Performance Communications | November 13, 2013
Do you know what is being said about your brand in the forums and blogs? No? Why not? Your customers know. They visited just before they made a decision to buy (or not buy) your product. So again, why don’t you know? Customers don’t have to be regulars on forums, it’s easy and increasingly likely that they are being directed to them by Google.
AM Online recently published the roundup up of its 2013 Digital Dealer conference, which featured some stats from an old piece of research by Google, which contains loads of interesting figures, but the one that caught my eye was this:
[quote align=”center” color=”#ffda56″]Auto shoppers used, on average, 18.2 sources of information to help them make their purchase decision.[/quote]
That is staggering. That there are so many people out there offering opinions isn’t a surprise (opinions are like arseholes, everyone’s got one), but whats impressive is that consumers are bothering to search them out, read them and, inevitably, weigh them up in the decision-making process. No wonder it takes me so long to make a choice on which restaurant to eat at (10.4 sources FYI)!
So what can brands do? Well, if 50% of new car searches start, for example, with a visit to a search engine, then brands need to look at the bigger media picture. They need to stop focusing efforts and budget on Facebook and Twitter. That’s just two touch points. What about the other 16.2 pieces of information. That’s what Google is showing your customer.
You need to develop a strategy that can find these conversations and engage with them. Not shut them up, open a conversation. If they have a negative opinion of the product, why? Can their mind be changed, was it a result of a silly misunderstanding? Just ask Ford. If they weren’t paying attention to the wider conversations happening outside the cosy confines of their Facebook page, they would have missed the backlash that was coming from the Ford Ranger community over a simple misunderstanding (case study here).
Brands need to embrace all of the web, not just the bit that they can see. They need to search for openings and excuses to get involved in conversations happening outside of Zuckerberg’s place. Where are the 18.2 places at which people are forming opinions of your brand?
