The purchase decision is a long journey – Stores are the last mile

A brand needs to own key touch-points along the way to make sure when the right time comes that consumers will consider it.

So which touch points are critical to the success trial?


Well if you are not in the market for a new TV, Seeing an advert about TV’s will only refresh your awareness of the existence of that brand, hopefully give it some profile and potentially escalate it to acceptance and maybe “top of Mind” status. If this is not refreshed regularly you are likely to forget again, and the money is pretty much wasted.

Companies need to invest wisely in all the steps of the chain. The critical ones being downstream, they are also the ones where the ROI is likely to be higher.

What a brand marketer wants to do is the following.

• Establish awareness profile and acceptance of the brand as part of the consumer environment.


• Win the hearts of the opinion leaders / those who will generate a recommendation – Mavens


• Get people talking and particularly relay the words of Mavens. Create Buzz – Connectors


• Get Sales people in store to recommend and talk up the brand in a consistent way to the brand image carried in all other brand communications. Consumers are more likely to buy in, if the experience is consistent to the one they’ve had when talking to their friends or researching the market.
  

To convert a brand from awareness to trial you will need to win the consumers at four main levels:

• Establish brand acceptance at personal level (buyer has heard enough to find credible and accepts to consider – personal inner circle)


• Get Short listed through research rounds (internet, media, reviews, trade – environment outer circle)


• Get Validated by a closer circle (friends recommendations, trusted inner relationships circle)


• Win the in-store recommendation (point of purchase – outer circle)

Money invested in building awareness and top of mind becomes wasted if when coming purchase time friends reveal to you that this is a problem brand (for example customer service issues) or if when you walk into a store the sales person diverts you to a competitor brand for x,y,z unforeseen reasons.

All the steps are critical. But the in-store experience can make or break your work.

Picture credits: BdR76

Purchase process - All Brand touchpoints are not born equal

Let's say for the sake of this example that I am a marketer working for a company that is selling the “X” TV brand.

Is there a minimum number of touch points that I need to be across to make sure I convince consumers to buy the “X” brand (assuming I have the right appealing message) and which touch points are going to deliver the most efficient strategy?

All sources of information are not born equal. We believe less or more depending on where it comes from and how much trust we attach to the source.

For example:

• Our close circle of relationships: Friends and colleagues for example. We know their personalities, strength and weaknesses. Because of that we believe we can predict their behaviours and we know what we can trust them with. Suddenly an advice from them can quickly be assessed. If you know a friend who is a keen technology enthusiast his word will have more weight to you. He is a maven.


• Sales people in Stores: we all know sales people are here to sell, surely we also know they have incentives and are promoting one product at one time because of personal revenue gains. We take them with a pinch of salt but still we “believe” them to a good degree. They are the experts, they know what sells. They are supposed to understand the technology.


• Media: TV Advertising, Technology Reviewers, Print Magazines, Celebrity endorsement, and other ambassadors in the social media sphere. They are a good source of information, we understand some may not be as neutral as need be, but we believe and read with interest.

I should make a small aside here to discuss briefly Social Media spaces. I believe that currently because of the rather new landscape created by the rise of Social Medias, consumers are displaying a certain amount of naivety about it. In other words they give it more credit than they should. As with every other media this will settle down, and become an integral part of our world. When this has happened and the environment will have matured a bit, I believe this phenomenon will level out as well.

Regardless of the above, any information submitted to us gets double checked against our previous knowledge. The message content as well as the way it is delivered (format, tone, manner,...) are all just as important to us in deciding upon the “trustworthiness” factor.

“In a short slogan, there is no message without a medium. What the example seems to teach us is that at least in some cases, the reasoner should receive not just the content of a message, but take account of the message-with-the-medium.” Rott, 2004



Determining how much a particular message needs to be repeated until it gets the appropriate cut through is therefore pretty hard. What we know for sure is that the more risk averse a person is, the more it will take to convince her.

As explained in a previous post here, we are more likely to believe when the message is consistent across sources that look to us as if they are independent and neutral. The more of those sources with a consistent message the more likely the message is to be “true”.

Also the lesser number of touch points, the more difficult it is to be convincing and the less credible the message looks.

Imagine you go to a store to finally buy that TV and you come with a set of 2 or 3 brands in mind. Then you see brand Y in store ... you have never heard of brand Y before.

The store sales staff assures you it is the best buy for your money, will you believe them? Is that enough? Probably not. Unless you care little about brands and therefore are happy to take a risk.

You are most likely going to do one of two things.

1. Ignore that brand and buy one of the brands you have done your research on,
2. Delay your purchase and go research brand Y.

The environment you previously studied has changed and you need to reconsider.

picture credits: Old TV by afternoon_sunlight and Kermit shopping by Looking Glass

Advert recall even in fast forward !

Interesting research is showing that TV viewers that are using PVR/DVR functions and are fast forwarding adverts are actually still paying attention to what they are forwarding through. Ad recalls are still high even if they are lower. Subjects are so anxious not to miss the beginning of their show that they are still registering images. Read the full article

The difference between Advertising & PR

I have just read a funny post from Chris Brown in the US.

Here are pics from it - I think it is self explanatory !

Just one comment I would add though. Something I have been beating on constantly in this blog. It's the power of repetition from different sources. Joke apart the subject is more likely to believe the statement to be true if he hears the same info from at least 3 different types of sources. So Branding / PR and Advertising should be used together to consolidate the brand message... one really can't achieve the same results alone.