Marketing Matters
Your Reading List Can Show Route to Success
I read a lot every day. It usually starts with an online review of an article summary or a research study overview that leads me to click through to learn more.
Three of my favorite sources are Media Post, eMarketer and the Center for Media Research.
“Do Daily Deals Encourage Repeat Business?” was an eMarketer headline that grabbed me.
The article was about a MerchantCircle survey of small businesses and their attention-getting discounts. Acquiring new customers was why 58 percent of the businesses said they offered daily deals. Three-quarters of them said they would conduct another promotion.
In addition, a ConsumerSearch.com study found that more than two-thirds of consumers returned to a business they discovered through a daily deal without another deal incentive.
However, a Foresee Results survey showed that 38 percent of daily deal users were already frequent customers.
With that knowledge, are daily deals good for your business? You had better have a good sense of your customers to guide your decision.
Media Post recently reported on the Social Purpose Index, a study by the MSL Group. Consumers almost universally (96 percent) identified two to three causes that were personally important to them – but only 37 percent actually purchased a product associated with a cause.
In fact, the study reported consumers support causes that don’t make it to the top of their list. More than half (55 percent) gave time or money to support hunger relief, but only 22 percent ranked hunger as one of their top three causes.
Skepticism prevailed. Two-thirds of consumers feel that companies embrace causes only to help them sell products.
While cause marketing remains a viable tool, make sure you align yourself with a cause that fits your brand’s personality and truly resonates with your best customers.
You may think that some studies at the Center for Media Research are a bit narrow, but they can be very illuminating for the studious marketer.
For instance, consider recent studies of the owners of eReaders and of radio listeners.
The eReader study found that Kindle and Nook owners were 63 percent more likely to be heavy newspaper readers and 23 percent more likely to be heavy magazine readers than non-owners. Also, women are 52 percent more likely than men to own an eReader.
The other study examined which magazines are read by radio listeners.
Considering all radio listeners, the top three magazines are People, Time and Sports Illustrated. For country radio listeners, the list is People, Good Housekeeping and Readers Digest.
Sports radio fans also read Sports Illustrated, Time and ESPN The Magazine, while Top 40 listeners read People, Cosmopolitan and Time.
Useless trivia? Hardly. Especially if you are intent on finding the right media mix for your advertising and public relations efforts.
Information is easy to find. The trick is turning information into knowledge and using that knowledge to gain insight. You can start by expanding your reading list.
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