Is your company looking to connect with household purchasing directors?

Here are just a few reasons for advertising/hosting an event with Playin' Around Town:

1. Participating in Playin’ Around Town events and marketing to Playin’ Around Town members, create memories of fun and excitement about your product or service, in the minds and mouths of the consumer.
2. Participating in fun, family focused, events will exponentially increase positive word of mouth advertising about your business
3. Connect face to face with the household purchasing decision maker.
4. Deepen and expand your brand by becoming the subject in family-to-family conversation
5. Touch the lives of the prospective consumer by showing dedication and participation in acts of goodwill, within the community.
6. Repeat your message through online advertising, email marketing, and media coverage.
7. Meet the customers in your target market.
8. Playin’ Around Town offers a variety of marketing efforts, to ensure that your message is being heard.
9. Playin' Around Town gives category exclusivity at each of our events.
10. Playin’ Around Town offers you the advantage of surveying our members to get a closer look at their buying habits and how they directly affect your business.

Key facts about the effectiveness of Word of Mouth advertising:

• Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchases, according to ZenithOptimedia. (AdAge, April, 2008)

• Recommendation is the number one reason for choosing a particular site. (Royal Mail's Home Shopping Tracker Study, September 2007)

• Users who contribute product reviews or post messages visit sites nine times as often as non-contributors do. Contributors also make purchases nearly twice as often. (McKinsey and Co./Jupiter Media Metrix study, January 2002)

• Review users noted that reviews generated by fellow consumers had a greater influence than those generated by professionals. (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)

• Adult Internet users surveyed chose recommendations from friends as the one type of promotion they consider most worthwhile. (DoubleClick, May 2007)

• Consumers trust friends above experts when it comes to product recommendations 65% trust friends, 27% trust experts, 8% trust celebrities. (Yankelovich)

• Consumers say that word of mouth is still the number one influencer in their apparel (34.3%) and electronics (44.4%) purchases (Retail Advertising and Marketing Association/BIGresearch Study, November 2008)

• According to a global Nielsen survey of 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising among 78% of the study's respondents. (Nielsen, "Word-of-Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool", October 2007)

• Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers' opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions. ("Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape," JupiterResearch, March 2007)

• 86.9% of respondents said they would trust a friend's recommendation over a review by a critic, while 83.8% said they would trust user reviews over a critic. (Marketing Sherpa, July 2007)

For more information about how your organization can increase sales by sponsoring events please send an email to: sales@playinaroundtown.com or give us at call at 214.684.2744 (Jennifer) or 972.824.5306 (Leslie)