Our economy is changing at an exponential rate — it feels incredibly unsettling.
I understand how most business owners and marketers feel right now.
Which is why I partnered with the largest data, AI and analytics company in America to figure out what’s moving the American consumer to spend (or not), how it affects you, and what you need to do to excel at this moment.
Just today, we’re publicly releasing a 2nd “Covid-19 Consumer Survey” that will show NEW insights that business owners must understand (and pivot immediately) in order to grow their bottom line.
This is the same consumer data that companies like Disney, Amazon, TurboTax, and Hershey’s are currently investing their research dollars. We charge our corporate and political clients 5–6 figures for this data — but we could all use a little help right now, so I am giving it away.
How insightful is this new data for you?
Five weeks ago, I released the 1st and largest in-depth data survey regarding consumer spending habits since the pandemic hit in full-effect. That survey, along with my summary article have now been downloaded 36,973 times. The data is clear — the messaging for your brand, business, sales teams, and ad campaigns must change immediately.
As my data partner stated to me this week: “In the coming months, values and consumers are likely to shift their thinking even further. Marketing campaigns for industries that prevail will be those who capture these unique sentiment shifts in real-time to understand their audience, consistently refresh target segments, and personalize their creative to focus on these evolving dynamics.”
With this 2nd study, we surveyed 6,513 U.S. consumers (over the past few weeks) about their changing views and behaviors resulting from the pandemic and modeled the results to 200 million+ American consumers in our database (which is tracking billions of purchasing decisions every single day).
If you want to read this new 2nd study and skip my top observations below, just go to WinBigMedia.com and click on the tab labeled “Covid-19 Consumer Research.” No opt-ins. No funnel. Just download it for free (you can actually download both reports using that link).
Otherwise, here are my 4 top findings from this new data:
1. Consumer confidence: It’s coming back even though the unemployment numbers are at historical highs and consumer spending/investing is still stagnant. What’s created this confidence? The injection of trillions of federal government dollars into our economy (to individual taxpayers, two rounds of PPP loans, etc.), plus the stock market’s semi-recovery, and the soft re-opening of the economy. But the money is mostly being unused due to the lockdown. As the economy opens up even more throughout the summer, how will consumers spend this money? We know they will spend it (i.e. The average American had around $400 in savings before the Corona Virus outbreak. My assumption is the new injection of government cash to individual taxpayers will not be invested or saved).
· Mark Cuban has done some excellent research on this dynamic as well and attributes “fear” to the lack of spending in the economy. Check it out here: https://blogmaverick.com/2020/05/07/i-hired-a-team-of-secret-shoppers-to-find-out-how-businesses-were-opening-in-dallas-its-not-good/
2. The online economy: 87.25% of American consumers have increased or “stayed the same” in relying on a delivery service during the lockdown. And virtual gym memberships (i.e. Peloton) increased by 39% in the last six weeks (and don’t forget that we are working online at the highest rate ever). The data also shows that older Americans have (finally) fully embraced the online economy, like grocery and food delivery. But that’s not all, younger consumers are increasing their online purchasing footprint. Most American consumers are now fully trained in these new or optimized purchasing behaviors and it will likely define the new economy. This is bad news for restaurants, brick and mortar retail, commercial real estate, and even public transportation.
- Want to learn more about how unsettling this moment is for the economy? My friend Peter Diamandis poignantly addresses how the disruption will affect you: https://www.diamandis.com/blog/4-industry-impacts
3. Messaging for your brand or business: “Safety, trust and helping others” (identified in our 1st study) are still the key messages you must use with your brand and business — but we’ve observed some new evidence of its importance, including:
- 55.2% of American consumers think life returns to normal in over a year. And another 18.53% say in normality returns in the fall of 2020. That’s a total of 73.73%. American consumers are nervous, scared, and need certainty.
- Government social programs like “Medicare For All” has close to 60% support now amongst all American consumers (that support has increased 28% since March and it fits the attributes of “safety” and “helping others”).
4. One key new messaging insight: A HUGE new messaging insight has developed in the last month regarding “safety, trust and helping others”. You must use these three themes with an emphasis on “LOCAL.” Consumer sentiment is shifting to a distrust of big national and global brands — compared to “local brands” (inherently defined as intimacy, familiarity, trusting, and safe).
- Another example that spells this out is Q22a and Q22b — roughly 51% of American consumers don’t trust the federal government and roughly 50% don’t think the feds have been responsive enough. Compare that to Q22c and Q22d where consumers trust local/state officials (and think they’ve been responsive) by 73% and 75%.
- I sent this data to Seth Godin and he wrote a brilliant assessment of the importance of “local” — read it here: https://seths.blog/2020/05/clusters/
Please use this new data to your advantage while your competition is unaware and lost. Just go to WinBigMedia.com and click on the tab labeled “Covid-19 Consumer Research”.
Phillip
PS — In the model of the great Seth Godin (mentioned above), I only write these posts to share ideas and help fellow business owners. It’s a place to learn and grow without fear of being spammed or putting you in a sales funnel. I’m not doing that. If you know any like-minded individuals who might be interested in these articles, please have them email me (ps@phillipstutts.com) or sign up here.