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Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius

4 out of 5 Consumers Verify Product Recommendations Online Before Purchasing

internet-universeA new study of U.S. consumers from Cone LLC called the 2010 Cone Online Influence Trend Tracker reveals some interesting statistics about consumers’ dependence on word-of-mouth marketing and recommendations.  As you might expect from your own purchasing behaviors, four out of five consumers go online to verify product recommendations friends, colleagues, family, and acquaintances give them offline.

The Cone report found that 81% of survey respondents said they go online to verify product recommendations.  The breakdown of what they do when the go online is as follows:

  • Researching product/service information = 61%
  • Reading user reviews = 55%
  • Searching ratings websites = 43%

The Internet gives people more access to information than ever, and having that kind of access at their fingertips has changed the way people make purchase decisions.  The Cone research also found that 77% of respondents claim to be more likely to purchase a product that has been recommended to them if they can find additional recommendations online.

Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the Internet has become a source for product research and recommendation verification not just for high-ticket items but also for lower priced items.  However, as you might expect, the research also found that people are more likely to search for additional recommendations for products they plan to own for a long time.

Following are some more specific results related to the types of products consumers seek additional information and recommendations about online:

  • Low cost: 72% of Americans would go online to do additional research about recommended movies or restaurants
  • Moderate cost: 85% would go online to do additional research about recommended computer equipment
  • High cost: 82% would go online to do additional research about a recommended car

The part of this study that marketers and brand managers need to be aware of is the fact that managing online brand reputation is absolutely critical to business in the 21st century.  Furthermore, consumer product research is no longer limited to comparing products and learning about features and pricing.  Today, consumer product research also encompasses reading opinions from people around the world, which can occur very late in the purchase decision-making process.  Marketers need to make sure the right kind of information is available online to help consumers make final purchase decisions, and marketers need to make sure that information is easy to find amid the cluttered Internet landscape.  As the Cone research shows, consumers are looking.

Image: stock.xchng

The Second Life of Social Game Advertising

farmvilleRemember when having a brand presence on Second Life was the “it” thing for companies and marketers?  Well, the concept of marketing through social games is far from dead.  Today, the increased focus on brand advertising in social games like Zynga‘s Farmville has become the new “it” marketing tactic.  Companies like Zynga and Playdom offer social games through multiple sites and devices such as Facebook, MySpace, iPhones, Androids, and more.

According to a report by eMarketer, it is predicted that marketers will spend $220 million on worldwide advertising in social games in 2010.  That number is expected to rise to $293 million by 2011 — a 60% increase over the $183 million spent on advertising in social games in 2009.  Keep in mind, the eMarketer investment predictions don’t include mobile aspects of social games, so the advertising dollars spent will actually be even higher!

Given the broad audience of social game users (who doesn’t know someone on Facebook who plays Farmville or Mafia Wars from Zynga?), there is certainly huge potential for advertising in social games.  The challenge will be finding the types of ads that actually drive consumers to action rather than cluttering their enjoyment of the games they’re playing.  Obviously, ads in social games need to add value to the user experience rather than simply interrupting those players’ experiences.

Another question relates to the longevity of these social games.  How long will people continue to play them before they’re lured to the next online or social fad?  It’s probably safe to assume that the lessons marketers learn from placing ads in social games won’t be for naught.  Surely those learnings will be applicable to future marketing initiatives, so testing the waters and experimenting with messages and tactics in today’s popular social games hold value.  The question is which types of products and brands will fare the best through advertising in social games.  I’m looking forward to watching the statistics and analyses that comes from these efforts.

What do you think of brand advertising in social games?

How Customer Services Affects a Brand

customer_service_agentHow do your company’s customer service tactics affect your brand?  Have you researched the relationship between customer service and brand image in your company and with your customers yet?  If not, you need to.  Customer service and brand image change in direct proportion to one another.

In other words, poor customer service (whether it actually is poor or is just perceived as poor doesn’t matter) leads to a negative brand image in consumers’ minds.  Great customer service, on the other hand, can have a significant impact in positive brand perceptions.  The power of social web conversations can boost these perceptions exponentially higher or lower.

How many times have you called a customer service line in need of help and found yourself spending 10 minutes navigating through automated services, desperately trying to connect with a human being.  However, when you finally can connect with a human being, that person provides you with inaccurate information or chooses not to be helpful at all.  Often there is a language barrier that makes it more frustrating for customers.

Sometimes, customer service agents are simply so unfriendly, bored or aloof, that the caller ends up feeling like he did something wrong by seeking help.  I understand that customer service is a thankless job (I’ve gotten on the phones in corporate customer service call centers more than once to get a better understanding of how the process works in order to better market it).  However, as a customer, you still deserve to be treated kindly and as if your call is important.  On more than one occasion, I’ve ended calls with customer service agents who have sounded particularly bored saying to the agent, “You’re getting paid to talk to me, right?”  The agent always answers in the affirmative to which I respond by saying, “Then you should really cheer up.  You are getting paid after all.”  I’m sure it doesn’t make a difference to the agent, but perhaps they’ll try to be a bit friendlier.  I can hope, right?

Of course, companies need to cut costs, and customer service is an easy place to do it.  However, the negative implications to your brand when customer service suffers are far-reaching and long-lasting. That’s damage that can be hard to erase or reverse.

Human nature makes it far more likely for disgruntled customers to tell people about their negative experiences with your company.  Happy customers are usually less likely to go out of their way to tell the world about how great your company is.  It’s important to go the extra mile to build loyal customers, but it’s also important to do the simple things that customers expect — such as giving them an easy way to get effective and friendly help when they need it.  After all, an essential part of brand-building is setting and meeting expectations for your brand.

Bottom-line, make a point to study how customer service affects your brand in the minds of consumers and how consumers react to those perceptions.  It’s more important than you might think.

Image: stock.xchng

Women Spend 30% More Time on Social Network Sites than Men Worldwide

woman_computerComScore released a new report this week called Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet, which offers enlightening statistics and trends related to how men and women use the Internet around the world.  Considering that women make most purchasing decisions, this is a report that brand managers need to read.

One of the most interesting findings in the comScore report tells us that women spend 30% more time on social networking sites than men do.  Not only do they spend more time on social networking sites each month (5.5 hours per month for women vs. 4 hours per month for men), but more women are using social networking sites then men with 75.8% of women around the world who access the Internet visiting a social networking site compared to 69.7% of men.

Not only do women spend more time on social networking sites across the globe, but the statistic holds true in specific regions as well, as shown below:

  • Latin America: women 94.1%; men 91.9%
  • North America: women 91.0%; men 87.5%
  • Europe: women 85.6%; men 80.6%
  • Asia Pacific: women 54.9%; men 50.7%

Furthermore, women spend more time online overall then men do globally.  In fact, women spend a full 8% more time online than month with an average of 25 hours per month (this includes all Web use, not just social networks use).  Women also spend 20% more time on retail sites than men, and women spend more time on comparison shopping and review sites.

Brands that want to connect with the female audience have a significant opportunity to do so online, particularly through social networking, comparison shopping sites, and review sites.  If your brand isn’t there, you’re missing a huge opportunity and leaving it open for your competitors to leverage making it more difficult for your brand to find space later.

You can follow the link to download a full copy of the Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet.

Image: stock.xchng

New FritoLay Website Gets Good Grades

A recent article on BrandWeek brought to my attention the redesign of the FritoLay website.  FritoLay, a division of PepsiCo, is known for its snack foods, including popular items like Lays Potato Chips, Doritos, Tostitos, and more.  You’d expect to find a fun website for a snack food company, and the redesigned FritoLay website certainly feels less corporate and more “homey” as you can see from the home page pictured below.

frito-lay-website-home-page

Rather than using the expected top navigation bar, the new FritoLay site uses colorful buttons and a soft color palette.  The predominant links on many pages within the site highlight the same content about health, the environment, and the company’s socially conscious efforts, as you can see from the “Our Snacks” page pictured below.

frito-lay-website-our-snacks-page

I think the site is an improvement, but I think it could use a stronger focus on consumer interaction rather than speaking at consumers and telling the story.  The link to the company’s blog is buried and there are no evident links to ongoing conversations, Facebook pages, Twitter profiles, and so on (until you find the blog).  These days, this is a big miss that I hope FritoLay will rectify in updates in the near future.

Furthermore, there is no information about the brand promises, logo use, and so forth.  The company vision is accessible through the “About Us” page shown below, but a vision is very different from a brand promise, and for a company that has multiple, well-known and powerful brands, the website should include a section about branding, the history of the brand (rather than just the company history), logos and packaging through the years, and so on.  In other words, the brand stories are important for FritoLay, and they should be given the space they deserve.

frito-lay-website-our-story-page

All-in-all, FritoLay is on the right track.  The streamlined site that uses little flash is a welcome change in a time when most websites are still flooded with flash that does nothing to enhance the user experience.  The new design is less cluttered than many corporate sites, which is another positive outcome of the redesign.

What do you think of the new FritoLay website design?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.