People Are Using Coupons – But How Do They Get Them?

In a post I wrote in April 2009 titled Coupon Use Hits Early 1990’s Level I reported that coupon

There's a coupon in here somewhere!

redemption in the fourth quarter of 2008 grew nearly 10% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007.

In 2008 there was a 5% increase in the number of coupons made available to consumers for a total of 317 billion coupons. This distribution is not just up over the previous year, but is back up to levels from a decade ago.  If there are 330 million people in the US that would mean there were 960 coupons distributed per person.

Text messaging and email are quickly emerging as ways to obtain coupons in the US, with 8.6 million (8%) of the country’s households currently using one or both of these methods to receive money-saving offers, according to an analysis from Scarborough Research (pdf) that explores and ranks the ways households obtain coupons.

According to the study consumers who obtain coupons via text messages and/or email tend to be young, affluent, educated and female, the study found. Scarborough data revealed that they are 14% more likely than the average adult to be ages 18-24; 51% more likely to be a college graduate or have an advanced degree; and 6% more likely to be female.

Ways Households Typically Obtain Coupons (%)

• Sunday newspaper 51%
• In-store coupons 35%
• Mail 31%
• Preferred customer card/loyalty card    21%
• In-store circulars 20%
• Weekday newspaper 17%
• Product packages 16%
• Magazines 15%
• Text Messages and/or Email 8%
• Internet Sites    7%
  (Source: Scarborough Research, Scarborough USA+ Study, Release 2 2008)

It is interesting how often we read about the demise of the newspaper, but I forecast it will be many years before coupons distributed through text messaging and email come anywhere close to the levels of newspapers.

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When is a Sale Price Not a Sale Price?

To me a sale price should be a discount from a regular price and the two prices should be clearly marked so a shopper can make a comparison and determine if the sale price is of value? But what if you don’t know the original price. Is it really a sale?

A local restaurant launched a special month long promotion offering prices rolled back to the

Not a Sale

1990’s. They used banners at their location and advertised in the local newspaper which caught my eye.

As we go to this restaurant once a year and always found their food excellent I thought I would pack up the kids and check out what 1990’s pricing was like. Now they did not specify early 1990’s or late 1990’s so I wasn’t sure if we were rolling back 10 years or 20 years, but it still seemed like a great deal.

We arrived at the restaurant which seemed busy for a Tuesday night and were shown to our table. A crisp, new menu was handed to each of us and I eagerly opened it to see the difference in pricing between the 1990’s and 2009. The new looking menus should have prepared me for this, but there was no 2009 price stroked out with the 1990’s price beside it. There was no hint at comparison in fact. The regular dishes were there with a single price beside them.

When the waiter came by I cheekily asked him “How do we know that these are prices from the 1990’s?” His clever response was “Don’t they look lower than our regular prices?” I guess that would have been a fair question if I had been to the restaurant in June, but all I saw was Chicken Souvlaki at $ 12.95 and as far as I was concerned that seemed like a regular price to me. A poll around our table established that $ 12.95 was lower than most Greek Restaurants, but the lack of follow-through on what should have been a great promotion left me thinking I had been had..and the service wasn’t great either. Was service in the 1990’s bad?

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What Do Older People Do Every Day?

A recent Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends Survey on Aging among a nationally representative sample of 2,969 adults uncovers some interesting characteristics of senior’s lives.

Survey respondents ages 18 to 29 believe that the average person becomes old at age 60. Middle-aged respondents put the threshold closer to 70, and respondents ages 65 and above say that the average person does not become old until turning 74. I am in my early fifties and know so many vibrant  people in their 80’s that I think old age is not chronological, but a state of mind.

So what is old age? The average response was 68.

What I found most interesting among scads of findings was what older people do every day. One key finding was not to market to them over the internet as only 28% use the internet. Magazines, newspapers and TV are the best mediums to reach this group.

Below is a chart published by Pew Internet that details the daily activities of older people:

Daily Activities of Older Americans

You can read more on the Pew Research website by clicking here to go to their website.

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Best Banner Ad Ever

I admit I am a sucker for anything to do with marketing and when I saw a post about the best banner ad ever I had to take a look. It is well worth a visit to this website and make sure you click where it says

Pringles Ad - Click to Participate

click. I guarantee nothing bad will happen and it will prove how effective banner advertising can really be. Click here to go to the ad.

Source: Bridge Worldwide 2009: Cannes Cyber Lions Gold – Pringles Can Hands

New Study on Effectiveness of Banner Ads

A recently completed study on the effectiveness of banner ads provides some interesting data for advertisers.

Condé Nast and McPheters & Company have jointly released additional results from the recently completed study conducted in collaboration with CBS Vision using McPheters & Company’s AdWorks™ methodology. More detailed analysis explored the relative effectiveness of Internet banner ads that were aligned with the content of the Web sites in which they appeared – for example, food ads running on food sites, entertainment ads on entertainment sites, etc. – vs. those that were not. The new analysis found that:

• Ads running on sites with related content were 61% more likely to be recalled than ads running on sites with unrelated content.
• Recall of ads varied by site type.
  • Social network, shopping, and food sites generated the highest recall levels (29% to 39%).
  • Search and portal sites generated the lowest recall levels.
• There were large differences in recall by type of product advertised.

According to Scott McDonald, Condé Nast SVP/Research, “the magnitude of the differences we found offers compelling evidence that targeting by site yields important benefits for advertisers.” Drew Schutte, SVP and Chief Revenue Officer for Condé Nast Digital, added “while we have long known that context is important for print advertisers, we welcome proof that the same is true online. These results reinforce the importance of a marketer being associated with category-specific Web sites with established brands.”

In the analysis, each of the 400 ads for which recall was measured was associated with the Web sites in which they appeared. Ads were segmented by whether they appeared on Web sites with related content. Recall of ads was measured among Internet users who were directed to surf the Internet at will for 30 minutes. McPheters & Company fielded the survey at CBS Vision’s Television City lab facilities in Las Vegas. Rebecca McPheters, CEO of McPheters & Company, noted that “while AdWorks™ excels in providing comparable measures of ad effectiveness across multiple media, it also provides a unique opportunity to explore and better understand what works online. It can be used to successfully identify best practices not only for capturing the attention of online audiences but for placing ads where they will have the maximum impact.”

In a review by OnLine Media Daily they reported that from data released earlier in the year by Condé Nast and McPheters & Co., nearly two-thirds — 63% — of banner ads were not seen by Web users. Respondents’ eyes “passed over” 37% of the Internet ads and “stopped” on slightly less than a third, McPheters found.

In contrast to online ads, TV and magazine ads generated a strong propensity to be seen and recalled, according to the research.

Full-page, four-color magazine ads were determined to have 83% of the value of a 30-second television commercial, while a typical Internet banner ad has 16% of the value.

Marketing to Millennials – 18 to 26 year olds

Do you market to Millennials? I currently have 6 kids that fall into this range and that should make me an expert, but they are a confusing age group. I was curious how they compare to their

These Are the 6 Millennials We Are Raising

older counterparts when it comes to social media and in the process also uncovered an interesting related study on teens and malls.

In a recent article, Media Buyer Planner published a study called Teen Mall Shopping Attitude and Usage Study by Arbitron and Scarborough Research that found that nearly all teen mall shoppers notice mall advertising. Teens are significant spenders at the mall and the study showed that 95% of teens notice mall advertising.

Other findings:
—91% of teens notice poster displays
—68% spend more than two hours at the mall
—Teens go online for mall information: 75% visit a specific mall store’s website; 72% of teen mall shoppers chatted
with friends online about meeting at the mall or purchasing items there
—48% are “social shoppers,” shoppers who like to browse, hang out, and possibly make a purchase
—46% of teen mall shoppers are bargain hunters

The survey of teen mall shoppers questioned 1,687 teens (ages 12-17) across the country.

So what about their social marketing attitudes?  Millennials — 18- to-26-year-olds — don’t see value in Twitter, although they spend hours daily texting friends and communicating on social networks in real time, according to a study released Monday from the Participatory Marketing Network (PMN).

The study suggests that only 22% of Millennials use Twitter and of those young people here is how they used it:

• 85% said they follow friends
• 54% follow celebrities
• 29% follow family
• 29% follow companies.

That’s not great news for marketers and companies trying to reach this demographic through the site.

When asked about social networks, nearly all who participated in the survey revealed having an active profile on at least one site. I am assuming they are referring to Facebook and MySpace. How did they use these  sites?

• 89% have downloaded an application to their profile page
• 89% post photos
• 53% play games
• 51% search out entertainment
• 32% followed the news
• 29% followed the weather.

The study also looked at mobile social networking for Millennials. Thirty-eight percent have an iPhone or iPod Touch. More than 50% have downloaded games; 35%, entertainment; 31%, lifestyle; 28% have downloaded free financial applications, and 7% have paid financial applications. More than one-quarter — 26 percent — indicated that they have not downloaded any.

PMN conducted the study in May 2009 with its research partner, the Lubin School of Business’ Interactive and Direct Marketing (IDM) Lab at Pace University, by questioning 200 PMN panel members and consumers between the ages of 18-24.

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Do Banner Ads Really Work?

Yes, but not always in the way you think they might. While the number of people who actually click on the banner ad runs around 31% a further 27% reported that they did an online search for the product, brand or company, and 21% typed the company Web address in their browser. Nine percent sought additional information using social media tools. So clicks are not the only measurement in online marketing.

From a recent article in eMarketer,  a study from iProspect may have discovered an unexpected benefit of online display ads. When Internet users were surveyed to find out what actions they took when viewing a display ad on an ad-supported Website, nearly one-third said they clicked on the ad.

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Free Coffee Cups – Handheld Branding

Have you seen this service called Free Paper Cups?FreePaperCups.com is a marketing solutions company specializing in handheld branding in the office…ensuring office workers see, touch, and hold your advertising message throughout the day in the workplace. They bring advertisers and companies together by placing ads on coffee cups and distributing them free to companies for their employees to drink from.

For the company receiving them the benefits are:

• Not wasting money on paper cups for your office
• Saving money by eliminating this monthly business expense
• Eliminating Eco-Unfriendly styrofoam cups
• They can serve coffee in heavyweight paper cups like coffee shopsto preserve the coffee flavor,

For the advertiser:

• Hand deliver your marketing message to target audiences in offices via branded paper coffee cups
• Communicate your B2B or B2C message to corporate decision makers and consumers in the workplace 24/7 365 days a year
• Nearly 109 million American adults drink coffee daily
• More than 52 million Americans obtain coffee from their offices each day

Office Coffee Services benefit too:

• Offer your coffee service customers and prospects this money saving solution
• Utilize this competitive advantage to be truly unique in your market & win new accounts by providing significant cost savings
• Retain your existing accounts by adding value to their bottom line
• Customers who use quality paper cups consume more coffee because of the improved “coffee experience”

I have seen this marketing strategy used at local  coffee shops where an Automall has provided insulated sleeves with their branding. A great way to reinforce their message everyday to potential shoppers.

Coupon Use Hits Early 1990s Levels

According to data from promotions transaction settlement company Inmar, coupon redemption in the fourth quarter of 2008 grew nearly 10% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007, the first jump in redemption since the early 90s.

I think this is one of the strongest signs that impact of the tight credit has not only affected our disposable income, but changed our spending habits. I think that once people get used to using coupons they will become more firmly entrenched as a marketing tool and we need to innovate around coupon distribution, redemption and loyalty.

“Consumer response remained strong for the year with 2.6 billion coupons

There's a coupon in here somewhere!

redeemed, the third year in a row at that level.  The weak economy was a major factor in stopping the steady decline that coupon redemption had seen in the years prior to 2006.  The peak year for coupon redemption was 1992, at the end of the last major recession, when 7.9 billion coupons were redeemed.”

“Traditionally nearly 70% of coupons were redeemed in conventional supermarkets” according to Jennifer Mauldin, President of Inmar Carolina Services Revenue Recovery Services.  “But in 2008, the mass merchandiser channel saw a 15% increase in redemption overall, made up by a 20% increase in redemption for food coupons and a 13% increase in non-food coupons.”

This number has dropped to 64% while coupon redemption in mass merchandisers now account for nearly 19% of all coupons redeemed.

In 2008 there was a 5% increase in the number of coupons made available to consumers last year for a total of 317 billion coupons. This distribution is not just up over the previous year, but is back up to levels from a decade ago.  If there are 330 million people in the US that would mean there were 960 coupons distributed per person.

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Local Service Seekers Increasingly Favor Search

If you do a Google search for your business is your website in the top 10? If not you better take steps

My Business Listing

to get it there as you could be missing out on a big chunk of local business.

30% of local business queries are conducted online now, versus offline compared to 26% in 2007.

A comScore study sponsored by TMP Directional Marketing finds that search engines have become primary sources for seeking local services (31%) — followed by Yellow/White Pages (30%), online Yellow Page-type sites (19%) and then local search sites (11%).

These results, from the second annual Local Search Consumer Usage Study, represent a marked difference from last year’s findings, in which print Yellow pages ranked first by 33%, followed by search engines at 30%.  By the way, 90% of survey respondents say print Yellow Pages remain a valuable source of business information, even as they steadily lose ground to search engines.

So how do you improve your local search results?

Add your business to Google Maps or update your existing listing to include all of your business details. It’s easy; simply go to http://www.google.com/local/add/splashPage?hl=en-US&gl=US

You can claim your business listing today and let customers find you online!Create a detailed listing and stand out from your competitors by adding photos, videos and more.

Reach new customers on Google Maps and Google.com
Local customers are already searching for the products and services you offer. Why not make it easy for them to find you on Google search and on Google Maps? The Local Business Center is the place to start.

Works great for businesses of any size
Whether you run a single dentist’s office or dozens of coffee shops, manage all your listings from a single account.

Update your listing at any time
Use the Local Business Center to edit your listing whenever and however you like. Your Google Maps results will be updated in a few weeks, not next year.

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