A Forrester Research survey of almost 60,000 US online adults and more than 15,000 European online adults reveals that few trust common types of digital advertising and promotions such as social media posts, ads on websites, and text messages from companies or brands. Looking solely at US respondents, only 15% trust social media marketing, 12% information about companies on mobile applications, 10% ads on websites, and 9% text messages from companies or brands.
In each case, European respondents were even less likely to show trust in those forms of advertising and promotion.
Consumers display far more trust in what Forrester tabs “self-selected digital pull content.” That refers to content such as brand or product recommendations from friends and family (trusted by 70% of US respondents), professionally written online reviews (55%), consumer-written online reviews (46%), and natural search engine results (43%). (It’s interesting to see professionally written reviews gain more trust than consumer-written ones, as previous research has found the opposite to be true, at least when it comes to consumer electronics purchases.) Read the rest at MarketingCharts.
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