Behavioral Marketing Archives - Stevens & Tate Marketing

Factors That Influence Consumer Purchasing Decisions: Rethinking the Marketing Funnel

May 24, 2024/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Lead Nuturing /by Dan Gartlan

In order to continue attracting your target audience, it’s crucial to firstly understand “what is a consumer need?” Then, must keep up with the wants and needs of customers. Consumer behavior is influenced by many things, such as price, product features, brand image, and recommendations from friends or family. These all playing a vital role in what people decide to purchase. This can be a real challenge if you don’t understand the factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions. Those factors are a lot different than what they used to be. This means that the customer journey has changed a lot as well. This updated journey is referred to by many as the consumer decision journey (CDJ). What makes the CDJ so different than traditional marketing funnels is that each consumer’s CDJ is unique. Keeping that in mind, the following are three of the biggest factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions in today’s digital age:

Factors That Influence Consumer Purchasing Decisions

Product/Service Reviews

Very few consumers are going to blindly buy a product or service based on the content they’ve come across on your website. It doesn’t matter how effective you say it is, how clear your demonstration videos are, or what kind of accolades you’ve received. Customers are going to look up reviews first. Many consumers aren’t going to feel comfortable buying a product or service unless it has good reviews. Fortunately, online reviews are easy to find.

There are tons of different websites where customers leave reviews. In fact, a company having reviews on their website has now become so commonplace that not having the option to leave or see reviews can leave a bad taste in consumers’ mouths. Reviews are not always only about one specific product or service. Angi, Yelp, and Amazon all allow customers to leave feedback on products and services, as well as overall customer experiences. Reviews come in many forms. Gone are the days of a simple, written review. Now, many companies give consumers the option to upload pictures and even videos with their review.

In addition to consumer reviews, consumers also seek out professional reviews. For example, Consumer Reports provides professional reviews of certain products. They offer comparisons between different products as well.

Encouraging customers, as well as professionals, to review your products and services can be hugely beneficial. Doing so (as long as the reviews are mostly positive) can help improve your reputation and build trust with consumers who are in the evaluation stage of their journey.

Peer Recommendations

More often than not, consumers will initially become aware of brands or their products and services through peer recommendations. They may ask someone in person for a recommendation or ask online, via social media, online chat, or email. It’s one of the reasons why it’s so important to continue targeting existing customers. The journey doesn’t end when someone makes a purchase. You want to continue marketing to those customers to turn them into repeat customers. This allows you to build brand loyalty, which will turn them into brand ambassadors. Brand ambassadors will recommend your products or services to their peers.

Having a social media presence is incredibly important because so many consumers will turn to social media as a way to do research. They’ll look up brands, ask them direct questions, and ask their social groups about their thoughts on your products or services. They also look at your social interactions in general. This means that they will look at how you engage with your followers, as well as with users in general, to get a sense of how you carry yourself. They also do this to see if they can relate to you. A brand with no social presence is not going to make as good of an impression on consumers. Nor will one that doesn’t regularly engage with the community.

It’s important not to become over-reliant on the traditional marketing funnel. Consumers have so much power when it comes to doing their own research about different brands and their products and services, that it’s important to understand how unique the CDJ is. These are three very important factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions in this day and age that you need to make sure you address.

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Beyond Pixels: Unconventional Non-Digital Marketing Ideas to Elevate Your Brand

December 4, 2023/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Blog, Brand Development /by Terry Becker

In a world dominated by digital marketing, it’s easy to overlook non-digital strategies. While online platforms offer incredible reach and targeting options, there’s something uniquely effective about tangible, real-world interactions. In this article, we’ll explore some unconventional non-digital marketing ideas to boost your brand without relying on screens and algorithms.

Non-Digital Marketing That Creates Direct Interaction:

Handwritten Thank You Notes:
These days most communication is digital, receiving a handwritten note can be a delightful surprise. Send personalized thank you notes to customers, partners, or supporters to show genuine appreciation.

Host Workshops or Classes:
Share your expertise by hosting workshops, classes, or seminars related to your industry. This positions your brand as an authority and creates opportunities for in-person connections with potential customers. Home Depot does a great job at this by hosting free workshops that educate and bring visitors out to their stores.

Pop-Up Shops or Experiences:
Set up temporary retail spaces or experiential installations in high-traffic areas. This allows you to directly engage with potential customers and create a memorable brand experience. IKEA did this by creating fun pop-up stores. Even if your brand isn’t retail, consider creating a simple pop-up tent experience. It’s a good way to bring an experience closer to potential customers.

Vehicle Branding:
Turn your company vehicles into moving billboards by incorporating your brand’s logo, colors, and messaging. This not only advertises your brand, but also adds a professional touch to your business operations. If you don’t have the budget for a full vehicle wrap, displaying your brands website url or a QR code in the window is a good way to bring awareness to your brand.

Non-Digital Marketing That Increase Brand Visibility

Branded Merchandise:
Create custom-branded merchandise like apparel, mugs, or tote bags that people can use in their everyday lives. This not only provides value to your audience, but also turns them into walking advertisements for your brand. A word of caution: It’s easy to want to order all the same things other companies do, like can koozies, pens, etc. Really think about what branded items will really parallel your brand. Also, cheap is not the best approach as well. Getting one premium item vs many less expensive items can make a big impression.

Read more about branding: The Power of Story Branding

Unique Packaging and Presentation:
Your product’s packaging is an often overlooked marketing opportunity. Consider creating distinctive, eye-catching packaging that sets your brand apart on the shelves and leaves a lasting impression. This past Halloween consumers were bombard with custom packages and flavors, all appealing to the emotion that coincides with the holiday.

Sponsorship and Partnerships:
Forge strategic partnerships with other businesses or events that align with your brand values. This could involve sponsoring local sports teams, community events, or collaborating with influencers in your industry. Additionally, more brands are embracing the use of influencers because they already have an audience and they create the content using your brand.

Unconventional Non-digital ideas

Guerilla Marketing:
Guerrilla marketing involves unconventional and often surprise tactics to grab the attention of potential customers. This could include things like flash mobs, street art, or unexpected pop-up events. It’s a bold way to create memorable brand experiences.

Street Art and Murals:
Commissioning local artists to create street art or murals that incorporate your brand can be a visually striking way to engage with the community and generate buzz around your products or services.

While digital marketing remains a powerful tool, there’s a world of untapped potential in non-digital strategies. Implementing these creative ideas can help your brand break through the noise and establish a meaningful connection with your audience in a tangible, memorable way. By thinking outside of digital, you’ll not only differentiate your brand but also create experiences that resonate with your customers on a deeper level.

6 Types of Behavioral Data That Can Be Used For Segmentation

September 8, 2023/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Blog, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

Behavioral Data is the way that your users behave provides you with significant insight into your audience, your website, and even your products and services. You can use this information to segment your users so that you can more effectively target them using a variety of marketing techniques. This strategy is known as behavioral segmentation.

Behavioral Data Examples for Segmentation

You will need to use analytics in order to look at a variety of different metrics that will reveal behavioral data. The following are six metrics that can help you gather behavioral data to use for behavioral segmentation:

1. Page view history

Seeing what pages a user is visiting can give you a good idea of what they’re looking for. You can also identify pages that they are spending most of their time on. This reveals the content that interests them. Looking at their page view history (as well as the pages they’ve spent a lot of time on) will help you gather information on what subjects they’re most interested in. This will allow you to provide more custom cross-links for related content. It can also direct users to content that’s more likely to interest them.

2. Email opens

Just because a lead is on your email list does not mean that they are reading all of your emails. Identifying what emails they are opening will give you a good idea of how to follow up those emails with custom messaging and retargeting. You can also better understand what headlines and messaging times get the most open. This will allow you to adjust your email strategy so that it’s more effective.

Social engagement is identified by the content that users like, share, or comment on. You can track the social engagement of your users. This helps identify what types of content they engage in with most to tailor content that’s more to their liking. You can also share content with them directly to engage with them more personally. This will help build stronger relationships.

Read More Related Article – Improve Your Marketing Strategy By Asking These 4 Questions

4. Videos watched

More people are now watching videos on a daily basis due to how easy it is to access them via mobile devices. Keep track of your user’s video-watching history so that you can let them know when you publish similar video content in the future or so that you can send them more content (video or non-video) based on the subject matter of the videos they’ve watched.

5. Purchase history

Tracking what your customers have purchased will let you know their needs and wants. This will make it easier for you to send targeted offers and identify cross-selling opportunities. Remember, buying history isn’t just limited to what your customers are purchasing. It also includes when they are making those purchases. You can target them using offers on dates that they tend to make their purchases.

6. Product usage

Depending on the product or service you’re selling, you can gather data on its use. For example, if you sell software, then you can track how often it’s used. This allows you to upsell heavy users. This also allows you to send targeted content to users who aren’t using certain features about features. Lastly, it can re-engage users who aren’t using your software often.

These are 6 behavioral data examples for segmentation that you can use as well. By paying attention to your users’ behavior data and using that information to segment your users, you can greatly improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing efforts.

Core Difference Between Buyer Journey vs. Customer Journey

July 18, 2023/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Blog /by Nicole Wagner

You’ve probably heard a lot about consumer lifecycles and the different terms used to describe said lifecycles, such as buyer journey and sales funnel. They can be a little overwhelming and a little confusing. You might even wonder why some terms seem to describe the same thing, such as buyer journey and customer journey. Don’t be fooled–the buyer journey is very different from the customer journey and it’s important that you know what the difference is. The following is a breakdown of the buyer journey vs. the customer journey.

The Buyer Journey

As we’ve previously discussed, the buyer journey makes up the stages that a consumer goes through up to their decision to purchase a specific product or service from a specific company. This includes the awareness stage, during which they realize that they have a problem; the consideration stage, during which they identify the solution to their problem; and the decision stage, during which they decide what product or service is the best solution to their problem.

The Customer Journey

During the buyer journey, the consumer doesn’t become a customer until the end of the very last stage (the decision stage). However, your relationship with your customers doesn’t end the moment they’ve made a purchase. The real success of a business depends on return customers, after all. This is where the customer journey comes into play.

During the customer journey, you should focus on further developing relationships with your customers through regular engagement. Building relationships will help to increase trust in your brand, which, in turn, will improve customer retention.

Read about How to Use the Buyer’s Journey to Create Great Content

But getting customers to purchase your products and services again isn’t the only goal. You’ll want to establish customer loyalty, which means that they will only buy those products and services from you–and, eventually, will turn to your company for whatever needs you can offer solutions to.

Nurturing Customers into Brand Ambassadors

Once you’ve managed to build that loyalty, you’ll be able to nurture that customer into a brand ambassador. Consumers tend to trust other consumers much more easily than they trust companies, which is why brand ambassadors offer so much value. Keeping all of this in mind, the following are a few tips to help you nurture your customers through their customer journeys:

Initiate engagement following purchases – It’s important that you initiate contact with customers as soon as possible following a purchase. Many businesses use automation to send emails thanking customers for their purchase and even recommending similar products (in an attempt to cross-sell or upsell).
Send them relevant content – Continue nurturing your customers by sending them emails with content that is relevant to their engagement history (including their purchases and website behavior). The content you send should be informative and should help improve their brand experience. For example, tips on how to use the product that they purchased or general content relevant to their purchase.
Request and listen to feedback – Send your customers surveys or request that they leave reviews. Listen to what they have to say. Customer feedback is valuable to improving your business and can help you improve your relationship with your customers as well.
Reward referrals – You can encourage your customers to become brand ambassadors by implementing a referral program. For example, you can offer a discount for every customer that they refer to you.

Also Read How Businesses Use Brand Ambassador Programs To Increase Brand Awareness And Trust

The difference between the buyer journey and the customer journey is that the buyer journey leads up to the purchase whereas the customer journey continues following the purchase. It’s important that you have strategies in place to accommodate consumers during both journeys to help ensure the success of your business.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

6 Behavioral Market Segmentation Examples

May 9, 2023/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Consumer Marketing, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

When it comes to marketing automation, few techniques are as beneficial as segmentation, which allows you to categorize your leads based on data that you’ve collected on them. This, in turn, allows you to personalize their experience more, thereby making your nurturing efforts more effective. However, normal segmentation is based on who the user says they are; often provided by the information they fill out in your opt-in forms.

Another effective form of segmentation you should look into is behavioral market. Behavioral market segmentation segments your leads based on how they behave. This behavioral data comes from analytics. The following are six examples of behavioral market segmentation that you can benefit from:

1. User Purchasing Behavior

Basic purchasing behavior can be broken down into four categories:

Complex– When the user is highly involved in both the purchase and decision-making process between two very different brands.

Variety-Seeking- In which the user isn’t that involved in the purchasing process. However, they may choose a different brand just to try it out.

Dissonance-Reducing– Where the customer is happy with their brand, but they know other options that could be better. This also happens, when the customer needs to make a major purchase, but there’s not much difference between the products they’re considering.

Habitual– When little involvement is needed and the product doesn’t vary much from brand to brand. It’s mainly just personal preference that matters.

These behavioral market segmentation categories make it easier to identify what users are more likely to make a purchase and how you can make your product and brand stand out from the competition.

2. Occasion-Based Behavior

User behavior is sometimes identifiable by special occasions. For example, consumers often make more purchases around the holiday season or for special events in their own lives, such as birthdays and anniversaries. Occasion-based behaviors can be split up into universal occasions, regular personal occasions, and rare personal occasions. This will allow you to tailor content to all of these different occasions in a more personal manner.

Using Customer Segmentation To Improve Engagement

3. Usage Rate

Usage rate divides your users into heavy, mid-level, and light users based on how often they purchase your products or services. When segmenting your audience based on their usage behavior, you’ll be able to focus on turning light users into mid-level users and mid-level users into heavy users while keeping heavy users happy.

4. Purchase Reasoning

Different users have different reasons for purchasing your product or service. Knowing what those motivations will make it easier to meet their needs. For example, if you are selling business software, it may have many benefits, including ease-of-use, affordability, scalability, and integration capabilities. If you have an article about the affordability of your solutions to a user that purchased your software due to its scalability isn’t going to be an effective way to engage with them.

5. Customer Loyalty

Keep in mind that just because a customer keeps buying your product or service doesn’t mean that they are a loyal customer. Customers that are continually in need of the product or service that you offer are habitual customers. Whereas loyal customers only purchase your products and services, ignoring your competition.

They are important because they end up generating most of your revenue and aren’t that expensive to cater to. As a result, it’s important to be able to identify who your loyal customers are from your regular customers. That way you can focus on building your relationship with them.

6. Consumer Status

Determining a user’s status will help you figure out how to best approach them. For example, non-users need to be aware of what their problem or pain point is before you can offer your product or service as a solution. Other types of consumer statuses include prospects (who are learning about your product or service), first-time buyers (who may need to learn how to get the most out of your product), regular users (who may benefit from supplemental products), and defectors (who are ex-customers that have chosen a product from a competitor whose trust you need to try to regain).

These are six types of behavioral market segmentation examples that can help you to more effectively–and efficiently–engage with your users and to continue building relationships with them over the course of their buyer’s journey.

Using Customer Segmentation To Improve Engagement

April 28, 2023/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

Once a lead has made a purchase and has become a customer, your job isn’t over. The most successful businesses are those that turn their customers into repeat customers–and this requires you to continue building the relationships that you’ve already established through regular engagement. However, as your business begins growing, it’s going to become more and more difficult to keep track of all of your customers and to meet their individual needs. To deal with this challenge, you should implement customer segmentation.

What is Customer Segmentation?

The strategy behind customer segmentation involves using the data that you’ve collected on your customers, including the information that they have provided, their general behaviour on your website, the way they’ve engaged with you, and their purchase history, to divide them into different groups so that you can effectively target different groups within your audience at a time.

For example, if you sell pet food, then sending out a promotion for new dog food to customers who only own cats aren’t going to be an effective way to encourage them to make another purchase. If you’ve segmented your customers, you can send that same promotion to a customer that actually owns a cat or that has bought cat food in the past.

Customer Segmentation Examples

The following are a few customer segmentation examples to give you an idea of how to leverage your customer data to segment your customer lists:

1. Demographics

You can obtain customer demographic information via surveys and opt-in forms. This information can be helpful for segmentation for a number of reasons. For example, if your business sells a product that comes in an affordable model as well as a luxury model, knowing which customers fall within a high household income bracket will be helpful. Additionally, the way you engage with your audience may differ depending on their age. Certain types of messaging will appeal more to college-aged adults than senior citizens, for example, and they will likely have different pain points as well.

2. Geographic location

Segmenting your customer list based on where they live can be very helpful for a number of reasons. First off, you may have store-specific promotions. If you have multiple locations throughout the state or throughout the country, then you’ll want to make sure you’re targeting customers that can actually take advantage of it. Secondly, you may have products or services that are specific to certain parts of the country. For example, you may sell heavy-duty winter clothing. Even if you’re an online retailer, targeting customers who live in warm climates where it doesn’t snow will be ineffective.

3. Purchase patterns

Knowing when your customers are making their purchases and what they are purchasing can help you segment them into groups that you can target to improve sales even more. For example, some shoppers may be hesitant and may regularly leave products in their shopping carts without checking out. You could send them a special offer or discount code to help encourage them to see the purchase through. Grouping together customers based on when they make their purchases (on the weekend, in the evenings, on certain holidays, etc.) can help you time your interactions more effectively as well.

4. Device used

Tracking what devices your customers used to make purchases or to view products can be helpful in providing the right offers at the right times. For example, customers who are using mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, to make purchases are most likely doing it away from work since most people who browse during work hours do so on their computers.

These are just a few ways that you can implement customer segmentation to improve your ability to engage with existing customers using the data you’ve collected from them. Successful customer segmentation will greatly improve your marketing efforts as a result.

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A Guide to the Consideration Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

March 10, 2023/in Articles, Attraction Marketing, Behavioral Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Once you’ve managed to draw new leads to your brand by presenting content that helps consumers navigate their problems through the awareness stage, you’ll want to make sure that you have content living on your site (and on other channels, such as social media and email as well) that addresses the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey.

What Is The Consideration Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey?

The consideration stage of the buyer’s journey follows directly after the awareness stage. Once a consumer has a better understanding of what their pain point is as well as of what the potential causes of their problem are, they will begin searching for solutions. It’s during the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey that they will begin to explore their purchasing options.

At this point, you will want to explain what types of solutions will help with their specific problems as well as what their options are and present your products and services as a potential solution.

Let’s say the consumer has decided that they need to replace their current computer, which keeps freezing. They already know that they need to replace their computer and why they need to replace it. If you’re selling brand new computers, then you’ll want to present content that helps provide information that will help guide them to making the right purchase. They may have questions that include:

How much do new computers cost?
What kind of computer do I need?
Should I buy a new or used computer?
What brand is the best brand?

Content that addresses these questions is going to help consumers make a more informed decision about their purchase, thereby helping to get them closer to making a purchase.

How do you create great content with the help of the buyer’s journey?

Creating Content For The Consideration Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

You will want content on your site that specifically addresses the consideration stage for consumers who have been doing research on your site from the beginning of their buyer’s journey. However, this content will also help attract consumers out there who already know what their problem is and are performing research for potential solutions from the get-go.

While you’ll want to present your products and services as a solution, you’ll want to make sure that your content is still on the informative side and not the promotional side. The more helpful your content is in explaining what the consumer’s options are, the more they will trust your brand’s authority, which will help make them more likely to choose your solution.

You’ll want to create a variety of content, including short-form and long-form articles, videos, case studies, demo videos and more. Topics you may explore that help inform consumers looking for a new computer could include:

The Pros and Cons of Used vs. New Computers
Mac vs. PC vs. Chromebook
Buying a New Computer on a Budget
What to Look For in a New Computer

Other forms of content to consider creating include product webinars and FAQs that consumers can explore to see what your company has to offer in terms of solutions to their problems.

During the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey, you’ll want to provide content that provides consumers with information about potential solutions to their problems while also introducing them to your specific products and services. The idea is to give them enough information so that they will feel comfortable making an informed purchase.

What is The Buyer’s Journey?

March 7, 2023/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Blog /by Nicole Wagner

The general goal of every business is to attract consumers and turn them into customers. The process that a consumer goes through before they make a purchase is known as the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey has become a lot more complex over the years, especially since the advent of Internet. This is because consumers no longer rely on businesses to hold their hands and to guide them through their buyer’s journey. As a result of digital media, consumers can now navigate much of their buyer’s journey on their own. This also means that everyone’s buyer’s journey is different.

As a business, you will need to meet the needs of the consumer as they move through their buyer’s journey. You’ll need to be able to do this at every stage of their journey in a passive manner until they are ready to be engaged. This may seem like a challenge, but it’s what the entire concept of inbound marketing is built around.

We will be going over the different stages of the buyer’s journey, but before we do, it’s important to understand exactly what the buyer’s journey is and why it’s so important.

What is the Buyer’s Journey?

The buyer’s journey is the process a consumer goes through to research a product and to come to a decision to make a purchase. The buyer’s journey typically begins when a consumer realizes that they have a problem but don’t know what the solution to that problem is. For example, maybe they’ve stained their white carpeting with wine. They don’t know what the best solution is for getting wine stains out of their carpeting, so they will begin doing research online.

This research usually begins with a simple search on Google or other search engines. They will read up on possible solutions through articles and blog posts or view videos on the subject. Through this research, they will learn what products can help solve their problem. They will read up on the different products offered by different brands. The buyer will look into those brands to determine how reputable they are based on a variety of factors. They may contact that brand directly, download a free offer, or sign up to an email list through the course of their research.

The Buyers Journey Explained Stage By Stage

At this point, you would begin building a relationship with them by nurturing them through the sales funnel. At the end of the sales funnel, once they’ve reached the end of the buyer’s journey, they will make their decision and choose a product to buy. This process is split into three main stages:

Awareness stage – During this stage, the buyer realizes that they have a problem. They will begin doing research to figure out exactly what their problem is and what the cause of their problem is.
Consideration stage – At this point, the buyer has defined their problem and its cause and are doing research into the possible solutions to their problem.
Decision stage – The buyer now knows what the solution to their problem is and are comparing products or services as well as different companies to identify the best solution.

The Importance of the Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey may seem long, but the fact is, you’re meeting them halfway through it. The idea of inbound marketing is that you make available a wealth of valuable information (through different forms of content) allowing the consumer to do the majority of their initial research on their own.

However, this means that it’s extremely important that you understand every stage of the buyer’s journey. This is because you’ll want to make sure that you have content available that will be helpful and informative to the consumer no matter what stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in or what channel they’re on. You will also need to be able to identify the stage of the buyer’s journey a consumer happens to be in so that you know when to engage with them.

The buyer’s journey consists of numerous stages that make up the research and decision-making process of a consumer. It is the process that the entire strategy of inbound marketing revolves around, which is why it’s so important that you understand what it is and why it’s important.

A Guide to the Decision Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

February 10, 2023/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Blog /by Nicole Wagner

After helping consumers learn about their problem and how they can solve it, you will want to present your product or service as the best option for that specific solution. It’s at this point that consumers are in the decision stage of the buyer’s journey.

What Is The Decision Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey?

The decision stage of the buyer’s journey is the last stage, the stage in which you close the sale. However, there’s still work to be done. Although the consumer has decided on a solution by this stage, they have yet to decide on a product or service or the vendor that they will purchase from.

During the decision stage, they will be doing research into the products and services that they are considering as a solution to their pain point. They will also research vendors that provide those products and services to determine if they are trustworthy. For example, if the consumer has decided to purchase a new computer, they may be looking to answer the following:

The pros and cons of different brand computers
The type of warranties offered by different computer vendors
The expected lifespan of different computer models
The different features of different computer models
Customer reviews of different computer vendors

Creating Content For The Decision Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

You’ve done a massive amount of work to help nurture your leads through the first two stages of the buyer’s journey. You’ve done so by publishing a variety of different types of content addressing the awareness and consideration stages. At this point, you’re trying to get your leads over the finish line. This is why you need to have content that presents your brand as a trustworthy and reliable vendor and your product or service as the best option for their specific needs.

How do you drive website conversions throughout the buyer’s journey?

While this means that some of the content you’ll want to have available on various channels (from your website to social media to your emails) will need to be promotional, you can still provide more informative content as well. Types of content you’ll want to offer during this stage include downloadable white papers, case studies, use cases, which show off the benefits of your products or services. You’ll also want detailed product or service videos that include video demonstrations if possible.

Also, you will want to showcase exactly why they should choose to purchase from your business. This should be done by publishing customer reviews on your website and by encouraging reviews on social. You should consider creating customer testimonials as well–video testimonials tend to be extremely effective during this stage.

Creating Reasons to Choose Your Company

Last, but not least, give consumers a reason to choose your product or service over another brand. You can do so by offering a free trial of your product or service or a free consultation. This way they will get in touch with you. Services like Netflix and Amazon offer free 30-day trials. People jump on the chance to take advantage of such services for free and often end up purchasing the service in full at the end of their trial as a result.

The decision stage of the buyer’s journey is the third and last stage. You’ll want to encourage consumers to choose your company’s product or service by not only promoting your products and services, but also by informing the consumer about your products and services as well as about your company. The goal is to convince them that they can trust your brand. It’s also to show them that your product or service will meet their specific needs more so than any other option out there.

Download Our White Paper Guide To Learn How To Perfect Buyer Personas For Your Business

How Behavioral Marketing Can Increase Sales

June 14, 2022/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

Behavioral marketing is a form of marketing that’s based on how a lead or customer behaves. You can find out how a person behaves through the use of website analytics, search history, browsing history, social media interaction (such as the type of content they engage with or post), web cookies, and more. This type of information can give you much more insight into a lead or customer, which, in turn, gives you the opportunity to target your marketing efforts more effectively. In fact, if you leverage your behavioral data successfully, it can even help you increase your sales. The following are four examples of how behavioral marketing can increase sales:

1. Suggesting Products Based On Purchase History

Looking at what customers purchase can give you an idea of what their needs are and how you can position yourself to meet those needs in the future. For example, if they’ve purchased a certain product on more than one occasion, then you can inform them about any promotions for that product if you have them with a good chance that they will jump on the opportunity. If you release an upgrade or updated version of a product that a customer has purchased in the past, you can inform them about it. You can also use their purchase history to identify ways that you can upsell and cross-sell other items. Many businesses will use ads or send emails recommending products directly after a sale in an attempt to cross-sell.

2. Targeting Leads Based On Product Views

You may notice a lead looking at certain products or services on your site but never going through with the purchase. The fact that they are looking at these products means that they are looking for something specific. If they’ve looked at a product multiple times, then it means they’re likely interested in your specific offering as well. You can encourage them to make the purchase by sending them content that highlights the benefits of the product they were looking at or by sending them a special discount code for that specific product to help give them a push towards making a buying decision.

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3. Targeting Customers Based On Purchase Times

Data that identifies when someone purchases a product can be just as valuable as knowing what the product was that they purchased. For example, if they tend to make their purchases on the weekend, then you’ll have a better chance at reaching them with promotional offers that can spur action on the weekend than during the week. If they only make purchases at the beginning of the month, then you know that this is the best time to engage as well. The same goes for the times at which they make their purchases.

4. Following Up On Abandoned Shopping Carts

There’s nothing worse than an abandoned shopping cart. It means you fell short right before the finish line. The customer may have forgotten to check out (which can happen if they were distracted) or may have had second thoughts. You can use this information to follow up by sending out a reminder that they have something in their shopping cart or by sending an offer to help sweeten the deal (such as a special deal on shipping or a free trial) that can help give them a gentle push them over that finish line.

Behavioral marketing is effective because you’re relying on information you’ve gathered about how your leads and customers are interacting and engaging with your brand. This kind of information makes it easier to act in an effective way. These are just four examples of how the use of behavioral marketing can help to increase sales.