If you don’t have time to read this post, the short answer is YES!

Now for the longer-ish, way more fascinating answer…. 

This morning a few sitebranders, including myself, had the pleasure of attending “Interactive to the Max” – a cross-country event that blends some top-notch presenters with some mind-blowing internet numbers. The event is pulled together by Marketing Magazine in association with the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada.  A huge kudos to the event’s facilitator Paula Gignac (President, Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada) for such a stellar line-up. And if you happen to be in Montreal or Toronto, this event is coming to you soon so check out the above link.  

Anyhow…there’s too much to tell you, so let me zero in on one presenter by the name of Patrice Laing from Yahoo! Canada…who also happens to be a super nice guy. He talked a lot about something he calls “ROBO” which stands for the realities of consumers who Research Online, Buy Offline. I think this ROBO stuff is very true in Canada where even though we have 70% online penetration, we still lag in terms of how many purchases happen on the web. BTW, did you know that Canada has the highest online penetration?  The US is next with 60% online penetration and that’s followed by the UK, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

I’m actually going to share some highlights of a study Patrice presented. BTW comScore partnered with Yahoo! on this little baby. Yada yada, the study, which involved more than 175,000 panelists, compared those exposed to online advertising vs. those who were not exposed. I love that word “exposed”. Sounds so revealing, don’t you think! The study specifically revealed the impact of search marketing & display advertising on consumer shopping behaviour, specifically the in-store sales of major retailers.

• 89% of consumers who make in-store purchases in key retail categories have conducted online research prior to purchase
• When pre-shopping consumers are exposed to online advertising (search, display or both), they engage at a deeper level with your web site, viewing an avg of 6 more pages than those not exposed, a 53% lift
• “Exposed” consumers also showed a much stronger propensity to make a purchase resulting in a 43% lift in total revenue of which 88%  of the sales revenue generated from the online advertising budget was from consumers who purchased in the physical store (did you read that carefully? if not, pls read again since it’s staggering)
• 45% of consumers who research online buy additional products in-store when they buy the product they researched online (snuck this in from Forrester Research).
• Online advertising drives in-store sales at a 6:1 ratio to online sales

Bottom Line: Those exposed to online advertising spend an average of 29% more on their in-store purchase than those who were not exposed.  

Without a doubt, there’s a huge relationship between online engagement and in-store sales. So giddy up and happy selling wherever you can make the sale!