Desire Drives Attention: How to Tap Into Customer Emotions

A study by Microsoft found that the typical person’s attention span has dropped to 8 seconds. That’s less than a goldfish’s 9 seconds. For brands, that’s a tiny window for creating the perfect first impression.

Customers make decisions based on their emotions. For brands, the trick is identifying how to do it best – especially during the Awareness stage. The good news: data delivers these insights. Read this article o find out how to deliver individualized content early in the customer journey. Key takeaways:

• Three rules for building brand awareness
• The tools to anticipate your customers’ experience
• Tips for matching desires to products

Table of contents

Why do we care about Awareness?
Creating opportunities at the Awareness stage
Three simple rules
How to find your customers
Lookalike modeling
Where’s the data?
Reaching audiences at speed and scale
How to start

Everyone talks about the power of a first impression, but how important are they really? Emotions fuel consumer decisions. Tapping into them helps brands fulfill customer needs and wants more easily. And it all starts in the Awareness Stage. To do it well, you need to know if your brand content hits that sweet spot.

With data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, brands have the power to deliver meaningful, individualized content to meet consumer desire. Not sure where to start? This eBook will help. Download Desire Drives Attention for insights and advice on the tools you need to drive consumer desire.

What you’ll learn:

• Rules for growing brand awareness
• How to better anticipate your customers’ experience
• Tips for matching desires to products
• The tools for delivering individualized content

Although it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, it’s an exciting time to be in marketing and eCommerce. It involves a growing list of tasks as new channels and technologies bubble up, but with them comes a fantastic array of tools and exciting new possibilities. We can now closely observe and understand our customers and prospects as they weave their way through their purchasing journey.

In such a fast-paced environment, it’s hard to keep up with the latest trends and strategies. That’s why we launched the Magento Accelerator Webinar series — as a guide for the busy marketing and eCommerce professional. One session focused on the first stage of the customer journey – Awareness and how Desire Drives Attention. This article is a handy wrap-up of that session that will take you through the key messages, but please watch the webinar to enjoy an in-depth discussion on all the capabilities available to marketers.

How vital is Awareness? A recent survey by SEMrush showed that 95% of marketers create content for this stage. For it to work, you need to study and understand the role of content and campaigns and identify how you can do better in attracting and engaging prospective customers.

We’re all consumers, heavily influenced by our emotions. And we all know the power of the first impression. Let’s dig-in and get into the mindset of today’s shoppers and learn how we can better serve their interests and help them through the customer journey.

Why do we care about Awareness?

At the very start of the Magento Accelerator Series, we focused on Brand Utility: The Purpose of Purpose. Your brand purpose is the very reason your brand exists. It’s your ability to articulate its role in the universe. But at what point do you get people interested in your brand? And how do you get them to care?

Your brand purpose should draw some emotion and pull on your sense of purpose. Similarly, consumers are often influenced by their emotions when they embark on the customer journey. Your mission is to help them to choose the right path when making a purchase. But at the very start, it’s anyone’s game. People are passive during the Awareness stage — often ruled by feelings. Only sometimes do we disengage from autopilot and use active thinking when it comes to decision making. Research from Harvard showed that 95% of decision-making is done on a subconscious level.

95% of decision-making is done on a subconscious level according to research by Harvard.

Desire drives attention, but sometimes that desire is revealed to us through what we notice. When potential customers start through the Awareness stage, their desire is pulling them in many directions. In these moments, they are impressionable. Your objective is to channel those emotions towards your brand.

Microsoft recently released a study that found the typical person’s attention span has dropped to just 8 seconds (compared to goldfish’s 9 seconds of focus). When you consider the power of the first impression, that leaves a small window to leave an impact on consumers. Creating a positive first impression, and conscious awareness, forms an integral part of the customer journey for brands.

Creating opportunities at the Awareness stage

Emotion-led decisions don’t pose a challenge for brands who know their worth and have worked hard to develop a culture that is anchored against a clear brand purpose. If you know how your brand helps your audience, then your opportunity lays in building brand awareness. You want potential customers to see your brand before they identify potential solutions to their pain point. It’s all about establishing recognition, so you’re top-of-mind.

Developing engaging Brand messaging hits its peak during this stage because it is powerful. It can be absorbed quickly and effortlessly. Do more to create an anity for your brand before your customers discover alternative solutions. Getting in early means reaching your potential customers during the Awareness stage. You’re establishing a product preference before they even discover it.

How emotions rule decision-making

A one-point gain in average positive thoughts or feelings towards a brand increases the likelihood of up to:

• +10.2% Continuing a subscription
• +11.2% Purchasing in the next three months
• +14.8% Maintaining loyalty
• +15.4% Advocating on behalf of a brand

Three simple rules

Brands spend millions on branding. Think of Nike, Apple and Amazon. Each of these brands sticks to a few simple rules:

• Stay consistent in your look, feel and voice
• Create a seamless experience across devices (think mobile) and channels.
• Send and target content that’s personalised, relevant and contextual

How to find your customers

Yes, Awareness focuses on brand recognition, but you also need to identify whom your brand serves. Your product or service cannot suit everyone, but whom does it fit best?

You can’t duplicate your best customers, but you can find more like them. You’ve built up your brand awareness, but it’s critical you instil a proactive approach in the Awareness stage to help create the desire within potential customers. Lookalike modelling extends your reach by finding new high-value audience segments similar to your current customer base.

Lookalike modelling

To start, define your segments and traits within your high-value customer base. Select a trait or segment, a time interval and a first, second or third data party source. Using artificial intelligence (like Adobe Sensei), you can surface a list of potential people or businesses with the same trait. From there, continue to identify new traits to branch out and reach new, broader audiences.

Get creative and remain open-minded when reaching new audiences with lookalike modelling. They won’t necessarily use the same channels — today’s customers don’t think in terms of channels. They see through different windows when they experience their world. Instead, focus on getting the right message to the right customers at the right time. With lookalike modelling, you have the opportunity to do this exceptionally well, while lowering your costs and enjoying greater returns.

Where’s the data?

Make sure you are unlocking and mobilising the ‘Dark Data’ that exists across your organisation. this will enable you to develop richer insights into your customers and anticipate their desires and needs.

Reaching audiences at speed and scale

Technology delivers the means to harness the power of data, which is why machine learning and artificial intelligence are fast becoming table stakes for competitive brands. There’s an array of technologies out there to help build impressive capabilities across your business and team.

Without artificial intelligence and automation, today’s marketers will nd their hands tied. Where AI interprets your data and provides strategic insights to improve decision-making, automation lets you deliver personalised, relevant content or offers at scale.

As a result, tactics like batch-and-blast emails will become less and less effective. These may work to a certain point, but contextual relevance and timing are quickly becoming critical factors in winning new business (and building loyalty amongst your current customers). Automation does in a day what we used to need weeks to accomplish just a few years ago.

Marketers and eCommerce professionals now strive to deliver at breakneck speed and scale, so technology must do the heavy lifting. Data crunching and machine learning need to happen in milliseconds. As customers, we all expect our interactions to be personalised, relevant and contextual. When you engage a customer, you need your data and technology to work in the background. It should help you develop individualised, contextually relevant oers in real-time. This is what builds memorable customer experiences.

Technology won’t replace humans, but it alters what we as marketers do. The new capabilities delivered by technology adds an extensive suite of tools — all at our fingertips. As a result, marketing roles will trend towards adding value across operational activities and strategy development. From branding to nurture campaigns, event planning to content management, all marketing activities benefit from real-time data to accurately measure, hone and drive results.

We can focus on building and delivering great experiences knowing technology will help us accomplish it in the best fashion. The technology available today allows marketers to deliver a consistent and seamless message to their audience across channels, devices and more. By identifying how a consumer or lead interacts with your brand, you can help build a connected journey for them, growing awareness and trust along the way.

The onus is on us as marketers and businesses to cherish the data we collect and to use it to create real value for a customer and ultimately help them on their journey, especially during the Awareness phase.

Frequently asked questions

Question: How much data is enough? You can start small. The trick is to start. Identify internal data sources, remove any data silos within your organisation and build from there. Then test, learn and adapt.

Question: What data do you need? Start with whatever data you have internally. Your objective is to develop segments based on your best customer and build from there. If you have any data-sharing partnerships, you can utilise second-party data. Otherwise, choose a third-party data provider who best overlaps your business.

Question: What technology do you need? You want a tech stack that’s scalable and flexible. From eCommerce to marketing automation, they need to integrate with your internal business systems and CRM to foster the free flow of data, backed by a data management platform. And you want AI and machine learning across the lot.

Question: Who should own the process? It’s critical that the process has an owner, which typically belongs to marketing. However, before you get there, your organisation needs to collaborate and agree on your desired end state, including defining what success looks like.

How to start

It can be overwhelming to undertake every strategy and tactic available as marketers in today’s economic environment. Tougher competition, new technology, disruptive channels and evolving privacy laws all add up to a complicated path to navigate. The good news: you just need to start. Identify a project that can ideally deliver both top and bottom-line benefits (makes your CFO Happy), whilst also enhancing your customer experiences (makes your customer happy).

The marketing department is evolving beyond just their creative past to a future that embraces both the ‘Art and Science’ of marketing. A future that harnesses the power of data-driven marketing, that empowers marketers to help guide consumers through the customer journey. Their success lies in developing a meaningful appreciation and understanding of the customer and putting them first. The whole organisation must follow, and you put the customer in the centre of everything. After all, it’s the real reason your business exists.

Attracting consumers during the Awareness stage is an open-ended opportunity. There will always be new customers, and you now have a fantastic set of tools that study and understand your customers better than ever before. If you treat them with respect and foster a customer-centric approach throughout your organisation, your business is already on the path to success. Then it’s just a maer of identifying the best technology stack to empower your team, and best help customers solve their problems.

Source: Magento Commerce