How To Use Customer Behavior To Create A Branding Strategy

It is imperative that a brand or someone selling a product or service in this digital era look closely into the fast changing customer behavior, however customer behavior by itself is redundant us redundant unless it's informed by your branding strategy. Understanding consumer behavior is a vital aspect of digital marketing.

What's customer behavior??

Digital Marketing is so much more than creating a catchy phrase, hashtag or a jingle from the best artist that people will sing for days. I'm not dismissing these marketing strategies, I'm trying to communicate that there's a whole lot more to be done apart from those. Marketing is not a sprint but than a marathon, as how my friend Brighton would like to put it across "the marathon continues??", those are strong words of motivation. Are you willing to take the bold bate and continue the marathon??

Consumer behavior is the study/analysis of how people make decisions about what they buy, want, need, or motivation to a certain product, service, or company. It helps a brand?respond and identify opportunities that are not currently met that will give you a competitive advantage in the market with the best irresistible offerings.

This week I will share with you two recent example of a change in consumer behavior, the first one is based on Yanaya which is a local restaurant led by Nyaradzo Dhliwayo Moyo an amazing young female from Zimbabwe doing great things. Yanaya saw a change In customer behavior, which is eating habits of consumers that dramatically increased the demand for gluten-free (GF) products, vegetarian yogurts & foods, smoothies made from local healthy ingredients. Yanaya monitored the change in eating patterns of consumers created GF products to fill a void in the marketplace. However, many?brands haven't monitored the consumer behavior are currently being left behind in releasing GF products.I can't wait to see some of them run out of business and then realizing this after 5 years which is enough to have her spread Yanaya in all the cities and towns.

The second one is Senditoo, which is a remittance finance service provider. It is led by one of the a smart and innovative man from Zimbabwe, Takwana Tyaranini. Here's what he's doing differently and I'm delighted that he is changing the game. If you're from Zimbabwe you probably share the same pain as I do from the majority of remittance service, having to wait in long ques at the bank, poor public relations, the hustle of travelling in traffic going in and out of Harare CBD. Senditoo came into play help easy this pain by delivering cash to every customer's door step. None of the players in that area had ever thought of that, or they thought of it years ago and it was costly in terms of security and transportation cost to do so. Now they work with the data from the previous 5 years not noticing the changes that are currently taking place in the market right now.

Product Differentiation

So all your efforts will be all for nothing if you do not take your time and educate your audience, I do this with every time with my content. My intent is to educate and be on top of mind when in need of digital marketing services because me and my team are always on the lookout to learn and accumulating new and better ways of doing marketing, then the desired outcome is how I can help you increase traffic and sale for your business is my motivation, then you can also choose to engage someone else to help you with this but if you work with me I promise to make every step of the way memorable and have a lasting impact. This marks our why at Digital Mate Inc, and makes each and every step along the way fun and pleasant. That doesn't sound like a sells pitch but it is. Which is called the art of persuasion. I like to use this following analogy from Aristotle called the 5 rhetorical devices:

1. ETHOS(character), is vital when you want your customers to believe in you, but if your actions do not match your words customers can easily notice that.
2. LOGOS(reason), these are logical ideas or appearances that helps a customers know why should they pick your product or services over your competitor's.
3. PATHOS(emotions), persuasion cannot occur in the absence of emotions, people are moved about how a speaker or brand makes them feel. The best way to transfer emotions in through story telling.
4. METAPHOR, the use of metaphor turn words into images. It will give your audience a clear understanding of your ideas and be able to share it with others.
5. BREVITY, start with your strongest and most point.

This helps me clearly outline what me and Digital Mate Inc would want to be known for. There's a great need to be fully aware of what you want to be known for. If you want to be know for good quality of service or product you'll have to educate audience why your product.

How you go about pushing emotional buttons depends, of course, on your demographics.?

Your products or services should be able to stand out from the noise, you should be able to answer a customer when they ask why choose doing business with you or your competitors with excellence. Your messaging or unique selling point (USP) should be identified.

The goal is not to focus on the competitors, rather it is to focus on the game in our case the game is the customer and their behavior and motivation to buy. Your intent, motivation, and?desired outcome should be clear enough to match the end results. Customer behavior is shifting so fast, product variation which is what we're going to talk about below becomes a very important pillar of a brand. understanding consumer behavior allows pro-active brands to increase their market share by anticipating the shift in what consumer wants and providing a relevant product or service for that fits the current and the next generation of consumers.??

Create an emotional connection with customers

I'm convinced you’ve heard it said before that customers shop based on their emotions. Just like what I personally do with the tow brands that I used as examples above, the data that I use to buy or use their service or products is based on an emotional value that I get from those brands. Over 75% of the customer behavior is based on the emotions that push a customer in a certain direction.

What you need to do is make an emotional connection with people so that they make the decision you want them to make.

The best way we can achieve this is by using our branding to create a feeling. Remember, it’s this feeling that’s going to make a person take action. Take a moment to think about how your branding can trigger a key feeling among your customers after you solve their problem or pain point. To fully understand how consumer behavior affects marketing, it's vital to understand the three factors that affect consumer behavior: psychological, personal, and social.

• Psychological Factors

In daily life, consumers are being affected by many issues that are unique to their thought process. Psychological factors can include perception of a need or situation, the person's ability to learn or understand information, and an individual's attitude. Each person will respond to a marketing message based on their perceptions and attitudes. Therefore, marketers must take these psychological factors into account when creating campaigns, ensuring that their campaign will appeal to their target audience.

• Personal Factors

Personal factors are characteristics that are specific to a person and may not relate to other people within the same group. These characteristics may include how a person makes decisions, their unique habits and interests, and opinions based on the data that was installed in their minds. When considering personal factors, decisions are also influenced by age, gender, background, culture, exposure to information and other personal issues.

For example, an older person will likely exhibit different consumer behaviors than a younger person, meaning they will choose products differently and spend their money on items that may not interest a younger generation this is due to how they process information in alignment with what they already know. It was difficult for me to convince my mom that Youtube is also a great tool that can be used to learn things for educational purposes so that my little sister could use it. Her decision was mainly due to how she registered it in her mind as toxic since when she wanted to use it all she saw was explicit before Youtube changed their algorithms of course. If you saw how defensive she was around that until after sometime she began to play offensive around that.

• Social Factors

The third factor that has a significant impact on consumer behavior is social characteristics. Social influencers are quite diverse and can include a person's family, social interaction, work or school communities, or any group of people a person affiliates with. It can also include a person's social class, which involves income, living conditions, and education level and geographic area where one comes from as well. The social factors are very diverse and can be difficult to analyze when developing marketing plans.

However, it is critical to consider the social factors in consumer behavior, as they greatly influence how people respond to marketing messages and make purchasing decisions. For example, how using a famous influencer can have an impact on buyers.

A good product or service won’t last unless you nail your branding and customer behavior.

When it comes to brand differentiation, your profits will suffer if your sole focus is your product and its price. A branding strategy by itself as well is redundant unless it’s informed by customer behavior, which as a result gives the clients the best customer experience. Customer experience (CX) is essentially how people perceive you and the way you treat them. When you get it right, it makes people feel good about your brand and sales increase.

At the heart of a unique customer experience has to be your branding. This is what will set you apart from your rivals. Let’s take a look at exactly how to use branding to create a better customer experience.

Use your analytics to learn more about your audience, and their behavior so that you can give them the product or service based on the experience they crave. Remember, a good product by itself isn’t going to sustain your business. Unless people know about it and your branding is done right.

Go beyond the product, find who your audience is and then work out a way to push emotional buttons so that you make the right connections with the right people. Just like what Yanaya and Senditoo are doing.

This is part where I say goodbye is always the worst for me, so I'm going to say I will see you on the other side of this newsletter, come and share a comment. I would like to help you identify a branding strategy and analyze the customer behavior for your products.

That's it for this week,?I hope you've extracted some insights from this newsletter and please subscribe to our emailing list for more exclusive updates and promotions from?Digital Mate Inc.

Leon Mandigara?is the?CEO & Founder?of?Digital Mate Inc,?& digital marketer consultant. Want to schedule a meeting or call with him??click here.

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Until next time,?I'm grateful that you have made it this far and would like to say thank you for subscribing to this newsletter, hopefully you drew some great value from this and me and my team we would like to here from you on the comments below, don't forget to like it and share it with someone whom you think should read it, or just tag their name on the comments.