Budget Season POV: Broadcast dollars are wasted without Web

It's that time of year again. Brightly colored leaves crunch underfoot. Pumpkins with punched Mr. Potato Head faces decorate the neighborhood porches. And, your clients are calling with budget demands - what should I do next year? Oh, and I need to know by this afternoon.

Well, help is on the way. Here is the one piece of advice every client needs to hear in 2008:

If you don't back up every broadcast and print campaign with a personal, relevant online experience, you're wasting your money.

Here's why: Consumer shopping behavior has fundamentally shifted. Trial no longer starts in-store. It has moved online.

That makes the barrier at once lower and longer. (And gives the traditional ad agency both more control and more responsibility) Here's how it works:

While most consumers don’t choose to buy online, the vast do majority go online to ‘pre-shop’ for products and information.  Before we undertake any in-person shopping, we want to “try on” brands online to see if they fit with our complex choice models of price, perception, and utility.  That means pre-shopping product catalogs, readings reviews, comparing prices, etc.

From there, we head into stores with a more educated perspective and spend more than our offline-only counterparts:

• 89 percent of consumers shop for information about products online
• Less than 7 percent of retail sales actually take place online
• Online pre-shoppers spend an average of 41 percent more in-store compared with consumers not exposed to online advertising

(BIG research, Comscore)

Comments

[Bob Gilbreath]

I think one of the reasons many brands haven't made the online investment is hinted at in your starting point: "Oh, and I need to know by this afternoon."

Many marketers have been doing the same thing year after year for decades. They literally can do a budget in one day in that world. But making a significant shift in strategy and spending takes time, thinking, risk taking, etc. These things are not built into the annual budgeting process.

Habit change is extremely hard for consumers, and for marketers as well.