23Musings

I’m always amazed by the way some brands and even some whole industries still seem to ignore the web as a viable channel for communication, content, sales, PR or even advertising. What does it take to persuade them that they can’t just ignore the online medium and at the very least they need to take steps to engage with their online audience (because they’ll have an online audience even if they haven’t got a website)? So I like to highlight statistics that will help to make this clear. The three charts below are from FEED: The 2009 Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report. It’s a great report produced by a great agency and in my opinion these stats are very persuasive!

So, how a user experiences your brand online can have positive or negative bearings on how they feel about you. This is going on even if you don’t have a website, don’t do social media or don’t actively do any online PR or advertising. Your potential customers are still having experiences that are linked to your brand in their own conversations and online journey whether you are actively involved or not. Wouldn’t it be better to establish your own presence so you can increase the positive sentiment and work to address the negative?

Now the above is a powerful chart! If 97% of web users could have their purchase decisions positively (or negatively) influenced by your online presence doesn’t that make it something worth investing in?

Again, the above is hugely powerful. If an online experience can turn someone into a new customer then why aren’t you working your digital assets to your advantage?

As I said I aim this at those industries and brands who seem to lag behind the adoption curve when it comes to the web (I’m thinking of a lot of the financial services industry, a surprising amount of the FMCG sector and some service industries). The general message here is that you have a lot to gain by improving your presence on the internet, making it easy to interact with, useful to those you’re trying to attract and engaging so people want to interact.

Suggest you read the report which is available online here.