SociaLight Media Blog

Here’s an article from last week’s Wall Street Journal called The Ad Changes With the Shopper In Front of It. Very cool. It’s about how some companies, including Procter & Gamble and Dunkin’ Donuts are using new technology to increase the effectiveness of their in-store advertising. DD is using digital screen ads that change based on the customer’s purchase. For example, if you stop in for breakfast and purchase a coffee and bagel, the screen at the register will remind you about their new flavor of iced tea and personal pizzas as a lunch idea. Great stuff. P&G is working with Metro Extra in Germany with radio frequency tags which causes a screen at the customer’s eye level to display an ad based on the product that was picked up off the shelf! You pick up a certain brand or type of shampoo and the ad displayed changes to a complimentary conditioner.

This shift in advertising comes at a time when television spots are almost worthless due to the amount of noise viewers have to deal with, popular technology like TiVo and On-Demand, and the fact that the results of the ad are virtually untrackable. Businesses are trying to get their ads closer to the consumer purchase, which is one of two places: in-store or online. With an in-store ad, companies can rest assured that people are seeing, and not blocking, the ads (yet) because there isn’t as much competition for the consumer’s attention as there is on television. It is also much cheaper than a television spot and more trackable with automatic promotion and coupon codes.

Online advertising and social networks are also becoming the new battlegrounds for consumer attention. Every click is trackable; companies can see exactly where their customers are coming from, where they leave, how long they stay, and what they click on. Try to do that on television, or even in-store! Additionally, for many small-medium businesses, they benefit from the small price-tag of developing an online presence and the fact that they may have very little competition in their market. What’s even more appealing about developing an online presence is that they are providing consumers with information at the exact time when consumers are LOOKING FOR IT! In-store advertising and shifting display ads may be great for impulse-buys, but when it’s a more involved purchase, people research it first. 78% of internet users say that they research a product or service online before they purchase it (Pew Internet and American Life Project). That’s where you, as a business, want to be!

Here’s an article for the business owner. A couple weeks ago, The New York Times posted this article, To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click. It features a number of huge companies and has a great chart comparing Gap’s first quarter sales in stores and online.

A great example of outside influences of consumer behavior - the poor economy, the exorbitant price of gas. Consumers are shopping much more online this year rather than going to the gas pump then hitting the mall. What does that mean for businesses, large and small? The online customer experience is now more important than ever - from the ease of finding your website, to being able to see your products and services, to reading reviews of those products and services written by real people, to being able to swiftly make a purchase, or to receiving more information from you. Online customers need the same service treatment that they receive in-store. Your website has to exude your business - I like Anthropologie’s site, for example. Gives you a sense of their brick-and-mortar store, and is extremely simple; I can make a purchase in only four clicks from their homepage.

But back to the article - gas prices and online shoppers are causing a lot of big companies to take notice. Target, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and half a dozen other huge companies are offering limited-time free shipping online; both embracing the surge of online buyers and attempting to cushion the blow that the in-store sales have received.

These online customers aren’t just the computer-savvy either.

“I’m a computer illiterate person,” said one of the people interviewed in the article. “But I’m becoming much more literate as a result of gas prices.” Virtually everyone industry’s customers are opting to stay at home, research your product online, and make purchases from home. These customers need to be able to find you quickly and easily, or they’ll simply look elsewhere online for the product or service. The hard times of the economy and the high gas prices coupled with the ease of the internet and shopping online are making this environment extremely competitive.

Online sales are expected to surpass $200 billion this year, the article states, and all industries are taking note.

“To encourage the trend, retailers are investing in online operations and experimenting with new marketing techniques. Even retailers that are scaling back in their physical stores are expanding or enhancing online operations, which are by and large the fastest growing parts of their company. The shopping Web sites themselves are becoming speedier, easier to navigate and filled with more products.”

I’m really looking forward to this year because of all of this. More and more, people are beginning to see how important their business’s online image is, and as a web-ophile, that makes me smile. Read the article and tell me what you think!