Trusted Sources of Information

In a growing Web 2.0 world, consumer-generate content is becoming a staple for successful sites and sales. This is a big advantage for word of mouth marketing (WOMM) and those of us interested in using it. But as a novice in this area, you may not be sure what mediums to start with. eMarketer posted an article today with studies indicating people’s most trusted sources and where influencers flock.

As I say in most of my posts, identifying the niche for your product is most important place to begin. The niche(s) determines the subject of your messages and where you go to advertise your product. This perspective still applies with word of mouth marketing.

Information in the following charts can help us understand where consumers trend. We can use the information to choose where to begin our word of mouth campaign or even our general advertising.

We all know family and friends typically give us our most trusted information. The following graph presents consumer-trusted sources by popularity. When thinking about your WOM or advertising campaign, your goal is to get people on board with the following type of classifications or experiences.



People spread the word about a product with varying intensities. The most intense word-of-mouth communicators or “influencers” are the most attractive. One major component of WOMM sometimes crosses with publicity by attracting key persons to review your product and talk about it in articles or on their blogs. The chart bellow from eMarketer, based on a 2006 study, identifies key places influencers go to get their information. The first column, adult influencers, represents key influencers who shape consumer attitudes.


If you want to attract key people to your product, locations in the chart above is where you should start either advertising or request them to review your product.

For those of us who don’t think our product is excellent or that flaws in the product will be learned quickly, I suggest not advertising in some of the locations above. If your product is sub-par, people in these places will be the first to find that out and potentially spread the information on how much your product fails. That statement may seem unethical, but most of us at some point represent products we don’t have in confidence. Yet, we still want to do our best to make it sell as best as possible. Word of mouth marketing doesn’t work positively for weak products. The word will get out about its ineffectiveness (or people will simply not say anything about it). But, it’s possible to slow down the discovery and get strong initial buy-in using other traditional forms of marketing.

Online Advertising Affects Offline Sales

comScore released on Monday results of a study they and Yahoo! conducted of 5 major online retailers with offline store presence.

Article Stats:

• People exposed to both search and display advertising spent 41% more in stores than those who saw neither ad.
• People exposed only to search advertising spent 26% more in stores than those who saw neither ad.
• People exposed only to display ads spent 11% more in stores than those who saw neither ad.
• 89% of consumers shop for information about products online.
• Less than 7% of all sales happen online.
• Almost 90 percent of the incremental sales generated by online advertising take place in-store.
• For every dollar spent online resulting from an advertising campaign, five more were spent by the same group of people in the store.

Why This May Not Directly Relate to You:

The study watched activities and sales of five major retailers. The announcement didn’t mention them by name, but the types were three national department stores, a major apparel retailer, and an office products supplier.

Due to the type of companies, the information may not directly apply to you. The companies in the survey probably have a strong Internet presence. They also can afford to put on large advertising campaigns and provided excellent and clear landing pages and cross-promotions on their own sites. The study also focused on consumers who were spending a bit of time researching products they were thinking of buying.

When putting together an advertising campaign, information on your products needs to be full, complete, and consistent from the ad to the point where the buy process begins. Those elements plus the ability for customers to pickup the product at a location nearby will help produce the results described in the article. Therefore, it’s not just placing the ad that makes a difference, but everything else in-between.

But what if you don’t have retail stores and you only produce the products other retail stores sell? Focus on providing all the right information on the products and then display the retailers near them that sell the product. Although you may also offer an online buying option, you can be confident that significantly more people will choose an offline option than who buy from you.

Conclusion:

Click-throughs are just as important as they always have been. Therefore, this study doesn’t replace the need for targeted advertising. This simply shows that our advertising programs may be significantly more successful if we can make it easy for people to find an offline location near them to pick it up.

References:

• comScore: Yahoo! and comScore Study Finds Online Consumers Who Pre-Shop on the Web Spend More In-Store
• eMarketer: Search and Display Work Better Together

Types of Internet Marketing by Popularity

eMarketer just released an article discussing the effectiveness of RSS. Within this article they provided two graphs prioritizing the types of advertising marketers use the most (presented below). This really was the gem of the article for me.

They represent the conclusive expertise from seasoned marketers on where to best spend your internet marketing dollars. So, if you are wondering what the most effective types of online marketing may be or are trying to determine where to start your spending first, use these graphs to help you make your initial decisions.

Keep in mind that the product/service or company you are trying to advertise may get better results using a less “popular” advertising medium. Identifying your product’s niche is really the most important component. From there, you can decide which medium is best and how to present your ad within it. Good luck!