New Study Finds Nearly Half of Consumers ‘Always On.' How do these Consumers Impact Business Success?

An ‘always on’ consumer is defined as one who owns at least three internet-capable devices for personal use, goes online from at least three physical locations, and is online multiple times a day.

A recent study by the Vivaldi Partners Group turned up a surprising fact: these ‘always on’ consumers make up nearly half of all adults.

Increasingly, businesses are realizing how much time potential customers spend online, and working to reach out to them there, but what happens to the business owner who lacks the technical know-how to reach Internet audiences?

It’s certainly not as simple as deciding the customers are online, and having a website or Facebook page thrown together in an afternoon, then waiting for the customers to show up. A business owner needs to be able to have a proactive plan to reach out to customers, and provide engaging information about the service or goods offered.

Of course, there are different customers, and different approaches. This is as true on the Internet as it is offline. No single online marketing method can reach every type of online customer. The Internet opens a world of marketing techniques, from social media pages, to video campaigns, to promotional codes.

For a business owner who is new to the online marketplace, all of this can obviously be overwhelming. What are the customers doing online? Where are they? What are they looking at? How can you reach them?

That’s where marketing firms and specialists can help. They do the research, figure out the things that will get a consumer’s attention, the places to put an ad to catch the consumer’s eye, and the things that will draw customers to the business’ website, social media pages, and eventually, physical location or online shopping cart.

For instance, the same consumer study determined that ‘always on’ individuals could be divided into five main categories, based on how much time they spend online, what they do while they’re on the internet, and what will influence them to purchase a product or service.

 The groups were broken down and labeled as ‘Social Bumblebees,’ ‘Mindful Explorers,’ ‘Deal Hunters,’ ‘Focused Problem Solvers,’ and ‘Ad Blockers.’

An ‘Ad Blocker’ consumer, for instance, isn’t going to be reached by bright flashing banners or pop-ups, because those consumers are ignoring ad content, rarely allowing themselves to be influenced by advertisers’ assertions.

A ‘Social Bumblebee’ consumer, meanwhile, is apt to incorporate reviews by other purchasers into his decision, and buy within a day of first noticing the product, according to the Vivaldi study.

The study further defines the ‘Mindful Explorer’ consumer as one with brand loyalty, who will usually only buy what is on his list, and will stick with a brand long-term once it has earned his trust.

The ‘Deal Hunter’ is a listener and observer, who watches for coupons and special buys, and makes about one purchase per week.

The ‘Focused Problem Solver’ will stick to brands she’s comfortable with, and would rather make her purchases in a physical store. If she buys online, it’s probably a needed household item.

That’s a lot for a small business owner, who just wants to sell the purses she designs or promote his landscaping business, to keep up with.

Yet, when these ‘always on’ consumers make up so much of the customer base, it’s absolutely necessary to incorporate the ways they make purchasing decisions, and what they will buy once they make the decisions, into marketing strategies.

This necessity becomes even more pronounced, since the study also finds that these consumers tend to be above-average in income level, with 80% of them making more than $40,000 a year, placing them firmly in the demographic of consumers who can afford to purchase products.

Hence the marketing group, who takes over these tasks and helps to figure out exactly who the company is trying to market to, what these consumers want, and how to make sure the consumers know that what the business is selling is exactly what they want and need.

This new information shows the changes that are coming to marketing. It’s no longer enough to hang a sign in front of your store and place an ad in the weekly paper. People are becoming a bustling, multi-tasking mass, who are moving great chunks of their lives onto the Internet, and if the Internet is where people are living their lives, well; the marketing has to be done where the people live.

As Vivaldi Partners Group’s CEO and Founder, Erich Joachimsthaler, explains it,

‘Our research shows the need for marketers to come up with new ways, methods and approaches to understand consumers, what matters to them, and how they view brands through the new technologies that are available to consumers and to brands.’

Consumers are changing, and businesses that don’t update their advertising methods will lose out to those who are more connected to their customers.