Being Recommendable is Powerful
by John Moore, TalkTrack® Conversationalist, February 21, 2011Tags: Brands, Keller Fay Group, research, Shopping & Retail, Social media, TalkTrack®, WOM, word of mouth
Last week we shared Keller Fay TalkTrack® data showing which retail brands are more talkable and thus, more valuable. The value of being talkable cannot be understated for the simple reason that the more talkable a brand is, the more recommendable a brand becomes.
The Retail category is full of talkable brands from department stores to discount retailers to specialty shops. Keller Fay research shows conversations Americans have, both offline and online, about retail brands is more likely to contain a recommendation than the all-category average.
Americans have strong opinions about retail brands they recommend and those they don’t. The following chart illustrates how much more likely a conversation about a retail brand will include a recommendation to “Buy It or Try It.” The chart also shows how retail brands that do not earn opinions from customers suffer from indifference.
Another statistic Keller Fay measures in its ongoing TalkTrack® study is how likely a word of mouth recommendation will result in a purchase. For recommendations by Americans of retail brands, the likelihood of someone on the receiving end to purchase something from the recommended retailer is 11 percentage points higher than the all-category average. Meaning, the word of mouth recommendation of a retail brand is very likely to result in a sale.
For retail marketers, this next set of data is highly actionable. What is the best marketing medium to impact the word of mouth recommendation of a shopper? If you said the Internet, you’d be correct. 19% of shopper recommendations are spurred by something they saw online. High on the list of more impactful marketing mediums to influence a recommendation is point-of-sale marketing materials. This in-store marketing opportunity not only can drive purchases, it can also, according to Keller Fay data, drive word of mouth conversations.
The complete list and ranking of which marketing materials impact a shopper’s word of mouth about a retail brand most can be viewed below.
Just like the Retail category makes the American economy hum, in many ways it also makes the word of mouth marketing economy hum. More and more retail brands are investing in word of mouth marketing activities from social media to provocative advertising to delivering talkable in-store experiences. Americans love to talk about shopping almost as much as they love shopping. As evidenced by Keller Fay’s rich data on word of mouth in the Retail category, if a brand becomes talkable it can become recommendable which can lead to being more a profitable and valuable brand.
Feed
