Recently I read the book The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton who reveals four key steps to sell your brand when people’s habits are changing.

Habits are hard to break.

So, how do you persuade people to buy your brand when most of the time they are on autopilot, thoughtlessly buying the same product over and over again?

Habits are really hard to break, however, if consumers’ environment changes, such as they undergo a life event like getting a new job, starting university, having a baby, getting married or retiring, their environment is changed enough to destabilise their habitual behaviours.

To quantify this phenomenon, the author surveyed 2,370 UK nationally representative customers. He asked two questions: first, which life event they had undergone recently; second, whether they had changed brands in ten specified categories: make-up, taxis, trains, coffee, shops, lager, broadband, cars, mobiles and opticians.

The results where conclusive. For every single product category, consumers were more likely to switch brands when they had undergone a life event. For three categories, those who had undergone life events were more than three times more likely to have switched brands.

4 KEY STEPS TO MAKE THEM BUY YOUR BRAND

1. Shake consumers out of automatic behaviour

The best approach is to draw consumers’ attention to a habit and jolt them out of their behaviour. The key of success is to target communications to the moment or place this automatic behaviour happens.

In a study in 2004, Sainsbury’s realised that most supermarket shopping was done in a daze, the so called “sleep shopping”. Shoppers were buying the same item every single week, restricting themselves to the same 150 items, despite there being 30,000 on offer.

Sainsbury’s creative agency decided to hire a man dressed in a gorilla suit and sent him to a Sainsbury’s supermarket to do his weekly shopping. They questioned shoppers as they were leaving the store, and a surprisingly low percentage only had noticed him.

When shoppers are on autopilot it’s hard to grab their attention.

The creative agency tried to wake customers from their doze with a new campaign, Try Something New Today, which used Chef Jamie Oliver to inspire shoppers to be more adventurous. The ads were supported by point of sale signs, recipe cards in store and training programme for all 150,000 staff. The campaign was a great success. It worked very well for Sainsbury’s because, being a retailer, they controlled the environment in which the habitual actions occurred.

2. Target customers after they have undergone a life event

Today’s life changing moments are easier to be identified because of the wealth of targeting data available. For example, Facebook captures when users move to a new house, go on holiday or end a relationship.

Life events such as retirement shake up purchasing behaviour among older consumers just as powerfully as younger ones.

The recommendation here is to identify the life event most relevant to your category. For example, for make-up, the crucial ones are when a consumer changes their social group, like when they start university, start a new job or get divorced. In these circumstances buyers may need a confidence boost or simply take the opportunity to change their look.

3. Advertise at moment of reflection

Two psychologists from New York University and UCLA, Alter and Hershfield, have identified that people whose age ends in nine are more likely to question the meaningfulness of their lives. They term this group “nine-enders”.

The author surveyed 500 UK national representative adults and found that nine-enders were 12% more likely to claim to think issues through thoroughly.

Nine-enders are more likely to make big, decisive steps, good or bad, to change their lives.

Data from the sports website Athlinks showed that nine-enders were 48% more likely to enter marathons for the first time than other age groups.

So if you need to get consumers to reappraise their behaviours, nine-enders may be a great group to target.

4. Communicate before habits harden

As an alternative, you could focus your communications before habits become entrenched.

In the supermarket example, families with older children might be the biggest spenders. However retailers should recognise a better long term approach for those who go supermarket shopping for themselves for the first time, such as students and first jobbers.

Conclusions

Habits are indeed hard to break. So targeting consumers after they have undergone a life change gives you a good chance to get your brand noticed; and even make your brand become their new habit.

GUEST BLOGGER AUTHOR:

CLAUDIA TINNIRELLO