In response to a recent Online Spin article: "Shaping or Breaking Brands", the author talks about how online reviews can make or shape clients brands. Mulcahy writes:

"... According to a recent survey by Deloitte's Consumer Products Group, consumers are turning to online reviews in large numbers. And guess what, those reviews have been found to have a serious impact on purchase.

Findings show that 62% of consumers read consumer-written product reviews on the Internet. Out of that group, more than 8 in 10 say they have been directly influenced by the reviews. Influence, of course, is twofold: consumers are either influenced to buy the product they were researching, or switch to another brand."

This note brought to mind an e-commerce campaign I managed, whose majority of PPC revenue was generated through brand terms (no surprise). In digging a little further into some click path data, a decent percentage of users started out in the search engines typing the brand term (let's say in Google), then went on to type in a non-branded term across several shopping engines, *then* came back to Google on the brand term again and purchased. This wasn't just one event... it was one of many.

The analysis was exciting to see (to prove the value of brand terms- yay!) but also scary, as it showed many users were not loyal to the brand. Luckily, they had a lot of good reviews. As Deloitte's survey points out, having reviews available on your site (and on the shopping engines) can influence users to (with good reviews) positively impact your brand.

Labels: brands, google, online reviews, search engine marketing