- People trust other consumers more than they trust direct brand advertisements.
- People don’t want to buy something that is obviously displayed as a product.
- 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- On Twitter, 53% of consumers recommend companies or products in their tweets. Of those, 48% follow through with the intent to buy that product or service.
The money wasted on SEO and bad online ads is astronomical. For some reason too many brands feel they need to make Google richer by spending a lot of money on search even though research continues to show organic search is rated more trustworthy by consumers.
Brands have been using the Internet like a billboard and consumers are tuning them out. Some brands still believe that social media is important while consumers seem to ignore them. I mean, how many brands in your pantry do you want to have a social media relationship with?
Then there is the belief that “you need to tell a story” about your brand. Today’s consumers don’t have the time to read the content on their favorite sites what makes you think they want to read your story?
The truth is that digital marketing is evolving and consumers are getting smarter. For a lot of products they are going to read reviews before buying, but don’t think that applies to every product. If I see a good looking frozen pizza I’m going to buy it not read reviews. Do you really think women are going to read reviews about Diet Coke before they buy it?
In order to really leverage digital marketing a marketer needs two things:
1ne: A good eMarketing person who can view your brand as a consumer and answer the question “what’s in it for me?”.
2wo: The willingness to experiment with different online platforms to find one that works.
We tried something earlier this year in the Midwest market for a new brand of frozen pizza. Starting at 3PM we served ads that showed the pizza coming out of the oven and someone eating a slice. Needless to say the video within the ad even made me hungry. The result? A significant lift in sales within the market, we served the ads to versus the blackout market.
We didn’t need focus groups or a ton of research to tell us the ads would work. We came up with the idea while visiting the company HQ’s in Chicago and being served some of their product for lunch. The client was willing to experiment and we set up a great test, but how many brands are nimble enough to do things like this?
Yes, digital marketing is changing, but if you really understand your audience some things will never change.
