Consumer Behavior: What it Means for YOU
If you’re a business owner, you probably already know that consumers are the most important part of keeping your company up and running — without consumers, you have no business. Because customers are so integral to the survival of companies, a great deal of time and effort should be spent tracking their behavior, analyzing their preferences, and combing through the feedback they share. If you’re not paying attention to what your consumers think of your brand, the experience, and the products, then you’ll probably lag behind your competition. This week, we’re looking at how consumer behavior affects brand strategy and what this means for you. We’ll cover how consumer behavior insights can help you craft an informed strategy, put you in the shoes of your consumers, and target relevant groups to align with your goals. Let’s get started.
Allows You To Craft An Informed Strategy
Brand strategies are always a good idea. However, it can be a shot in the dark, especially in the early stages of your business, to try to determine exactly what your audience wants. While research can definitely help, you might not yet have enough experience in the field, sales numbers, or consumer data that you can use to craft an informed brand strategy. However, once you start actively gathering consumer data and processing it into understandable and helpful statistics, this information can and should be used to craft a more informed brand strategy.
Companies can collect data about their customers through a variety of means, whether through using cookies on websites, tracking analytics through your online presence, seeing customers’ behavior in-store, circulating feedback forms, or incentivizing productive criticism through focus groups and feedback surveys. The more consumer data you have to work with, the better informed your brand strategy will be.
Tap Into The Mind Of A Consumer
Another important benefit of tracking and analyzing consumer behavior — it gives you the advantage of tapping into a consumer’s mind to see what they want and don’t want. Research into their behavior will allow you to understand the motives, preferences, desires, and dislikes of the audience you’re marketing to and can be a great way to fine tune your marketing strategy. Gathering this data allows you to create a comprehensive and detailed bank of knowledge that you can then use to make confident business decisions in the future.
For example, suppose you are a cupcake store and make most of your sales in person. You find that many people aren’t actually taking pictures of your cupcakes in-store but post about them later on social media. This is a major indication that you need to revamp the look of your physical store to make it more social media-friendly and shareable. Consider adding neon walls or signs, lush plants, and beautiful lighting, and make the cupcake display as enticing as possible. Ultimately, if you recognize what your consumer wants, you can adapt your strategy accordingly and stay miles ahead of the competition.
Understanding Your Demographics
When you analyze your consumer data, you get a much better picture of your audience’s demographics. Consumer behavior says so much about who your target audience is, where they come from, their ages, their education levels, and how much they earn. All of this information is vital in creating and pricing products and crafting your brand strategy. For example, customers would be more willing to spend more on a matcha latte in Los Angeles than they would in a city in South Carolina. This could be because matcha lattes are more popularly available in LA, they are more part of the mainstream culture and are engrained in daily routines, customers in LA are more likely to spend more money on drinks, and those in LA are on average earning more than customers in South Carolina. This information is primarily gained from analyzing your customer demographics and crafting your brand strategy accordingly.
Overall, it’s part of your job as a business to understand and respect consumers’ price sensitivity and acknowledge the perceived value of the product you’re selling. Any discord between these may decrease sales and lead to an assumption that your products are overpriced. I mean, you probably wouldn’t appreciate it if a college town (with entry-level job teenagers) opened a luxury home goods store. What home? With what money? For who? Knowing your demographics by analyzing consumer data can inform decisions for your marketing strategy.
Targeted & Relevant Advertising
A key part of understanding consumer behavior is seeing where they live. The location of your customer base is an excellent indicator of how you should communicate and present your brand. By understanding their communication channels, media consumption habits, and information-seeking behavior, you can deliver targeted and relevant marketing messages that capture consumers’ attention, engage them, and drive desired actions—like clicking the ‘buy’ or ‘contact’ button. While this may seem obvious to local businesses, especially those with a physical store presence, it’s equally important for online businesses in the digital landscape.
Let’s walk through an example. Suppose you have an online store that sells uniquely fragranced candles. You’re based in New York, but have found that a lot of your sales come from South Asian countries or from localities that have a substantial diasporic population. This is the ideal opportunity for you to use this information to market to that audience, especially during certain times of the year. During Diwali, you know that candle sales will be booming, and they’re likely to increase if you specifically use Diwali banners and offer discounts and bundles for those celebrating. Not only does this increase profit, but it also makes your customers feel like you know them and care about them. After all, making your customers feel comfortable is a good step in the direction of brand trust and loyalty.
To sum it up, spending time, effort, and resources on understanding and analyzing consumer behavior will help you craft a better brand strategy that aligns with your goals and drives your business forward. You can use a variety of sources to analyze the numbers, including third party vendors that comb over customer data and take on the logistical work for you. However, you must remember that understanding consumer behavior is not a one-time activity. Analyzing your consumer data should be a consistent practice that will help you track changes over time, allowing your brand strategy to change with it. Use your consumer behavior data to drive meaningful business decisions and you’re already ahead in the world of digital marketing.
Always in your corner,
The Content Queens
