Three Things Brands Can Take Away From “The Science of Sharing”
This morning, we are hosting an event in New York at Soho House to share some new research we have done in conjunction with M Booth that looks at “The Science of Sharing.” We are discussing the findings with a panel from YouTube, Buddy Media, Crowdtap and Mashable. In fact, Mashable has already posted a summary of the study.
We conducted a survey of over 3,000 consumers in the U.S. and U.K. and asked them to share their online experience of researching products that they were intending to purchase. The research covered 12 categories of brands, which could be grouped into high involvement (consumer electronics/travel/financial products) and low involvement (health and beauty/baby products/music) products. (We have the data for all 12 categories: baby products, music, personal finance, automotive, kitchen appliances, cookware, health and beauty, consumer electronics, fashion, tools, travel and restaurants.)
To put the research into context, it is now over four years since Forrester published its Social Technographics research, which showed that just 13% of the population were creators (upload their own content; for example, a YouTube video), 19% were critics (defined as consumer who had written a review of a product or service) and just 19% had used a social networking site.
The picture is very different today. The number of people who could be classified as creators and critics has gone up three- to fourfold, while the number of people on Facebook (the social networking site), has increased by around 64%, according to Facebook and U.S. Census data, combined.
Like it or not, the social consumer has arrived.
High Sharers vs. Low Sharers
Every day, consumers are creating and sharing millions of pieces of content related to brands. One of the most fascinating pieces of the research was that consumers are clearly divided into two different camps: high sharers, people who actively create and share brand content across a range of different channels, and low sharers, who are more passive consumers of content. High sharers, who account for approximately 20% of the population, are more likely to be younger, more likely to be loyal to a brand and three times more likely to recommend products to their friends. Low sharers, on the other hand, are more concerned with brand quality than image alone, are more likely to switch brands and tend to be older.
One of the other things we looked at as part of this research was the relative influence of owned and earned media channels, as well as the influence of search. It turns out that there are some very important differences when we look at the influence of individual channels for high vs. low involvement brands. For high involvement brands, the brand website, review sites and search have a much higher relative influence. However, for low involvement brands, Facebook and even Twitter are, relatively, much more influential.
Even at a category level, there are some very important differences. For example, if we look at the consumer electronics category, review sites are the single most influential channel, alongside the brand website, which also has a very high relative influence. However, for these types of products, Facebook has a relatively low influence.
What Can Brands Learn From This Research?
This research is, we believe, the first study to show that people who share content about a brand are more likely (by a factor of three) to recommend that brand to a friend. That, in itself, is a fascinating finding that brands need to incorporate into the way they approach their digital social strategies. The research helps brands identify some very specific ways in which they can turbocharge their digital social strategies, depending on the product category. However, if there are three things to take away form the study, we can summarize them as follows:
Brands need to use the data they have to understand the relative influence that each of their digital channels have on different stages of the purchase and advocacy lifecycle, and then optimize each channel and the content on it
Brands need to identify and nurture high sharers, because they hold the keys to driving brand advocacy, which will result in sales
Given the importance of search, brands need to make sure that both their comms and marketing teams optimize everything they do to drive value in organic search
-- David Hargreaves, CEO of our sister agency Beyond
