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Moving your consumer from awareness to interest

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Less than 10% of the consumers stay in the funnel and go from ‘Awareness’ to ‘Action’. Looking a bit deeper, one would observe two things - Attrition rates are the highest from ‘Awareness’ to ‘Interest’; and most marketing efforts are actually spent on ‘Interest’ and beyond where enticing offers are typically used to ensure acceptable sales conversions.It is widely known (and unfortunately accepted) that the four phase traditional "Marketing Funnel" (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) is very leaky. Sadly, little effort is made to ensure that consumers are able to transit from ‘Awareness’ to ‘Interest’ without the severe drop off. But this is where social media is the game changer.At present, the consumer is targeted by a branding campaign at a time when he or she is perhaps, not ready to consider the brand.Imagine someone who has just finished a delicious meal spotting an ad of another great nearby restaurant. While this person would at the point be aware of this new restaurant, the circumstance is just not ideal for ‘Interest’ to develop. So there is a time lapse between ‘Awareness’ to ‘Interest’, where consumers often forget about the brands they recently come across. This is the "out of sight, out of mind" syndrome.Brands who are unable to continue their interactions with these consumers will suffer atrocious drop-offs from ‘Awareness’ to ‘Interest’. Any brand wishing to maintain consumer interactions over a sustained period will realise it is cost prohibitive to do so. However, with social media this changes drastically as brands can establish direct and affordable sustained relationships with consumers.When a brand connects with consumers on social media, it forms a potentially long term relationship beyond just first contact in a typical marketing campaign. As brands actively engage in quality interactions with their consumers, they exert powerful social influence through effective conversations. These conversations over a period of time help brands subtly position, persuade, and promote themselves to the consumer. Brands now have the ability to go beyond mere awareness to helping consumers appreciate the value they have to offer.This then helps minimise significantly the attrition of consumers as they move from ‘Awareness’ to ‘Interest’.So whenever consumers are finally ready to progress into the ‘Interest’ phase, brands with continued social engagement have a higher chance of being included in a consumers' mental menu.A consumer’s mental menu does not have a list with hundreds of options because it is mentally exhausting to make a decision with too many considerations. In fact, the list contains only about three to five brands that have been subconsciously curated through personal encounters, experiences and preferences. Brands who are able to be present in their consumers' lives through social media, will likely be on their menu.For brands to be socially influential, they must go beyond mere mindless product peddling, and especially beyond engagement in the form of giveaways and contests for short term tactical gains. Instead, brands need to prove that they are able to add value to the lives of their prospective consumers.Consumer intelligence is needed to quantify the expected values of brands that would qualify being in one’s mental menu. Analytics can only present what the consumer choice is, but not why.It is far more important for brands to understand the key motivations behind those choices to ensure inclusion on the menu. A brand’s community on social media offers a ready pool of consumers who can assist in ascertaining what these motivations might be. From these, brands can then develop and establish marketing strategies that are more effective as they constantly evolve to meet the changing needs of their consumers. Higher relevancy with consumers implies being the obvious choice within one’s mental menu.Social media marketing thus plays a critical role in patching the terrible leaky “Marketing Funnel” and maintaining a wide ‘Interest’ phase through the use of effective social influence strategies. By using social media marketing at the right moment for the correct purpose, we can truly change not only the shape of the “Marketing Funnel”, but consumer marketing itself.The writer is Ryan Lim, business director of Blugrapes.

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