There is some good news for affiliates who are already using different types of media, and something to think about for those that are not yet incorporating media in their marketing strategies. TNS Media Intelligence studies (as quoted by eMarketer.com two days ago) show that people’s hearts and minds are open to online news, word-of-mouth recommendations, CSE (comparison shopping engines), expert reviews, blogs and forums.
Here’s a breakdown of media types especially popular in 2008 in the US and Canada:
And here’s one for Western Europe:
Recommendations by friends scored extremely high in the US (48%), Canada (46%), Germany (47%) and the UK (45%). If you’re running a datafeed-driven website, do you have a way for people to recommend products to their friends? CSE (comparison shopping engines) or product comparison sites have also scored quite high throughout North America and western Europe. So did user forums, and expert reviews. The above data gives affiliates a lot of food for thought. There is an array of ways one could incorporate a number of above media types even within one website.
I’m surprised how low the percentage is for a personal blog on the first survey. I also think there would be some overlap between that one and “recommendation by a friend” since many of the personal blogs I follow and take recommendations from are also my friends.
Yes, I agree with you, Tim. There’s probably some overlap there (and also with the “user reviews” category that got 20%).
The respondents that took part in survey were asked to rank different types of media on a scale of 1 to 10 (to reflect how much they trust the information presented through all these different types of media). Remembering that in April 2009 eMarketer estimated that “in 2009 96.6 million US Internet users will read a blog at least once per month” (which includes 48.5% of US Internet users), the 9% that quoted above for those that trust blogs does seem a bit low.