As we are entering the New Year, it is often a good time to make good resolutions for the year ahead. If you are a marketer, my simple recommendation for 2007 will be for you to pay more attention to what you own and control rather than only looking at buying eyeballs: Take care and Love your Brand Website! Its value and ROI is exponential. Below are simple points that explain and support this good marketer resolution for 2007.
As media fragmentation will continue to accelerate and as traditional media and advertising are loosing effectiveness, marketing should value actions that drive engagement specifically, when these actions are primarily consumer driven. Indeed, at a time when brand marketers are looking to intimately connect with consumers, unlike most marketing and media activities, brand website exposures are consumer driven: people choose and decide to visit the brand. When you compare this with traditional interruptive media where the brand forces its exposure, no wonder that brand websites offer an engaging and strong value proposition. For example, the SiteCRM™ normative database[1] confirms that brand websites are all about quality rather than quantity of contacts; on average 85% of brand website visitors are either medium or high value consumers to the brand. Furthermore, according to recent research from Forrester and Planetfeedback (see Figure below), vocal consumers find that word of mouth and brand websites are by far the most trusted sources of information in comparison to other forms of advertising.
So, if you want positive conversations to take place, start in your own back yard. Provide consumers what they need to spread the word about you, ‘open up’ and provide information for people to discuss, engage and buzz about you. Do this by starting on your brand website - it will only accelerate ‘organic word of mouth’. It sounds simple, so do it. It offers unique and long lasting ROI as it builds trust and relationship.
Having been in the business of measuring and valuing brand websites since 2000, this news is not new to us, consumers have always told us so. For example, back in 2003, when questioned about the value of different advertising stimuli to interact and learn about the brand, consumers already praised the brand website above other sources; nearly 55% considered it the best option, compared to 9% for TV Advertising for example.
Although as we know well consumers today tend to avoid forced advertising exposure, back in 2003 consumers were already showing us the way to ‘conversational marketing’ as 75% of them were stating their intention to increase their frequency of visit to brand websites, 25% not changing their visit frequency.
Quite clearly, and well before the rise of social media, consumers were looking for intimate, more personal and balanced relationship with their favourite brand websites. In 2003, we were already recommending marketers to grab this unique opportunity to market their brand website as a central hub, a real destination platform for consumers. And at that time we were already saying[2] so:
« This is clearly the beginning of a powerful
new trend. Five years on, we may lookback
at this article and say, ‘Of course!’ At present,
however, smart brands have agreat opportunity
to begin building customer relationships through
their website,which, as we have seen, has strong
bottom-line implication »
The ones that got the message back then are now really starting to leverage the benefits. Is it too late for the others? No, we do not think so, as consumers will continue to look for intimacy and closer relationships with brands they love. In fact, the recent US results of the Baroblogs™ barometer (November 2006, crmmetrix), shows that brand websites and one of their extensions - brand blogs - are good avenues to connect with consumers. Indeed, about 30% of Americans online claim to have already visited a brand blog (28.4%) and in general perceive the initiative as being largely positive for a brand (84%). The interactive nature of brand blogs are clearly valued by consumes as they will then either praise the brand (67.5%), claim their dissatisfaction (72%), share information about products with other consumers (60%) and even look for testing new product initiatives (58%).
Quite clearly, the opportunities are there for brands to expand relationships with consumers, starting again from their brand websites. So ‘open up’ - if you do, you have more to gain than to loose. Indeed, the conversation is already going on about you (in forums, blogs, etc.), so either join it or run the risk of becoming irrelevant. Start feeding these conversations with valuable content that consumers can find on your brand websites. Stop ‘counting’ traffic only, start ‘measuring’ their value. In other words rather than ‘watching’ your online visitors, and start ‘listening’ to them (to find out about the importance of listening to generate word of mouth, review for example one of my IMediaConnection articles).
So, if one of your 2007 resolutions is to be more customer-centric, start with your brand websites, leverage them, they will only expand the power and value of closer relationships with your best consumers!
[1] Since 2000, the brand website effectiveness solution SiteCRM™ normative database has gathered over 6 million data points collected from brand websites in categories ranging from cpg, pharma, apparels, services to automotives in the US, Europe and Asia.
[2] Admap article, February 2004 : « 10 facts about the value of brand websites », to get a copy of this white paper visit www.crmmetrix.com/eng/whitepapers.asp
Could not agree more with you, Laurent. To your point, brand websites are one lever within our control to become more customer centric and embrace web 2.0 opportunities.
Eric
Posted by: Eric Kintz | 01/08/2007 at 07:18 PM
Could not agree more with your post here, Laurent. Brands should also take comfort in knowing that websites are getting easier to build, control, and change. As brands internalize blog-publishing methods, far more agility and flexibility is entering the system. Early on, too many brands over-invested into impenetrably inflexible website plaforms. The sites were so rigid that even with world-class listening techniques, you simply couldn't "act" on the insights. That's beginning to change, and this should fortify your argument even more.
Posted by: Pete Blackshaw | 01/07/2007 at 11:58 PM