• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, April 12, 2017

According to a new report from Marketing Sherpa, by Daniel Burnstein, Senior Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, all marketers should have three key questions in their head at all times: What do consumers really think about my business practices? What marketing approaches can I use to tell them about our business? And where do they want to hear these messages (i.e. channel preferences)?

To respond to these questions, Marketing Sherpa conducted research with 2,400 U.S. consumers, sampled to reflect a close match to the U.S. population’s demographics. The responses were split into satisfied and unsatisfied customers to understand how these marketing and business behaviors affect customer satisfaction, especially taking a customer-first marketing approach to all of these business decisions.

The top way unsatisfied customers describe that company’s marketing, “The company does not put my needs and wants above its own business goals”

• When asked about the marketing of the company they were highly unsatisfied with, “The company does not put my needs and wants above its own business goals” was chosen by 35% of unsatisfied respondents. This description was more frequent than complaining about privacy issues or intrusive, boring or irrelevant marketing.

The most frequent response from satisfied customers, chosen by 56% of respondents when asked about the company’s marketing was,

• “I consistently have good experiences with it”

Print ads most trusted by consumers when making a purchase decision

• Prints ads were the top trusted advertising channel, according to the survey, with four out of five Americans (82%) saying they trusted newspapers and magazine ads.
• Only a quarter of Americans (25%) indicated they trusted these ads when making a purchase decision.

Online pop-ups least trusted...

With the digital marketing industry abuzz about ad blocking, says the report, it’s not surprising that online pop-ups were significantly less trusted than other advertising channels asked about, says the report

Traditional channels are still popular with consumers

• Watching TV ads was the most popular overall channel, with 52% of satisfied customers saying they often or always do it and 29% of unsatisfied customers saying the same

It’s easier to lose customers with product reliability than it is to win them over

• The most frequent response from satisfied customers (43%) was that the company’s products or services were “very reliable.” The responses for satisfied customers skew heavily towards reliability
• However, the most frequent response for unsatisfied customers was “fairly reliable” (34%), though the responses from unsatisfied customers were much more evenly distributed

For more about the Sherpablog, and the inclusion of video discussions, please visit here