Around 30% of the Swedish population experiences advertising as disturbing (Orvesto Consumer 2016).
If you put this in relation to how many marketing-related messages that reach a person daily, these individuals are being disturbed around the clock. It’s a bit like living with a facade renovation day in and out. Our job as a marketer is to ensure that the disturbance is reduced – to show added value and create a quiet moment in the consumer’s everyday life.
Not surprisingly, a large proportion of those who are most annoyed by advertising are also the ones who use the internet most. If we didn’t dig deeper into the phenomenon, the conclusion might have been that these 30% are more difficult to reach and therefore less energy should be put on them. It is clear, however, that those who use the internet are also bombarded by marketing messages to a completely different extent. By looking at brand preferences, these 30% show a clearly higher brand preference for companies that advertise than those who do not advertise. This can be explained by the human ability to ignore irrelevant information. Individuals exposed to many impressions and messages simply capture what’s relevant to them – which further reinforces the importance of communication and a consistent brand image. Therefore, less energy shouldn’t be put on these individuals – just another type of energy.
It’s no surprise that Content Marketing and Big Data (including insight and predictive analysis) rank as the two hottest trends for marketers 2017 (Smart Insights). This year it’s all about understanding prospective customers, differentiating the market both digitally and analogously and adapting the offer accordingly. That said, 50% of all companies still haven’t integrated digital channels into their overall marketing strategy (Smart Insights) – risking relevance and brand image when customers get different messages in different channels.
With different entry routes and communication channels, the customer journey is no longer a clear linear structure. It now consists of many contact points created by the customer himself, both online and offline. It’s important to recognice where in the customer journey the added value can be created. Collecting and adding data is an important part of understanding the various communicative target groups and predicting their behaviour. A good digital example is that the behaviour of looking at a product does not go hand in hand with buying a product. Investigative tendency isn’t the same as buying tendency and building a strategy based on past behaviors online can contribute to advertising irritation and reduced brand preference. Nevertheless, many work in this way – without adding insights to who their likely buyers are.
In a previous post I discussed how communication can be kept relevant without being intrusive (the contradictory evolution of data). That mindset should always be used for CRM purposes for data collection and tracking. In short: your customers may begin to question why they provide you with information if they never benefit from it.
Personalization by means of data doesn’t mean telling a person time and time again that you know who they are – it’s about giving relevant offers that say “I know you” without saying “I know things about you!”. By creating relevant offers you lower the risk of being lost in the crowd of impressions that your customer is exposed to every day. You get increased conversion rates, satisfied customers and higher sales – what’s not to love? So before running away from the 30% of the Swedish population who say that advertising bothers them – make sure to create offers and communication with added value and talk with the individual, instead of to them.
Frida Boman – Head of Analytics and Campaign / InsightOne
Manoeuvring the digital landscape can be scary, but the amount of time required to gain the insights is worth a thousand. Contact us if you want to know more about how we can help you forward.
