Four traits of today’s consumer

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Four traits of today’s consumers

New technologies are changing consumer habits — and expectations

Catching the attention of consumers is tougher than ever before. While core marketing principles still apply, your marketing strategy must reach an increasingly fragmented market of distracted consumers. Here are four important trends you want to incorporate into your marketing and business plans.

Mobile, mobile, mobile – and tablets.

New data indicates consumers love using their mobiles and tablets to research products, check reviews and make purchases. The days of browsing on a desktop PC are dwindling. Yet too many web experiences remain formatted for large-screens, mouse navigation and full-sized keyboards. According to media research (via Emarketer.com), 80 per cent of consumers who own tablets use them to research and shop. This means businesses must specifically format messaging for finger-tapping tablet users. Remember, consumers use tablets before they visit in person, but also expect to use them in person, too. Is your website optimized for those consumers?

Social networks are for socializing.

A survey from Greenlight, a search engine marketing firm, reports that nearly 44 per cent of people have never clicked an ad or a sponsored story

on Facebook, and; another 31 per cent rarely did. It’s obvious that content drives engagement socially. Since the majority of a brand’s social fans (84 per cent) are existing customers (Nielsen, 2011), driving loyalty and referrals doesn’t need online ads so much as it needs a good online conversation.

Video created for on-the-go.

Even with cellular data becoming more costly, consumer demand for mobile data increases annually. Cisco’s latest report shows wildly escalating numbers: mobile data usage more than doubled for the fourth year in a row to nearly eight times the size of the Internet in 2000. Mobile video traffic reached 52 per cent of all traffic for the first time ever. Cisco expects more than 100 million Smartphone users to consume more than one gigabyte of data per month by the end of 2012. Nearly two-thirds of all mobile traffic will be video by 2016. You get the picture: video consumption is exploding – but it’s doing so on the “thirdscreen.” Even allowing for tablet growth, Smartphones dominate mobile video. Marketers must rethink the size of the visual canvas if they want video to be effective tomorrow.

Saying you offer an 800-number for customer service is like asking customers to wait two to four weeks for delivery. Tweet it – or lose customers. Bye-bye waiting; hello customer satisfaction

Leaving a voice mail is like asking someone for a stamp. Where have you been sleeping? Same for wading through auto-attendants or waiting on hold for customer support. Enter text messaging and Twitter. Customers get a live response faster than phone, email or self-serve web for quick questions such as: is cable Internet out, is my plane delayed, and is my dental appointment confirmed? Saying you offer an 800-number for customer service is like asking customers to wait two to four weeks for delivery. Tweet it – or lose customers.

As today’s consumers take full advantage of our ever-expanding universe of technological advances, earning your share of the market will depend upon how well you integrate these, and future trends.

Brian Buffini is Founder and CEO of Buffini & Company, headquartered in San Diego. Buffini & Company is the largest real estate training and coaching company in North America. He can be reached at www.buffiniandcompany.com