Where are your next customers?
Do you remember when aggressive salespeople would always follow up asking for a meeting to educate you on their latest product? If you are a millennial, you might not have experienced this much but, not too many years ago, it was quite common to sit through slide after slide of Powerpoint to hear the latest details on a new or updated product. Nowadays, things are different. What changed?
Education
In 2019, marketing experts estimate that over 80 percent of consumers educate themselves online before purchasing a new product online or in a store. In most cases, consumers are looking to understand if the product will deliver on what companies promise in the description. Besides reviews, they can easily analyze product specs and make comparisons with competitive offerings. For major purchases, they can score products on specific categories from performance to long term warranties.
Amazon is the perfect example of taking product education to a new level. On many product pages, you can even watch videos of consumers using the product before contemplating a buying decision.
Word of mouth
Even more important than product education is word of mouth marketing. It has been proven to be ten times more effective than traditional advertising. This is why you see so many ads in social media promoting different products and why influencer marketing is playing such a critical role in social channels. People want to buy products and services that have been proven to create customer value.
In fact, 86% of marketers used influencers in 2017, according to Linqia.
Location, location, location
With all this change happening in the marketing space, so much of why people buy comes down to how and where they get engaged with a company. In the past, most individuals would read the newspaper, watch hours of television, or drive by a billboard. People don’t read papers anymore, they don’t watch traditional TV, and automobile passengers are face down on their iPhones while they drive by roadside billboards.
This begs the question, are you still over-invested in traditional marketing tactics? Maybe it is time to relocate your advertising spend from the newspaper to a medium that can quantify how many people viewed your ad. Perhaps it is time to start analyzing engagement and gain a better understanding of which ads work best to generate buzz and get new customers in the door.
Blair Allen can help get your ads placed where they matter most. We can help educate your prospects before they buy through social media and innovative web design combined with content automation.
Click here for a FREE Digital Marketing audit so we can jump-start your marketing and start creating new leads in 2019.
Author: Michael Moreno, CSO at Blair Allen