Brand content is one the main marketing problems for businesses today. Indeed, it’s a crucial question for brands to know what their prospects and customers really want from them in terms of content.
Yahoo! France conducted a survey on a panel of 1856 people to better understand consumer perception of brand content. This survey, available on Slideshare (in French only), can help you to optimize your brand content strategy giving you valuable insight into what consumers want. Below, I’ve summarized the main results.
The golden rule to remember
According to the Yahoo! panel, the most important thing to remember for brands is to focus on their domain expertise. That’s where people seek value proposition from brands.
What type of incentives do consumers want?
According to the Yahoo! survey:
- 71% want samples of products to test
- 71% want vouchers and discounts
- 70% want exclusive information on the brand and its products/services
- 61% want presents
- And only 49% want little free applications and services like look simulator, weight calculator, credit simulator, etc.
The first interesting point to notice is that product samples and exclusive information are as important as vouchers for consumers, whereas most of brands often only focus on vouchers. The second interesting figure is the relatively low importance of applications that give low value-added service to consumers. People focus more on finding information to help them make purchasing decisions— nothing less, nothing more.
What type of content do consumers want?
According to the Yahoo! survey:
- 86% want advices, tips and practical information
- 85% want product information that helps make purchase decisions
- 80% want product benchmarks
- 76% want exclusive content & information
- 72% want information about the latest trends
- 59% want information presented in a funny way
It’s interesting to note that while fun content is cool, it’s not at all what people want. Consumers are very pragmatic in terms of content: advice, benchmarks, guides and exclusivity. They ask brands for help in their purchase decisions and do not necessarily want them to entertain them. At a time where a lot of brands are focusing on funny things on Facebook or YouTube, or launching consumer magazines providing entertaining content, it’s important to remember these best practices in order to align your brand content with consumer preferences.
