TMP’s recent study about how consumers look for product and service information online vs. offline has some really interesting insights into the way consumers use online vs. print.
There is a lot to look at here so let’s just focus on 2009.
The important news for online is that consumers use the internet earlier in the process as opposed to looking offline to find the right product or service (P/S). Once they’ve determined what product they want to buy they leave the internet and rely more on printed yellow pages to find the local retailer.
I think that if brand managers did a better job of connecting the local dealer to the consumer online everyone would be better off. Giving the consumer product, price and place to buy locally on one microsite is what the consumer is looking for, we’re just not doing a good job of making that happen yet so the consumer leaves our site and picks up the outdated printed yellow pages.
Many brand site dealer locator results are nothing more than a telephone number, address and map. No wonder consumers go back to the printed yellow pages to find out more about a dealer. Or, when a consumer searches online for a product in their market brands lead the consumer back to the top of their site and the search process starts all over again. Not a good way to connect consumer to dealer.
The answer is to build microsites, Google landing pages and more for each of your better dealers that are co-branded between the dealer and your brand. Loaded with good product information coming from you, and loaded with good service and price information coming from the dealer. That we’re not doing this and driving the consumer to ink on paper is a major leak near the bottom of your sales funnel.
There are solutions.