Why Consumer Behaviour in Marketing and Advertising is Important ?

Marketing & Advertising

Have you ever lived one day without coming across an advertisement ? Most probably, the answer is: NO. Advertising has an enormous impact on consumers and their buying behavior. Therefore, marketers competitively advertise products in multiple ways, and each marketer is trying to hire the most professional agency like Tree Advertising to reach your target audience.

In the past, advertisements used to be hand-written, drawn, and designed on paper. They used to appear in newspapers and street signs. After that, radio, TV and digital advertising followed respectively. Over time, the importance of advertisements has been growing due to the offering of wide range of products, rising competitiveness, the change of people’s awareness, and the diversity of their preferences. Hence, greater efforts and more serious research on users are needed to understand consumer behavior and, consequently, affect buying behavior.

Although there are different ways for researching consumers, common factors should be considered. For example:

1. Demographic factors:
These include age and gender. By knowing consumers’ age and gender, you can use appropriate language and get closer to them. As a result, your target consumers will feel that they are personally addressed.  

A typical example: Birell Egypt
A non-alcoholic barely drink that targets men basically. In all its ads, we can notice that it addresses men and uses their jargon, especially on social media networks. This feature applies to both the content of Berill page and followers’ comments.

2. Customers’ interests:
Learning about your customers’ interests (e.g. sports, travel, fashion, photography, etc.) will make it easier for you to choose the best ad design. As a result, customers are expected to be attracted to your product.

Birell Egypt: Again!
The marketing campaign focused on football as the favorite sport of target consumers (men). So, they incorporated football themes in a way that suits the brand and its essential value.

3. Geographic Factors:
Consumers’ location is one of the most important factors that a marketer needs to highlight. For example, there is no point in advertising Beni Suef University in the USA.

4. Customers’ Culture:
In researching customers, advertising campaigns should pay attention to customers’ culture, seasonal habits and traditions. Otherwise, your brand can be dramatically affected. For example, Egyptian consumers have habits that are different from Saudis, and so is the case between Gulf and US consumers.

A typical example: H&M
Despite being one of the most famous fashion brands, H&M turned deaf ears to its customers’ culture. Its advertising campaign featured an African boy wearing a hoodie reading ‘Coolest Monkey in the jungle’. Customers believed that the phrase expresses prejudice against Africans and colored people. As a result, an H&M branch in South Africa was damaged, a strong social media backlash was provoked and sales went down.

After understanding customers, marketers should select the right channel to advertise their brand.  
At present, social media networks are among the fastest and most outreaching channels that enable marketers to access and communicate with target customers. They also require lower costs than other advertising channels. Now, there are about 3.5 billion internet and social media users.
Social media users

Facebook 2.072 billion users
Twitter 330  million users
Instagram 800 million users
LinkedIn 500 million users
Google+ 111 million users
Pinterest 200 million users
Snapchat 178 million daily users
YouTube 1.5 billion users
Reddit 234 million users
WhatsApp 1.3 billion users
Flickr 90 million users
Wechat 1.12 billion users
Weibo 600 million users
Airbnb 150 million users

However, other advertising techniques, e.g. billboards, productions, newspaper ads, print ads and motion graphics, are also important. More details about motion graphics will come in a separate article.

• Buying motives

You always have to ask how, what, when and why the customer will buy your product ! knowing the answers to these questions will keep you on the right track.
Here are the steps a customer goes through before buying a product.

• ​Awareness

The product needs to be introduced to the customer as a solution to their problems. At this stage, push ads are used to help the customer learn about the product. Push ads can be found on TV or on……
Search
Now, the customer will research your product to understand its specifications accurately. So, pull ads are used, where the customer will use a search network, e.g. Google, to watch your ads. 

• ​Comparing:

After exploring other users’ reviews of the product, the customer starts to compare your product with other products. At this point, you should make offers to attract customers to the product.    

• Purchasing:

This is when someone decides to buy your product and turn from lead to a customer.

• Follow up:

Offering a post-sale follow up and seeking feedback from your customer helps you gain loyal customers. Through the word of mouth technique, he will invite friends to buy your product.
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Finally, you should always put yourself in the customer’s shoes by understanding his needs.  
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