The influence of customers is the backbone of any business’s success or failure. No matter, what products you sell from eBooks to software, clothing to everyday consumer items, without loyal customers your business will fail drastically. Product quality is no doubt, an influential factor, but what matters the most is how people make buying decision. With the advent of online shopping, people tend to buy differently and have more power than ever. Today, the majority of people are vigilant, cautious and somehow influenced by the opinion of others. According to the report from DAC Group, around 71% of buying decision in the United States begins with research through search engines. Here are some of the key tactics to influence online customers thinking.
Use Social Media as an Engagement Tool
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are not only platforms to connect friends, peers, and people belonging to your industry. If you wish to have better results, make sure to use these social media platforms as engagement tools. According to social media statistics, the population of the world is 7.3 billion in 2015, while 2.3 billion are active users of social media. Making connection doesn’t matter at all because a layman can also connect anyone, they even don’t know. On the other hand, if a person likes or follows your page, it means that he/she trusts you in helping them get what they want. You can use a social media platform to connect and ask what the audience is actually looking for. Things like what color they prefer, what improvements do they want and what they want in the future can help you in the long run to offer much better product than predecessors.
Free Trial Products
What do you think of the free trial product? Is it a waste of money or just a free giveaway that haven’t benefited you in terms of financial gains? The answer is simple “No”. Those who have actually signed up for free trial products are your actual customers. If your product is worth enough, they would consider paying you for premium services. A study conducted by “Journal of Marketing Research” found that free trial customers act differently than those who pay. The study suggests that “starting a relationship through free trial product affects the usage and retention behavior. How people respond to your marketing messages through these trial offers and how long will they avail your service”.
Consumers are Hungry for Information
People are more attracted to the brands that bring information and feed them with something that would develop interest and curiosity. For the brands who are not constantly engaging the fans through the information, fails drastically. People are more cautious than before and that is why they need plenty of information before making the final purchase decision. Nowadays, products review and customer feedback is the most influential factor in the purchase decision. The information through videos, infographics, and presentations have widely become popular as they are easy to understand and takes less time.
Empowered Customers
In today’s online world of shopping, the outreach of consumers to marketers have become more vital than marketers outreach to consumers. The marketing driven by companies is pushed on consumers through sponsorship, traditional advertising, direct marketing and other channels. The marketers would force their decisions on consumers after they have skimmed down the brand options. For instance, if we look at the marketing campaign by a bed store depicting “every week for good bed sales” is a good example of how marketers force their consumers to check out the sales every week, despite they purchase or not. Each week, few people will decide to purchase the product, who were reluctant to purchase in the previous week. In fact, the traditional marketing holds great importance, but the way consumers take decision means that marketers must go beyond push style communication and learn to instigate the driven touch points like online information websites and word of mouth.
Cognitive Fluency
The ability of the human to prefer things that are much known and easy to understand is called cognitive fluency. In marketers’ opinion, the easier it is to understand your product, the more it will be purchased. For example, different cellular companies different types of plans catered to meet the needs of people. However, no one has time to compare each plan and spend hours to compare and pick the economical one. For the majority of people, going for unlimited data plans is a much better option as they don’t want to bother with a minute and tiny details, despite the fact that they will pay much higher fees. It is, therefore better to make your offer and pricing easy to understand for people to help them quickly take action.
Customers Review Matter
According to the study conducted by The Nielsen Company in 2010, people mostly rely on reviews given by customers to decide on what to buy. 57% of online consumers said they relied on online reviews before purchasing consumer electronics, while 40% of online shoppers said that they would never purchase any electronics without reading the reviews first. If you want to sell online, the first thing is to get as many reviews on your website as you can. Few of the negative reviews are never bad as they increase the sales. However, if there are tons of negative reviews, the majority of people will find another place to buy.
Customer Support and Prompt Response
Customer support is the key to online customers thinking, driving them to take decisions immediately without any glitches in mind. Moreover, the prompt response is another factor that helps consumers to get rid of any ambiguity like a fake brand, scam and another kind of online frauds. Moreover, customer support is all about customer care and when someone walks in your store, the first thing they notice is whether you are concerned about them or busy in daily chores. Same goes for online shoppers. People don’t have time to wait for another day or two and that is why the prompt response is the key influence online customers thinking.