There’s a popular saying – “we don’t shop with our brains,” and the statement is no less than true. When it comes to making a purchase, consumers are influenced by a range of factors, some of which are very irrational. Therefore, understanding the buyer’s motives can supercharge your growth because you can give them exactly what they’re looking for.
Consumer beliefs and behaviors are evolving at a rapid pace, and to keep up with them, companies must leverage deep consumer insights. So let’s take a look at how consumer behavior works and what you can do to take advantage of it:
Consumer behavior can be defined as the study of consumers and the processes they use to choose, purchase, use and dispose of products & services. This includes emotional, mental, behavioral and social responses. To put it simply, it is the answer to ‘why do you buy?’.
In marketing, consumer behavior helps to understand what influences customer purchase decisions, and then use that information to identify products/services that are the most in-demand and ones that aren’t at all.
By leveraging consumer behavioral data, marketers can also understand how to present a product or service to a customer in the most impactful way possible. This helps them develop the most effective advertising and sales campaigns.
So how do you use it to win sales? Read on.
Marketers often fail to start with people. Your marketing strategies should begin with asking questions from your audience’s shoes. Even though analyzing consumer insights can be a rigmarole, making use of the irrationality to shape behaviors can do wonders for your business. Let’s take a look at three areas where we can shape consumer activity:
Design is the stepping stone to attracting customers. Therefore, this is the first place where you start applying rigorously tested consumer data. Your goal should be to design the behavioral environment deliberately, which brings us to our first step – choice architecture. You can shape consumer behavior by deliberately designing the desired action as the default action. This can be the most effective when designing landing pages & CTAs.
Secondly, make sure you group your pains and separate gains, as consumers tend to value gains over pains. This is called prospect theory and it describes how people place more emotional weightage over perceived gains than perceived losses. So make sure you create a clear distinction between pain points and the solutions/gains that your product/service offers.
Leverage endowed progress. This is a process by which you use free progress indicators to motivate people. For example, having a progress bar on your E-commerce checkout page can motivate your customer to complete the purchase soon. People love visual progress indicators.
The goal of persuasion is to increase the chance your customers get to say yes. This should be reflected in your copy, landing pages, creatives and social media posts. Stress on scarcity as limited supply makes people want to buy more. Showcase social proof more often. People look to others’ behaviors to form their own. This includes testimonials, reviews and other kinds of UGC content.
Use authority to build credibility. People are more likely to act when an authority figure adds credibility and customers love to turn to them to understand what is legitimate. You may also practice reciprocity by offering something to get something else in return. For example, you may provide special discounts for registering an account.
When it comes to marketing, the more people vouch for you, the better. Get people to genuinely advertise for you by building social currency. People talk about what makes them feel good, so use branding tactics and ‘influencer currency’ to get people talking. Additionally, you can also use triggers as people mostly talk about what’s on top of their minds.
As for your branding and advertising campaigns, emphasize emotions that resonate with your target audience. This is perhaps the most impactful but misinterpreted strategy on consumer psychology. It would be best to focus only on the bigger picture, i.e., do not run behind instant gratification or vanity metrics. If your campaigns resonate with your audience’s emotions, they’ll naturally gravitate towards your brand and talk about you. People never fail to talk about what fires them up.
Understanding consumer behavior takes patience, since each pattern can change rapidly and unpredictably. However, by formulating an efficient strategy, you can quickly make use of the available data for your sales campaigns. Here are some places where you can find insights into consumer behaviour:
Consumer behavior insights can be crucial to your marketing campaigns and are necessary for winning sales. If you are not keeping track of it, you may miss out on many significant marketing opportunities ahead of you. Master the art of analyzing consumer purchase patterns and you’re already armed with the best resources for effective marketing and sales.
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