Brand Experiences to get a brand Chosen

Choose is the second stage of the Path to Advocacy and is about the process that the consumer goes through when choosing which brand(s) they are likely to buy.

This stage is about getting your brand onto the consumers’ short-list.

This used to be all about traditional media - using high impact, coverage, frequency, recency, etc. However, the internet now means i) consumers are very interconnected with each other, and ii) the way they behave and use media has changed. They don’t trust traditional media in the same way, they research differently (usually on-line) and actively seek relevant opinion/advice of others (e.g. friends & family and/or independent experts).

To succeed today brand owners must deeply understand their target consumers’ behaviours, particularly:

a) How and where consumers are getting information about brands

b) The consumers’ motivations for choosing. (These can be driven by functional needs e.g. specification, colour, price, etc and their emotional needs.)

The start point for marketers is making sure their brand is providing the right (usually functional) information, at the right time, in the right place. Effective ways to do this is include sampling or a good internet strategy (e.g. search, brand website, etc).

The other critical requirement is about making the brand relevant to the target consumers’ lives. It is where PR (Virgin, Marks & Spencer, Agent Provocateur), experiential (Electrolux), social media (Dell, Wispa, T-Mobile) and advocacy can play a big part.

A brand experience that lets consumers touch/sample the brand is one of the most powerful ways to increase their likelihood to buy

I was interested to read a recent post by Nigel Hollis (Chief Global Analysis – Millward Brown) about a research paper by Joann Peck and Susan B. Shu that proves that touching a product makes you more likely to buy it.

The paper says: “...in four studies, we found that touch does connect a person to an object by increasing the feeling of ownership of the object.”

This supports learnings from Touchpoints ROI Tracker that consistently shows, across virtually every category, that sampling is one of the most influential ways to deliver brand experience.

This is not a new a new idea.

After all, who buys a new outfit without being able to try it on, or a car without being able to test-drive it?

I recommend that any brand that wants to attract new users (errr I guess that would be most brands!) should look for ways to deliver cost effective brand experiences that lets potential consumers touch, sample and/or play with it.

It should not be complicated.

Develop a brand experience strategy that encourages consumers to interact with the brand.

Test it.

Do the numbers to check the ROI.

If it works, roll it out....