Does online advertising help offline sales?

November 15th, 2007 by Carolyn Gardner

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!

Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Search Marketing, eCommerce |

4 Responses

Patti Says:

November 15th, 2007 at 3:26 pm

Hi Kelly,

I was at the event this morning as well and when I came back to the office I received an email from Forrester entitled “Interactive Marketing First Look”. It’s an interesting addition to the information reveiwed today.

Thanks for the review!

Patti

Tom Wallace Says:

May 6th, 2008 at 8:52 am

Knowing online advertising can help offline says is a start, but how to we then go forward and begin tracking actual ROI?

The biggest problem myself, and others I have worked with before, is how to actually measure the value of online advertising as it applies to the offline world.

I’d love to hear some advice or tips on that subject!

Carolyn Gardner Says:

May 7th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

Hi Tom - great question and a common one! One thing I’ve seen is printable coupons that customers take into the store. These printable coupons can be offered via email or the web and they would have a special code on them.

You could also have special toll-free numbers that would be only found online - via web sites, banners ads or emails. Any calls received via these dedicated lines can then attributed to online advertising spends.

I hope this helps! cg

Joe Tremblay Says:

June 11th, 2008 at 9:28 am

Hey Tom, thats a great question, I feel like with the emergence of online advertising and the growth of the marketing sect of the internet, ROI is something that needs to be accounted for. There are certain companies that will actually track your ROI for you. One of the companies I work with is DirectoryM (https://signup.directorym.com/order/Default.aspx), I have a PPC campaign with them, and they track everything for me.

HOPE THAT HELPS!