Are you able to use content to influence consumer behaviour?

What is the number one goal of content marketers? You're not the only one who would say organic traffic growth is the most important goal for content marketers. It's incorrect. It is incorrect.

Content can influence consumer behavior and drive more traffic to your website than you might expect. This converts traffic into leads, conversions, and sales that can be used to build brand advocates.

How can you use content to influence consumers' behavior? Let's see how we can do that.

Quick Take-Aways

• Three types of motivating factors can influence consumer behavior: psychological, social, and personal.

• For decades, marketers have used the six principles of persuasion to influence consumer behavior.

• Personas that are centered on customer goals and actions have a greater impact on behavior than those that only focus on individual traits.

• For consumers to be more responsive, strong calls to action can be the best way to influence their behavior.

• Social proof is a powerful influencer in consumer purchasing decisions. Shareable content can increase instances of social proof.

• By leveraging the natural fear of loss, scarcity marketing can influence consumer behavior.

What's the link between content and consumer behavior?

Consumer behavior is the study of why people make certain decisions and take actions during the buying process. It has been studied by marketers for many decades.

Let's first look at how content can affect consumer behavior. This is why it is important to understand the fundamental principles of influence and consumer behaviour.

Motivational factors that influence consumer behaviour

We know there are three main types of motivating factors that influence consumer behavior.

• Psychological factors: Individual perceptions, attitudes and life perspectives of people

• Personal factors: These are personal identity factors such as age, culture and location.

• Social factors: These are the preferences and expectations of people's social group (family, friends or neighbors, coworkers etc.).

Marketers must be able to identify the factors that influence consumer behavior in order to have an impact on it. It is important to understand that marketing is not a one-size-fits all approach. You won't be able to get people to take action if your message doesn't resonate with them.

The 6 Principles of Persuasion

Nearly forty years ago, Dr. Robert Cialdini published Influence: Psychology of Persuasion. After years of working in marketing, sales, and public relations, he posed as a new employee to learn how companies convince customers. These six principles of influence were the main findings of his research.

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The world has changed drastically since then as has consumer behavior and marketing strategies. These 6 principles are still relevant and well-respected by marketers from every industry. They can be used to design campaigns and content.

• Reciprocity: When people receive something in return for a favor, kindness, or other valuable, they naturally want to give it back (in marketing this could be free trials, free consultations or product giveaways or great content).

• Scarcity: People naturally want to have what they don't have. People feel compelled to purchase something they don't have (e.g. limited editions, products that sell quickly, or items that are only available for a short time).

• Authority: A person who has demonstrated expertise in a particular area will be more inclined to trust that authority (person or group) and engage with them.

• Commitment: When someone is already involved with something, they are more likely to stay with it (this is why it is easier to retain existing customers than gaining new ones).

• Liking: People naturally like to be with others in the same demographic or social group as they are.

• Consensus: People follow social norms naturally. People who do (or buy) the same thing are more likely to do it.

What content is included in the mix?

Customers look for brand content that can help them solve a problem or fulfill a need. Content can help customers find the solution to their problem. Great content marketers understand that it can help steer a customer's next decision or action.

Later, we'll discuss specific ways to design content for this purpose. For now, I want to concentrate on the overall way it's done: funneling marketing.

Funnel marketing is the creation of targeted, specific content that maps to the buyer's journey.

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Buyers who have done their research will not be able to use introductory content about customer problems. Buyers who are just beginning their research won't have the time or patience to wait for product demos and clear CTAs to “buy right now!”

Because your content is aligned to the most probable behavior, mapping it to the buyer journey will make it easier to influence consumers' behavior. This provides a better user experience as people receive content that is relevant to their needs. They don't need to search for it elsewhere on your website or even from other brands.

Consumers feel more understood when funnel marketing is used to provide the most relevant content. This can have many positive effects, including a better user experience, increased trust, and a higher chance of conversion, to name a few.

Content design to influence consumer behavior

We've covered the basics. How do you create content that influences consumer behavior? These are five of the best ways to do this. They are all easy to follow and can be applied immediately.

Buyer personas

You've probably heard a lot about personas if you work in marketing. We're not talking boring personas that essentially depend on one fabricated person (i.e. Sharon, who is 50 and has been working in corporate for 30+ years, or Brett, who is in college and likes punk rock music.

While these might be fun to create and may not be completely accurate (at least not always), if you want your personas influence consumer behavior they must be based on actual behavior. While demographics and other personal identifiers are important, they don't provide a reliable predictor of how people will interact with your content. It doesn't consider what your customer actually does and what they want to accomplish.

Here are some things to think about when creating personas.

• Use the content you target customers for.
• They are interested in the following topics
• They prefer certain types or formats of content
• They use which channels
• The buyer's journey at each stage
• They use keywords to search for and
• They ask questions.

While the likely personal characteristics of your target customer are helpful information, they don't make up the main driver of buyer personas. You'll be able to influence consumer behavior by creating content that is focused on buyer action and the goals you want to achieve.

Strong CTAs

CTAs are the best way to influence consumer behavior through content. They are used to tell customers what to do next. For example, they can read more content, sign up for a newsletter or start a trial. It all depends on the stage of their buyer journey and your brand.

A CTA is an important part of any content. You will get the best ROI if you include personalized CTAs that are tailored to your customer. According to Hubspot research, hyper-personalized or “smart” CTAs perform better than the basic ones by more than 200%.

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This is in line with previous principles that we covered about motivating factors behind consumer behaviour (remember: psychological and personal and social) as well as personas built around customer goals.

This means that users are more likely to follow the next logical step if your CTAs align with their user's next step.

Content that can be shared

Shareable content may be more effective than CTAs if they are the best way to influence consumer behavior. Why? It drives social proof and consumers are more likely to follow the example and recommendations of others.

Although we may think of social proof in terms of product recommendations or purchase reviews, it can also be found as shareable content. Positive commentary and sharing of your content can be considered social proof.

This can be done by sharing your content in a way that increases the chance of it happening. Here are some simple ways you can do it.

• In your content, use statistics and facts
• Popular content types such as listicles and how-to guides can be created
• All of your blog posts should include social media buttons
• All blog posts shared on social media accounts of your brand
• Use lots of visuals such as images, videos and infographics.

Marketing scarcity

When they desire something, they feel an immediate sense of urgency. This principle is known as the scarcity principle and is the main tenant of scarcity marketing.

By leveraging people's natural aversion towards loss and desire to purchase products that are in high demand, scarcity marketing can influence consumer behavior. With tactics such as emphasizing the limited availability of products, limiting special offers to a certain time, and using social proof to show demand, scarcity can be built into your content.

Balance and authenticity are the keys to successful scarcity marketing. To avoid appearing pushy or aggressive, don't make scarcity claims.

Develop a content strategy to convert paying customers

Do you want to consistently create high-quality, consistent content that grows your customer base and converts them into paying customers? Marketing Insider Group can help create a custom content calendar and publish optimized content every week for one year. ).

To learn more, or to schedule a consultation, visit our SEO Blog Writing Services.