Marketing is becoming increasingly transparent, for content marketers. Technologies have progressed enough to allow you to map consumer journeys, to the most minute of details. You can now track a consumer right from when they arrive to your website to when they buy from you. You can see the impact of your content and how your audience received it. There is no shortage of metrics to measure to track your marketing progress.
Now that can see your consumers’ journeys, you can ask more pertinent questions about consumer behavior, so you can use it to create more effective content backed by smart marketing strategies. Every marketer can benefit from knowing why consumers say no instead of yes, and what drives them to do so. The following are some insights that can help shed some light.
1. Minimal requirements drive better conversions
A popular rule in digital is to keep everything under three clicks. Why? In 2015, it was reported that the average attention span of digital surfers fell to a shocking 8 seconds. That is all the time you really have to capture your consumers and reach them to their preferred destinations. Delays in the process, hang-ups, slow loading websites, too many fields to fill in and too many things to do before purchase can seriously hinder your conversions.
Imaginary Landscape, a website technology firm, conducted an A/B test for two contact forms on a website. The shorter version received as much as 160% more submissions. To optimize your website for conversions, you could build and test multiple forms for conversions using a form building app like SleekNote.
2. People love the news
It has been neurologically proved that the ‘new’ or ‘latest’ factor drives people to seek something out. The idea of something new, undiscovered and unfamiliar, prompts the release of dopamine in the human brain, which in-turn pushes people to chase it.
This is why people love newsy stuff. One way to leverage this fact, is by building your social media strategy around it. Be the first to discover news in your industry and share it, and be the first to track trends and tell your audience how to keep up with them. Doing so will increase your social media traffic and therefore improve your chances to convert. To source the latest content for social media, you could use a content curation software like DrumUp, or any app that intuitively collects the best content for you to share.
3. Labeled audiences are more likely to act
I’m not asking you to judge your audience to label them, what I’m asking you to do is far from it. People like being labeled, as long as the label is positive and makes them feel “included”. In fact, labels drive people to act.
Scientists from Stanford and Cambridge universities conducted a small experiment to see if labels affected people’s voting patterns. Two groups of people were chosen. One group was told that they were deemed to be “politically active” by scientists and therefore, more likely to vote. The other group was told nothing. The group that was complimented to be more politically active had a 15% higher voting turnout than the other group. Similarly, in the retail market, “Gold card” or “Silver card” holders re likely to have greater total purchases than regular customers. The takeaway is to give you audience the “special” status when you can, and make sure to give your loyal customers valuable benefits and rewards.
4. Information is most credible coming from “people I know” and “people like me”
According to Edleman’s trust barometer, friends and family rank as the top source for information in the digital world. If you thought that a reputable and austere presence is all it takes to vitalize your digital presence, you were wrong. This is the age of word of mouth marketing, and micro-influencers.
Social media puts you in a unique position to boost your business. You could create a powerful network of people to instantly drive up your visibility and influence on social media. Most businesses already have partners and loyal customers who would make great advocates, but employees are the people who could really make a difference to your marketing results. With the right employee advocacy guide and employee advocacy platform, you could revitalize your social media marketing efforts.
5. Admitting shortcomings is an important part of being reliable
It is better to admit your weaknesses than sweep them under the carpet, according to this study. A group of people were given two fictitious year end reports. One report focused on the companies strategic decisions, while the other focused on external factors like the economy and market. The participants found the first company favorable because admitting where you are lacking shows a certain pro-activeness. It shows that you have identified the problem, and are focusing on fixing it.
Sometimes, admitting shortcomings can be a great way to highlight your strengths. For instance, if you are not as popular as your competitors, you could advertise that your lines are shorter. Some time back, a convertible company advertised its latest model with a photograph of it nearly buried in snow. While that did highlight the drawback of owning a convertible, it also shows that it could let good weather in.
Admit your shortcomings in such a way that is also positions you favorably with your audience.
6. Telling your audience why matters
The xerox experiment brings out one of the most interesting insights about human behavior – the need for reason. People standing in queue to get photocopies were asked the following questions by someone (the researcher) standing behind them in line.
94% relented to the first version of the question, only 60% to the second, and a surprising 93% to the third. It seems that people simply need to know that is a reason to do something, and the actual reason or the accuracy of it doesn’t really matter.
Wherever possible, tell you audience “why”.
7. Some audience members are more likely to buy than others
Across all industries, potential buyers can be grouped based on their willingness to make a purchase. Most people fall under three major groups – spend thrifts (15%), un-conflicted (61%) and tightwads (24%). It is a good idea to approach different audience groups by how much effort of yours is necessary for them to convert. The tightwads are, predictably, the hardest to convert. Focusing on them is important because they make-up about a third of your audience.
To convert your audience, it is important to build credibility and improve the superficial value of your product/services on the web. For instance, instead of saying subscribe for 500 a year, you could say subscribe for 41.66/month. It is easier for people to see value when your rates don’t take away their focus.
There is no time like now to build a marketing plan that accounts for consumer behavior, because there are ways for you to measure it. Consider the tactics highlighted on this article while creating your social media and content marketing strategies and you will see positive results.