Despite the popularity of Facebook with the demographic, by a wide margin 18- to 34-year-olds still prefer to learn about marketing offers via postal mail and newspapers rather than online sources such as social media platforms, according to national survey from ICOM, a division of Epsilon Targeting.
The survey found that across a number of household, health and food products, the preference for 18- to 34-year-old Americans to receive marketing information from offline sources, led by mail and newspapers, is two to three times greater than online sources, such as social media. The one exception was travel, where online information was preferred to offline by a 42 percent to 35 percent margin.
Moreover, comparing results of
the survey to one done two years ago, online sources are becoming
even less trusted for information. Among respondents across all ages in the
survey:
- Thirty-six percent of U.S. respondents in 2010 said information is more private if sent through the mail vs. e-mail or online, up from 29 percent in 2008;
- A quarter said a lot of online information can't be trusted, up from 19 percent in 2008;
- For general products, 57 percent of U.S. respondents ranked friends and
family as the "most trustworthy" sources of information. Newspapers
ranked second, 26 percent; company websites, 22 percent; television, 20 percent;
and brochures and flyers, 18 percent. Among social media sites, Facebook
ranked as 8 percent while both YouTube and Twitter came in at 7 percent.
"A key takeaway from this research is that marketers targeting coveted 18-34 year olds who are tempted to invest solely in social media could be missing a significant portion of their audience," said Warren Storey, ICOM VP, in a statement. "For example, a consumer goods company that relies heavily on a female audience, especially moms, could fall short of expectations if it uses only the social media channel. Companies need to employ a multi-channel approach to gain maximum engagement with their customers."
The 2010 study covered 2,569 U.S. households and 2,209 Canadian households.
Discussion Questions: Are online marketing campaigns, particularly those tapping social media, being negatively affected by privacy and trust issues? Is the marketing community generally overestimating the capabilities of reaching consumers through social media now and even in the future?