One of the most challenging aspects of local businesses is determining what media is driving the sale of a product or service. Some businesses claim the majority of their sales are driven by word-of-mouth, others by a directive medium such as Yellow Pages or Google Adwords and yet others believe creative mediums like Radio, TV or Newspapers are the key to success. Last year I did a post on “Word of Mouth Needs Support – A Deeper Look at Web Referral Traffic” in which I encouraged business owners to get a little more sophisticated in their approach when asking customers the source of a sale.
For this post I wanted to share a personal story of purchasing a Massage Chair. Although this is a high-ticket item, I think it demonstrates the complexity of the local media mix and one of the challenges that local businesses face in determining the source of a sale. For emergency or low engagement products or services the number of steps would likely be less.
Earlier this year we purchased the INADA Sogno Dreamwave Massage Chair from Bodo (read my review here).
In reverse, here are the steps that lead us to making the purchase:
1) Day of Purchase – Used YellowPages.ca iPhone App, did a search for Bodo – Calgary to plot the store address on the map in my iPhone.
2) Visited YouTube to watch any videos I could find on the INADA Sogno Dreamwave Massage Chair, search for Inada Sogno.
3) Performed a Google Search looking for Inada Sogno Massage Chair Reviews.
4) Met the team from Bodo at the Calgary Home Show. Wife had a chance to sit in the chair and test it out. Also, was entered into a home show draw that would have knocked up to $1000 off the price of the chair.
5) Visited Bodo.ca, the corporate web site to learn more about the company.
6) Heard an ad on QR77, the talk radio station that I listen to in the morning on the drive into work, for Bodo. One ad in particular was very interesting featuring the Inada Massage Chair.
7) Moved back to Calgary in 2008, used YellowPages.ca to find Massage Chairs – Calgary and Google for the same search. Checked out a few local retailers and what brands they carried.
8.) At the Toronto Home Show tested out the Sanyo as well as the Panasonic chairs available there. Almost bought the Sanyo at the show. (Note: was living in Toronto at this time)
9) Used YellowPages.ca to find Massage Chairs – Toronto and Google for the same search. Checked out a few local retailers and the brands they carried.
10) Started doing research on Google for Massage Chairs to see what product was available in the market place. There were lots of options; we knew this was going to take some time.
So the question is … who gets the credit for the sale?
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