by Zontee Hou

Compel Your Audience to Action Throughout the Customer Journey: How to Reach Today’s Bionic Consumer

I wanted to go to a pop-up shop this weekend, so I pulled out my smartphone, looked at the brand’s Instagram account to see if they had posted about it, visited their website to check the hours, and then looked at a couple of articles from various publications to see what other people had thought about it.

That was all in order to decide whether I wanted to go to a store for about an hour. Then once I decided, I pulled it up on Google Maps and I sent a link to my boyfriend.

We live in a world in which making decisions about which brands to interact with is more complex than ever because we have more information than ever as consumers—reviews, comparison charts, 360 degree photos, unboxing videos. We basically have a super-computer in our pockets at all times, and we’re not afraid to use them to make us as informed as possible prior to the point of purchase. Even without chips in our brains, we are already bionic consumers, constantly buttressed by our access to digital resources.

This is the world that we as marketers live in today, and it’s the world that I’ll be exploring in my upcoming talk at Social Fresh this December 5-7 in Winter Park, Florida.

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68% of US internet users are as or more likely to use a smartphone as a computer/tablet

Not only are we able to do research at any time, but we never shop alone anymore. We are always with our devices, ready to snap a photo to send to our moms to see what they think of that new jacket or ready to send a photo of a label for our significant others to locate at the grocery store.

According to Google’s Consumer Barometer, a majority of internet users’ browsing activities are smartphone-centric. This high reliance on our portable devices means that the amount of the consumer journey that is impacted by marketing messages is higher than ever.

We can (and do) retarget people inside of our shopping center or neighborhood. We message people who just made a purchase with additional incentives. We are always on, and so is our customer.

Users Rely on Smartphones More Earlier in the Purchase Journey

This always-on attitude also means that inspiration is truly the realm of digital (and especially social media) marketers now, more than at any other time. PR is melding with social media, as is programmatic advertising.

Google found that US adults browsed on their smartphone throughout the purchase journey, but especially for inspiration. With this in mind, it’s important for brands to understand why and how to compel their target audiences to take actions that will lead them down the customer journey path.

Metrics + Nudges = Compelling Messaging

It’s not enough to understand where people get their information, but also why they feel the urge to act when they see certain types of posts. That’s why we need not only big data, but also behavioral economics—the study of decision-making—to help us create strong social media and content marketing campaigns.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can affect change, based on our gathered data, I recommend Cass Sunstein and Nobel winner Richard Thaler’s popular book, Nudge, an exploration of how small triggers can result in big behavioral changes.