Consumer Sharing and Participation Higher than Even I Expected

Here’s a good piece from emarketer that reveals some interesting statistics about on how consumers pass along brand information on and offline.

The percentage of people who claim to help a friend make a purchasing decision didn’t surprise me.  In fact, I might have thought it would be higher – and that’s saying something considering how much I believe in the power of word-of-mouth marketing.  But I was really surprised on these stats

• One out of five people contribute to a forum
• One out of five people attend offline events with people of a similar interest – Like a Tweetup.
• 40% of people actively share information they find online

Just more reason to find your influencers, build a relationship with them and empower them to spread the word.

The emarketer piece also has some information on which age demos are more active in sharing information.

Happy Birthday to Your Dead Grandmother

I’m not sure if there’s anyone to blame on this one, but it’s certainly worth considering the next time you send out an email blast.

Earlier today, my wife received an email blast from 1800 FLOWERS reminding her of her Grandmother’s birthday.  The only problem is that her Grandmother passed away last year.  The email was triggered because she ordered flowers the celebrate the occasion last year and I’m not sure if she opted in for a reminder.

Again, I don’t necessarily blame 1800 flowers for this, but I hope they encourage their customers to maintain a personal profile to help manage their dates to remember.

Don’t Forget About Offline

All of the internet marketing big shots have been down in Austin for South by Southwest Interactive this week to talk about things like social media,  online communities, blogs, Twitter and Facebook.  And that’s cool, I love social media.

But it got me thinking…

Maybe it’s because the most popular topic on Twitter is Twitter and blogs tend to talk about other blogs more than anything else – but it seems like everyone is forgetting about the old-fashioned and less cutting edge part of word of mouth marketing: offline.

For all of your online word of mouth building efforts to truly work, it almost always has to go offline.  That’s why I find it so interesting that everyone is jumping into the social media game head first.  For every 100 social media marketing experts, how many offline, word of mouth experts is there.  I can think of a few, but not many.

A few questions and things to think about:

• If you’re focused on building relationships online, what are you doing to engage consumers offline?
• If you have an agency to manage your online community, do you have one to manage the offline?
• Do your online conversations include a call for offline action?
• 71% of “word of mouth” conversations happen face to face (source: Fizz, TalkTrack/Keller Fay Group 2006)

Insanely Cool Online/Mobile Promotion

I don’t know what you call this technology, but this is by far the best use of it that I’ve seen.  Check out this insanely cool promotion from the Gonzaga Women’s Basketball Team.

The You Can’t Buy That moment: Making people feel like they’re part of the team.

Via: Made to Stick

Mark Silva Interview

Mark Silva is internet pioneer.  Not only does he run one of the best interactive agencies in the country (Real Branding in San Francisco), he also started RealBeer.com way back before blogs and user generated content were buzz words du jour.

I had a chance chat with Mark Silva before we headed into the Great American Beer Festival this past week.  In less than 3 minutes, Mark manages to summarize how companies need to connect with consumers in the web 2.0 age.  Then we went inside and drank some beer.

For more on how Mark thinks, check out his blog.

For those of you reading via RSS, click here for the video.

more about “Mark Silva Interview“, posted with vodpod

Brand Content is Like Food

If you’re reading blogs, you already know this.  And if you’re digging as deep as my blog, you probably already REALLY know this.

Consumers want fresh, new, evolving and relevant content.  If fact they expect it.

I was reminded of this when I read Mark Silva’s blog today showcasing some comments that college students made in a copywriting class.  The comment that stuck out to me was:

“Brands are built by consumers and consumers are people/living things. Brands need to show more ‘life’ online to become or stay relevant.”

So if college students (don’t know what level they were) know this, then why do so many brands still treat their website like a static online brochure?  The time has come for brands to monitor and publish online content on a DAILY basis.  The days of freshening or tweaking the website once a quarter are over.