As pollsters, political parties and candidates wrap up frantic campaigns and look to interpret the post-election results of their outreach to voters, they center on swing voters and turnout of their base.
Politicians have learned that the key to winning often centers on uncommitted voters who can be persuaded to switch, but many retailers often avoid the undecided crowd in favor of betting their marketing resources on their most loyal base coming to their store or website.
For those who have followed the strategies of company loyalty programs, there is a certain set who have figured out how to entice the base without giving away the margins, but many are finding ever more creative ways to give away margin in real-time offers that don’t lead to competitive and financial success.
So maybe it’s time to take a page out of the political playbook and focus on “persuadable” consumers, i.e. consumers who are willing to be persuaded and could be a new source of brand-loyal consumers for you.
Lessons from politicians: Engaging “persuadable” consumers
Consumers who have already chosen a side — whether it’s your brand or the competition — are like voters who always vote the party line. No matter how much you invest, the odds of changing their behaviors are slim to none.
For example, if you’re a die-hard Coke fan, you will use coupons that Coke sends you, but you need fewer special offers or promotions to buy Coke — just enough pricing difference to load your pantry (“turning out the base”).
If someone tries to entice you to become a Pepsi fan, they could spend a lot of resources and never convince you to make the switch. It would be little long-term loyalty for the expensive promotion.
With the 1:1 marketing now enabled by e-commerce, social platforms and email, you can at least target these offers to that group and avoid unnecessary giveaways to the base, something you certainly should do if you follow this path.
However, in the same way that politicians differentiate between party loyalists and swing voters, retailers need to have different strategies for brand loyalists and “persuadable” consumers who can be persuaded to buy their products over the longer term.
- Differentiate between brand loyalists and persuadables: The first step toward improving marketing impact is to separate loyal customers from persuadable consumers. Dedicate marketing funds to this overall segment and offer elasticities that swing them to your brand. Once they buy in, do data deep-dives to mine for those consumers who can be converted into lifetime loyalists. Unlike once-per-cycle elections, you have continuous opportunities and can experiment through A/B and multivariate testing with what works for consumers.
- Influence “undecideds” through social media: Your marketing strategy should include tactics that connect influencers with persuadable consumers via social media channels. By pulling out all the stops on social media, you can increase sales by winning the business and loyalty of persuadable shoppers. Much like political campaigns, consumer products companies are finding that identifying influencers who promote your brand through friends and family are a powerful addition to the marketing toolkit, enabling a better focus for social investments.
- Develop messaging and promotions for persuadables: The content and promotions that are distributed to uncommitted consumers must be different than the ones that are distributed to loyal customers. Carefully align your content, messages and promotions with the channels that are most likely to reach uncommitted buyers and leverage “small data” (i.e., data specific to this set of consumers) insights that brings a segment down to the 1:1 marketing level.
This year’s election cycle may be over, but the quest to reach persuadable consumers is never-ending. By differentiating between loyal customers and those who may be ready to become consumers loyal to your brand, you can increase the impact of your marketing dollars and convert more shoppers into passionate fans.
