We introduced Jim Lecinski’s ZMOT e-book in our last blog post.
 
While the whole e-book is full of insights, we’ve decided to share some key takeaways with you:
 

• Marketing pieces (such as promotional posters) don’t just result in consumers deciding on the spot whether or not they’ll purchase –lots of pre-purchase investigation now occurs and the moment where people decide whether or not they’ll purchase due to finding relevant information, is the ZMOT
   
  • In fact, 70% of Americans look at product reviews before purchasing!

• Americans now spend as much time online as they do watching TV, according to Forrester Research, yet only %15 of media ad budget money is spent online

• Surprisingly, consumers not only do pre-purchase research on large items, they do it on small purchase items as well. According to Bob Thacker (p.15), “pre-shopping [has] crossed all categories of shopping behaviour. It’s just the way people buy today.”

• According to a study by Shopper Science on behalf of Google, The average shopper uses 10.4 sources or information (ranging from recommendations from friends & family to magazine articles) to make a decision, in 2011, which is up from 5.3 sources just last year

• Almost half of shoppers talk with friends/family about the product they are thinking about purchasing

• One critical difference between traditional word of mouth and digital word of mouth: traditional is one to one where as digital is one to millions. However, it’s important to note that shoppers aren’t “replacing traditional sources with new sources’, they are utilizing both traditional and new sources together, so your ZMOT strategy should incorporate both offline and online channels.

• 2011 ZMOT study found that 37% of shoppers are influenced by online social services when making decisions

• One of the top online social activities among shoppers is “getting an online referral from a friend” (p. 33)

 
Other than the highlights above, chapter 6 (How to Win at ZMOT) is particularly practical as it lays out 7 steps for discovering and optimizing your brand’s ZMOT. Lecinski asks a key question, “Are you working with products….that can help your customers spread that earned love?” (p. 49)
 
As we’ve talked about in previous blog posts such as ‘The Future of Marketing is Trust’, the consumer now finds their own information and as Lecinski says, “what was once a message is now a conversation”.