Posts Tagged ‘study’

Digital Media’s Influence on CPG Sales

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

A new study dunnhumby with Accenture and ComScore shows how important a brand’s online presence is to in-store sales. They found that when consumers visit a brand’s website to learn about products, offers and relevant content, they are much better customers.

Shoppers who have visited a brand’s website spend 37% more money with the brand and 53% more in the category than non-visitors. The following chart shows how website visitors compare against non-visitors in these key shopping behaviors. Non-visitors are represented by an index of 100.

Monthly brand spending – Websites are a very powerful influence. Visitors spend 37% more with the brand in the retail store. The study found that the length of time visitors spend on the site is was the key determinant of their likelihood to purchase the brand in the store. What makes a website effective? The most important factor is fresh content that is updated frequently. Content that provides reasons to buy the brand, product ratings and user generated content are all effective at increasing time spent on the site.

Category spend – Website visitors are educated in the category and likely to make many purchases in the category with multiple brands. These consumers spend 53% more money in the category.

Brand units – Since they spending more money, it makes sense that they are filling their shopping cart with 48% more products.

Category price per unit – It’s interesting to note that these are savvy shoppers. They pay slightly less per unit than non-website visitors. They know where to look for discounts, and the web is a great place to find offers.

There is obviously great untapped potential here.

“The research highlights the significant yet underutilized potential of brand websites and digital communications as key drivers for building customer loyalty and preference for CPG brands.”

“Since website visitors have higher affinity to the brand and the overall product category, there is an opportunity for brand marketers to drive loyalty through personalizing the website experience, catering to the preferences of their best customers.” – John LaRocca, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships at dunnhumbyUSA

While this study isn’t specific to social media, it points to the quality of a brand’s presence across the entire internet.Most brand websites feature their Facebook and Twitter sites prominently. A few of the brand websites, like Skittles.com and Snickers.com, seem to exist just to pull people into their Facebook pages. It’s a great approach. Instead of just linking people to a Wall or offer page, they deliver a high-impact brand experience on the website and give customers reasons to dig deeper into the activities and conversation on Facebook.

The survey was conducted over a 6 month period by dunnhumby, Accenture and ComScore. ComScore tracked the online activities of a million web users in the US (with permission of course) and the data was matched against dunnhumby’s in-store shopping data. Accenture looked at websites of CPG brands to evaluate the common components of the most successful websites.

Get your copy from dunnhumby here.

Tags: CPG, dunnhumby, study
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Mobile Phones at the Point-of-Purchase

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

New research from Pew Internet show just how important mobile phones are to shoppers when they are in the store about to make a purchase. Not only are consumers using their phones to compare prices at other retailers, they are looking up reviews of the products staring back at them from the shelf.

The report ”The Rise of In-store Mobile Commerce” Pew found that during the last holiday season, 52% of adult cell phone owners used their phone in the store to help make a purchase decisions. If you thought they were standing there banging away on their phones to text their kids in the food court, you might be surprised to see that they were actually conducting some serious point-of-purchase research. The study found:

24% looked up online reviews
25% gathered price comparisons (19% of them went ahead and bought the product online when they were in the store)

These shoppers tend to be younger (age 18-49), live in urban areas and have incomes above $50,000.

Online price comparisons are going to happen. As mobile sites get better and as new apps make price aggregation easier, this behavior is only going to increase. But it’s not always all about price. Pew’s data shows that as many people are looking up product reviews as are checking prices at Amazon or apps like myShopanion. But they’re not looking for ads and company websites. They are checking with friends on social networks and searching for product reviews from other customers to get the info they need to feel confident about a purchase. Building customer advocacy is one area where marketers can influence, and it should be a primary focus.

Filling the web with authentic discussion from customers about quality, efficacy and value is the best way to fight the price war you can’t always control. The story is even stronger when those discussions include photos of the product in use and demonstration videos.A study last fall from Web Liquid found that social media posts with photos had engagement rates higher than any other type of post.

We are encouraging our Agents to use mobile devices as often as possible to share product opinions and experiences. Some of our Agents, like busy moms, use smartphones as their primary connection to the web and their social networks. Having an iPhone app not only enables them to share detailed product experiences as it happens, it’s integration with the iPhone’s high-quality camera make it easier than ever to post the personal videos and photos of the product experience in the store and at home with their families. This is the kind of stuff that will get a product into the shopping cart.

Got the app? If not, try it here: http://www.bzzagent.com/pg/iPhone

Tags: iphone, mobile, study
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What Gets Clicked on Twitter

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

You think you know a thing or two about using Twitter to promote your product? If you are using Twitter to drive people to product pages, offers, articles and blog posts, then you need to know what gives you the best chance for success.

Dan Zarella of Hubspot studied this and created a great infographic on how to get more clicks out of Twitter. Here a summary of his findings with a little of our own commentary.

Keep tweets between 12 and 130 characters. This makes a lot of sense. You want to say enough to communicate a compelling thought while leaving enough space for the RT and your username. If you want to be re-tweeted, keep your audience in mind and make it as easy as possible for someone to just click RT. The more time they have to spend figuring out ways to cut words and spaces to get it down to 140, the less likely they’ll be to do it. An RT should just take a second.

Place links about 25% of the way through. The highest click rates occurred when the link was a quarter of the way into the message. This was an eye-opener for me. I usually put the link at the end of the tweet so I can use the beginning of the message to build the call to action. But as they say in the newsroom, don’t bury the lead. The chart shows that you don’t want to start with the link, but get it in the message early.

Tweet links a slower pace. Sending only 1 or 2 links per hour will boost your click rate by as much as 300% compared to more frequent posts. You don’t want to appear spammy and sending too much of anything becomes noise. Make your tweets count by sending quality links at a slow, but steady basis.

Choose the right words. Twitter is a conversation so it’s important to recognize the people you are communicating with. Tweets mentioning others using the word “via” and @ had click rates in the 6% range, triple the click rate of tweets not using the terms. “RT” and “please” were also well received. It pays to be polite on Twitter. On the other hand, the use of “@addthis” and “marketing” actually performed worse than tweets without them. Think about that the next time you click the share button. My guess is that many share button tweets prepopulate the language in the post so it becomes a lot less interesting if a lot of people tweeting the same thing the exact same way. My takeaway, be creative.

Experiment using paper.li. If you are not familiar, paper.li is an automated content aggregator on a particular topic. Content is collected daily based on keywords or hashtags and posts are sent daily with the words “daily is out”. This must create a sense of ugency people can’t resist. According to the study, these gets click rates in the 30% range. Sounds like it’s time to set one of these up.

Use action words: more verbs, fewer nouns. Tweets with more adverbs and verbs have a much higher click rate than tweets with mostly nouns and adjectives. This all comes down to being interesting and talking in an active voice. Nouns are passive and boring.

Tweet on the weekends. Tweet click rates jump on Saturday and Sunday. A Sysmos report from 2009 shows that Twitter volume is somewhat lower on the weekend, especially on Sunday. Seems like when activity is lower, your tweet is more likely to get noticed.

Tweet later in the day. Clicks rates are high at 9am before fading as the morning coffee wears off. Lunch must energize people because clicks skyrocket to their highest point in the day at 2pm. Rates fade and jump at 5pm and again between 8 and 10pm. The study doesn’t indicate whether these are east coast times, but I suspect they are. So I’m sure the popularity of afternoon tweets has a lot to do with the addition of our west coast friends when they come online. No matter where you live, avoid 2am to 7am. Nobody’s clicking anything then.

This is interesting stuff. Some of these findings have made me re-think some the ways I approach Twitter for marketing. What about you? Lets talk about it at @bzzagent.

Tags: hubspot, study, twitter
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Looking for the ROI of Social? It’s $1.50

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

For every $1 spent, social marketing returns an average of $1.50. That’s what we found after analyzing results from all the Market Mix Modeling (MMM) studies conducted on BzzAgent social marketing campaigns for several of the world’s leading CPG companies.

(Here’s the press release on the study)

The MMM studies were conducted on 21 campaigns by top measurement firms including Nielsen, Genpact and Foresight ROI between 2009 and 2011. We’d love to be able to discuss the companies involved, but as you can imagine, they hold their ROI cards pretty close to the vest. They are valued clients and we respect that. We can say that they are all large CPG companies, including 3 of the top 10, with products sold at retail nationally.

An average ROI of $1.50 for social marketing is great validation about the financial impact social can make on a business. In some cases, the studies have shown that the ROI has been as effective as anything in the brand’s marketing mix. It’s important to look at ROI in the big picture. We know that ROI analysis practices can differ in every company. So a lower ROI may still represent a very successful campaign when evaluated in the context of the overall marketing plan. The great thing is that sophisticated analysis like MMM enables you to do that.

If you are not familiar with MMM, it’s considered the gold standard in media measurement. Some of the biggest marketers in the world use it to quantify the drivers of business performance across all marketing channels and activities. It is a comprehensive process led by specialty measurement firms and it is usually conducted once a year.

What does this all mean? Two things:

1. Social ROI Can Be Measured Accurately. Social marketing can be measured using the same sophisticated analysis used on all other media investments. Marketers don’t need to make up new metrics or rely on inexact assessments of influence and engagement to evaluate business impact. Social can be measured apples-to-apples with other media in the marketing mix.

2. Social is an Effective Sales Channel. We’ve always known that social media has a tremendous influence on our purchase decisions, but its actual business impact has been unclear. When social marketing is focused on product attributes, with the right targeting, cultivation and measurement practices, it can be a highly effective sales channel for brands.

Social media is used many different ways in an organization. Each department has their own communication goals, so their metrics of success should reflect that. If you are in marketing and looking to support the sales effort of the company, then social media can be an effective tool for driving sales. With the right practices, it can be managed and measured the same way you evaluate marketing investments in every other media format. As we’ve seen from this data, often its social media that comes out on top.

Tags: Measurement, mmm, ROI Research, study
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[Infographic] The Long-Term Impact of Brand Advocates

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

Social marketing is great at getting advocates excited about a product so they’ll want to share their opinions and recommendations with many others. The lifts they generate in product opinion, likelihood to recommend and purchase intent will make any brand manager smile, but how long does the love last? What’s the long term impact of these brand advocates?

It’s the question everyone involved in marketing wants to know. If we knew the long-term benefits on an investment in advocacy marketing, it would be easier to justify expanding programs to include more of the loyalty enriching activities used in the offline world.

To answer this question, BzzAgent studied brand advocates participating in programs for several consumer products over the course of a year. We found that brand advocates remain amazingly enthusiastic about the product. After a full year, 94% of the lift in product opinion, 91% of the lift in likelihood to recommend and 88% of the lift in purchase intent was maintained. That’s remarkable stamina for any marketing campaign. Here’s a summary of what we saw:

Tags: advocates, study
Posted in Making BzzAgent Work | 1 Comment »

Photos and Videos Generate the Most Engagement

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

Marketers are always looking for the best ways to get people involved in the conversation on Facebook. If you ever wondered if a post, a video or a photo were more likely to get people engaged, check out this new study from digital marketing firm Web Liquid.

Web Liquid studied over 1500 interactions on Facebook pages of 16 brands to benchmark rates of engagement for each type of post. The brands they evaluated ranged from CPG companies to sports leagues with fans ranging from a few thousand to over a million.

They found that posts with photos had the strongest engagement rate at 0.37%. This is higher than posts with videos (0.31%), text only posts (0.27%) and links (0.15%).

This is good advice if you are encouraging your customers to post their experiences with your brand. A post with a detailed review is great, but a photo of the product in use or a video demonstration of it is even better. This is what gets us so excited about our new iPhone app. The BzzAgent user experience is tightly integrated with the iPhone’s camera so it’s easy to capture the “eyes of the consumer” at the moment it happens. This is compelling content, and as this study proves, there’s nothing better at sparking conversation and engagement.

If you haven’t grabbed the app yet, you can get it here. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Tags: facebook, study
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Shopping Behavior Across Generations

Monday, October 31st, 2011

It’s a known fact that women control most of the purchasing decisions in and out of the home. With this information, brands specifically market to these women, hoping their product will stay top-of-mind when shopping in the aisles in stores. However, not all women are the same. Older generations are getting more involved in social media (my mother and grandmother included) and marketers now have a great opportunity to reach out to these women in different ways, not just collectively as women with Facebook accounts. Mintel reports that 66% of 35-44s can be expected to be using social media, along with 60% of 45-54s, 48% of 55-64s, and 35% of seniors 65+.

Different generations are driven by different factors and behaviors.

In a Nielsen study consisting of daughters (average age of 30), Mothers (average age of 47), and Grandmothers (average age of 67), daughters are the most stressed. They are the most impulsive shoppers of all the generations and also the most likely to try new products. Daughters are the most price-sensitive, and they seek out promotions and deals across stores and through various media channels. Daughters are most likely to hunt for deals through social media and to look for reviews and advice prior to purchasing. They are most tech-savvy of the different generations and an early adopter of new technology. When it comes to ads on social media, this age group is most likely to click. She is influenced by all media channels.

Mothers feel mid-level stress because even though their incomes are higher, they still worry about their finances. In fact, according to Mintel 62% of moms 45+ are spending more time this year looking around for coupons and deals than they were last year. They are heavy internet users and also text and email just as much as their daughters (maybe just a little bit slower). Mothers make more planned shopping trips, and are most focused on buying products with good value. As their daughters are most influenced by all types of media, mothers are most influenced by TV.

Grandmothers are the biggest planners and habitual shoppers. They are still learning the ropes with new technology, but catching up as they use email and social media more and more.

Despite the differences between generations, commonalities still remain linking them all together when it comes to purchase behavior.

While price is an important influencer for purchase decisions across all generations, the number one driver for brand loyalty is quality, even over price and convenience. Price and value attract an initial purchase decision, but the majority of women equate loyalty with quality.

The majority of women, regardless of age, state that a friend or family member’s recommendation is the most trusting advertising source. Following word-of-mouth, women will turn to editorial content and opinions online before making a purchase. Marketers should connect with these women to make them feel like valued customers and to gain trust in order to create loyalists and brand advocates for their brand. Women want to feel connected and involved with the brands they choose on a daily basis.

Brands should try to earn trust as early as possible with women, especially as daughters become mothers and mothers become grandmothers. Since women are most loyal with the brands they trust, daughters will likely continue to purchase their favorite brands for themselves and then for their families, when they become the household purchasers.

Tags: moms, shopping, study
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dunnhumby Study Proves Offline Sales Impact of Digital Media

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

Our friends at dunnhumby released the findings of a great study today. They prove the importance of digital media promotions to in-store purchases of CPG companies.

Working with Comscore, dunnhumby linked a permission-based panel of a million internet users to their anonymous loyalty card in-store purchase data. This was done so no identifiable personal data was disclosed. They compared the in-store purchases of households exposed to online promotions to those not exposed to it. The results show how important digital media is to CPG marketing:

Exposure to digital media promotions lifts in-store sales 21%

Households exposed to online promotions for the products bought a median of 21% more CPG products in retail stores. 5 of every 6 campaigns measured generated a sales lift, and 40% of them had a lift that exceeded 30%.

Targeting consumers based on buying data lifts in-store sales 42%

The sales lift doubled when targeting based on in-store purchase data was added to the mix. A new Microsoft tool called CPG Online Effect provided targeting algorithms based on anonymous dunnhumby buying data and Comscore web browsing data.

“Based on these results, the power of purchase-based ad targeting is clear. By delivering a relevant and persuasive message to the appropriate consumer segment, brand buying at retail stores can be increased substantially. It’s clear that the level of accuracy in reaching a brand’s consumer target that is possible with the Internet can drive ROI several times higher than what can be obtained using traditional media channels.” Guy Fulgoni, CEO, Comscore

This study is based on exposure to online ads. BzzAgent is now using this same in-store purchase data to target something even more influential – active brand advocates. Combining loyalty card purchase history with social media savvy customers may be the biggest growth opportunity for marketers today. These “Social Shoppers” have a deep connection to your brand and they rely heavily on social media to discuss products and recommendations with a big audience of followers. Download our latest ebook “From Loyalty to Advocacy: Driving Sales with Social Shoppers“ to drive sales results like these using the most persuasive voices around your brand.

Tags: dunnhumby, study
Posted in Making BzzAgent Work | 2 Comments »

Brand Advocates Clean Up

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

This is part of BzzAgent’s “Voice of the Advocate” series where we summarize the latest trends in a product category and review how to get brand advocates talking about them.

Home cleaning products are staples of daytime television. You can’t get through a single commercial break without seeing ads for products that clean your soiled clothes, grimy bathtubs and filthy floors. From Ajax to Windex and from Lysol 4-in-1 to 2000 Flushes, there are products to clean everything… and we all have some of them in the house.

Did you know these products are also among the most discussed among brand advocates? Social marketing programs have been successfully deployed to drive millions of dollars of measurable sales for these products.

Let’s have a closer look. Here are 3 trends from Mintel on the category matched to opinions from over 5,000 BzzAgent brand advocates who use these home cleaning products.

Trend #1 DIY

Overall new product launches have been soft in the past year, but the home cleaning category is strong due to the economy. The recession has caused many to cut back on professional maid and cleaning services which has led consumers to take on cleaning themselves. Use of professional services for those with $100k+ incomes dropped from 19% to 7%.

Both men and women take on cleaning in the home, but let’s not kid ourselves. Women are the primary cleaners. 56% of women report being the main cleaner in the household, compared to 32% of men. A big problem for marketers is that many of these women believe store brands perform just as well as the costlier name brands.

What Our Advocates Think:

They are hands-on when it comes to cleaning products. A significant majority of those taking our survey were women and 84% of them buy these products at least monthly. 75% of the time the purchase is made at a discount department store like Wal-Mart or Target where they are likely purchased with other products for the home.
These are savvy cleaners. These products are very self-explanatory and people know how to use them so home product demonstration parties and access to “how to” content from the brand have limited appeal. The focus is entirely on the product and how it makes their job at home easier.
They are eager to sample products they haven’t used before. 95% of them are very interested in trying new cleaning products and sharing coupons with their friends and followers.

BzzAgent advocates are heavy users of home cleaning products. A BzzCampaign puts the product experience into the hands of these consumers so they can see the results in their own home – showing them what they are missing with the economy store brand they’ve been using. The precision of targeting is also a key advantage. Reaching a specific segment of women using these products frequently at home ensures your message is personal, relevant and highly effective.

Trend #2 Green Theme

Products with green and natural claims made up 54% of the recent new product launches. But there is a disconnect happening with consumers, as only 25% use green cleaners regularly and as many as 40% have never tried them. The biggest barriers to adoption are the higher costs and doubts about product effectiveness. Not surprisingly, 18-34 year olds are most likes to go green while those 55 and up are least likely.

What Our Advocates Think:

“Green” may be the hot marketing theme, but our advocates don’t feel it’s very talkable. “Green” falls far down the list of topics after other product attributes. It’s likely that there hasn’t been enough education from marketers on why they should care.
Other product attributes they care more about include new scents and formulas. 7 in 10 are very interested in talking about these topics – especially the 55+ audience.

If you are marketing with a strong “green” message, make sure you focus on the most receptive audience and spend the time to explain why this is important. Address the concerns around the high cost perception directly. If your green product works just as well as the leading competitors, make sure to ask advocates to demonstrate this through video demonstrations or written product reviews. BzzAgent create a BzzGuides for every campaign to provide product facts and education on the key benefits so your key messages come through clearly.

Trend #3: Convenience

Many consumers report feeling a sense of accomplishment when cleaning, and 75% have a clear cleaning routine – usually in the morning. Since the day starts early, time-saving and ease of use are valued by a wide range of consumers. A third of launches featured this claim with products that have resealable packaging, ergonomic bottles and on-the-go variations. These features are so valued that many consumers are willing to pay more for these benefits.

What Our Advocates Think:

Innovation is important. Advocates are always looking for what’s new. A new product launch in the category is a big deal, and for 84% advocates report being very interested in discussing it.
BzzAgent advocates are very social and they love to share what give them a sense of accomplishment. 92% are very interested in writing detailed reviews of cleaning products online and 78% want to post reviews on e-commerce sites like Amazon. They also value the opinions of the friends and followers. 83% will help spread the word by commenting and sharing great reviews posted by others around them.
Advocates are interested in getting more involved with the brands they trust. 7 in 10 are very interested in participating in contests or sweepstakes surrounding cleaning products.

There aren’t a lot of products that give consumers a feeling of personal accomplishment. Home cleaning products can do that and advocates want to talk about how they feel. BzzAgent gets users of your products to tell their personal stories in their own words so others can see why your new features, enhancements and product launches save time and give people pride about living in a cleaner home.

Tags: advocacy, CPG, study, voice of the advocate
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