The most urgent challenge facing marketers across all sectors is comprehending consumer behavior—the reasons behind why consumers act in certain ways. How can we understand the course of our potential customers’ decisions? To reach a specific audience, it is crucial to conduct market and consumer research.
Marketers can learn why users choose certain actions by studying psychological, sociological, and economic factors. Buyer personas and user data can both be used to guide consumer behavior. However there is still a great deal of ambiguity regarding the factors influencing consumer behavior, its complexities, and how we may influence it.
Four Kinds of Consumer Behavior
Consumer behavior varies greatly between businesses, but the marketing profession has condensed it into four major categories. Each is distinctively different in subtle ways that merit investigation.
Habitual Buyer
A trip to the grocery shop to pick up some staples, like your favorite brand of toothpaste or some canned goods, is an example of a purchase that falls under this category. Regular purchases are less likely to be seen as a risk because of the modest prices at which they typically are made. When the stakes are low, it’s easier to make a call with little forethought or investigation. Regular purchases of the same item might be categorized as pattern purchases.
As brand loyalty is less important in habitual purchasing, this is different. Consumers are not motivated by loyalty when making these purchases, as they involve relatively little input. It’s not because of any special loyalty to your product or service; there are just too many alternatives.
Variety Buyer
Purchases made for the sake of variety disrupt a consumer’s usual spending habits, not because the buyer is dissatisfied or has found a better option. People are naturally curious creatures that will try new things just to see what they’re capable of. Similarly to compulsive shopping, variety shopping entails purchases that are both modest in cost and risk, and in which the shopper is only peripherally involved.
Complex Buyer
Large, infrequent purchases like homes or cars involve more complex buying behavior. Due to the high expense and potential danger associated with complex purchases, first-time purchasers must devote a lot of thought to the final outcome. Comparison and study are essential prior to making a decision on a large investment.
Dissonance-Reducing Buyer
If a shopper has a lot of anxiety about making a bad purchase, they may resort to dissonance-reducing buying behavior. It’s discordant when customers have trouble differentiating between different brands or products. High engagement is needed for dissonance-reducing purchase behavior, which seeks to reduce stress by making the right selection.
Five Ways to Shape Consumer Habits
Share Stories in Your Content
Although it’s beneficial to base decisions only on statistics, there are occasions when good old-fashioned storytelling wins out. Telling a story helps you connect the dots between what you know about your audience and a narrative that is easy to follow, has resonance with the listener, and addresses their concerns.
Now that any company can produce detailed customer profiles, tailoring your marketing to the needs of your target demographic is easier than ever.
Developing compelling brand narratives that resonate with target audiences is not only possible, but it’s also one of the most efficient means of producing genuine communication that generates true brand loyalty.
Make It Easier for Your Consumers to Buy
The purchase process should just involve a few simple clicks across all of your assets (websites, social media, emails, blog, etc.).
By establishing a streamlined full-funnel framework, you improve process uniformity and solidify your path to a successful transaction. This system is well-designed in that it attracts attention, guides each visitor to a purchase, and facilitates feedback in the form of a review.
You can better choreograph the entire customer’s journey if you prioritize a flawless client experience. Convincing your audience to go in the right route is as easy as making their experience with you seamless and straightforward.
Use Technology & Automation to Personalized Campaigns
Brands may sway consumers with hyper-targeted marketing efforts by using quantitative and qualitative marketing data and technology. Several services give original content, emails, webpages, and more to drive engagement based on various audience activities.
Several platforms also include reporting capabilities, allowing you to define benchmarks to gauge the performance of your customized campaigns. Your team can then optimize and improve future campaigns using this data.
You can gain practical knowledge about increasing your impact by being able to micro target and then evaluate your performance.
Develop a Strong Online Presence
Creating an online community is one very successful way to influence consumer behavior. As an illustration, you may build a social page, Facebook group, forum, or other community-focused technique to provide your clientele an online home.
A community built around your brand accomplishes a number of goals. You construct an in-group, develop unofficial brand advocates, take advantage of potent social psychology effects, and add a new consumer touch point to interact with your audience.
These factors can all lead to changes in consumer behavior that are favorable to your brand and its products.
Offer Prices, Promos, & Discounts
Retailers in the digital space may boost revenue and client retention with limited-time promotions like discount coupons and specials. Promo codes, social media contests, in-person events, and online sales can all be used to attract new customers from your podcast’s target market.
Associating your business with rising cultural phenomena like podcasts can have a significant impact. The repercussions may be rather severe.
Final Thoughts
Although consumer behavior is a crucial component of marketing, aspects of it are frequently misinterpreted and underutilized to further brand objectives. This is a serious error.
It makes sense to invest time in educating your team on consumer behavior so that, at every level, your marketing initiatives are genuinely in line with your target audience. If you want to change the way these actual customers behave, it’s also essential to establish this.
If you understand consumer behavior, you have a chance of achieving a level of customer involvement that even the most well-known brands can only hope for.
