How Offline Messages Influence Online Behavior - It Starts Offline, Goes Online
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So iProspect established that their sample is heavily engaged in online search – they take it seriously, they do it frequently, and they see it growing in importance to the way they use the Internet. How much are these frequent online hunters influenced by what they see offline? After all, it seems pretty natural to do a search for something you see online; you’re already online, and with tabbed browsing available in the most recent versions of both Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, you don’t even need to lose your current screen.
Doing a search online after seeing something offline, however, may involve a change of venue – assuming users aren’t multitasking, sitting at the computer while watching TV for example. And indeed, as it turned out, in the past six months, one-third of the sample apparently wasn’t driven to perform searches by offline advertising messages.
Of course, that meant that two-thirds of the sample DID perform a search related to offline advertising. Of these, the most influential messages came from television (37 percent), word of mouth from friends and acquaintances (36 percent), and magazine/newspaper ads (30 percent). The finding was interesting in part because iProspect had predicted an even split; they expected half of their sample to be influenced to search from offline messages, and half to not be influenced to perform such searches. The actual question was worded thus: “Within the last six months, which of the following prompted you to go to a search engine and look for information on a particular company, product, service or slogan? (Select all that apply).”
As you might expect, those who are most accustomed to performing searches are most likely to perform a search in response to something they see or hear offline. Fully 44 percent of daily searchers reported performing a search in response to a television ad in the last six months, while 41 percent did so in response to word of mouth from a friend or an acquaintance. In fact, daily searchers were more likely than less frequent searchers to perform a search in response to an offline advertising message through every medium iProspect asked about – television, word of mouth, magazine/newspaper ad, company’s store/physical location, radio ad, billboard, ad/company name on company truck/van/car and ad/company name on taxi/train/city bus. After all, if you’re already moving naturally from offline to online on a daily basis, you’re more likely to remember and be curious about what you’ve seen offline – and search engines are often the quickest way to satisfy a person’s curiosity.
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