Web Sites Beat out Newspapers & Print for Purchase Decisions

Are You Throwing Your Advertising Dollars Away With Print Media?

The latest Harris Interactive poll solidifies the inevitable death of newspaper advertising as a viable return on investment for businesses.

While some potential customers continue to use older styles of media to help prepare for future purchases, the number one deciding factor now is the company's web site, coming in at a substantial 36%. Print dinosaurs (newspapers and magazines) have slipped even further down to 19% or less. The only way for newspapers to survive at this point (barring the push by some for government bailout) is for them to embrace modern technology through more advanced usage of the internet to compliment and eventually replace their non-green, environment un-friendly print methods.

We believe the cost of advertising in print far exceeds that of a proper internet presence and achieves a greatly reduced return on investment.

How People Make Purchase Decisions

Despite the ascendancy of social media, customers still prepare for purchase decisions using a combination of old media, new media, and old-fashioned conversations with friends and family. However, the old media is losing more and more power in affecting purchase decisions.

According to a March 2009 survey by Harris Interactive, the most common methods of gathering information prior to making a purchase are using a company website 36% of the time. Face-to-face conversation with a salesperson or other company representative (22%), and face-to-face conversation with a person not associated with the company (21%) take second and third honors.

The younger crowd, those 18 to 24 years old, are four times more likely to use social networking sites than adults of all ages (16% vs. 4%) to help them with their decisions. They're also more likely to rely on conversations with friends and family than older adults (33% vs. 21%), so engaging these young adults, their peers, and their perceived authority figures is a crucial process. Needless to say, one cannot engage a potential customer through print however with the proper online website a company can build relationships with all of their potential markets.

With print media suffering such dramatic declines, it simply doesn't make sense to continue wasting your advertising budget on them. When you also consider that 21% of purchase decisions are based on communication that a company would not have any control of or participation in, it is simply a must to provide an online presence that can not only affect potential customers positively, but one that encourages and cultivates existing customers into sharing the positive aspects of dealing with your company with the world.

Brand Experience & Word Of Mouth

Adults who had a memorable product purchase, use or service experience were asked if they had taken any type of downstream action and almost four in five said they had (79%). More than seven in ten who had taken an action (72%) said they had taken positive action with 57% communicating about their positive experience with others while 41% specifically recommended that someone make a purchase.

The intuitive advertising directors and agencies will have serious looks at where they are spending the company dollars and perhaps will find that a more engaging and attractive website or a robust online marketing campaign will yield far greater results then the out-dated approach to marketing through print.

Find out more by reading the poll results at: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/pubs/Harris_Poll_2009_06_15.pdf

Thanks to the folks at GuardianHost for the article.