4 Ways to Attract and Retain a Values-Driven Customer this Holiday Season
Research suggests that shoppers are now more ethically conscious and driven by values than ever before. Learn how to market to them during the holidays, using our five recommendations as well as smart insights from customer behavior gathered by artificial intelligence (AI).
We are now in the thick of the holiday shopping season that started from Black Friday with millions of shoppers flocking to brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce websites to get their holiday presents. How are you reaching your target buyers this season? Are you connecting with them on an emotional level? Read on to find out how you can do so by focusing on values and ethics.
The values-driven or values-based customer is aware, involved, and sensitive to social issues. They are looking for transparency, compliance, and inclusion from their favorite brands. Customers want to know what brands stand for and what they are doing to contribute to these causes and make a difference.
These values-based customers should be at the heart of your holiday marketing strategy. With sales expected to rise by 5% this year and the average household spending nearly $1500, the right strategy can capture attention and convert values-driven customers.
Learn More: Boost Your Holiday Marketing Strategy With Experiential Marketing
4 Ideas for Marketing to Values-Driven Customers in 2019
There has been a lot of talk about values-driven brands over the last few years. Forrester found that consumer awareness around the environment, politics, and science has grown significantly since 2014, and this has a major impact on buying habits. 52% of adults in the US will actively consider your values before buying a product; this rises to 7 out of 10 if you’re looking only at millennials.
Clearly, this is a vital factor for any marketer looking to establish a lasting connection with consumers during the holiday season. Here are four ways you can communicate that your brand shares and espouses the same values as your customers, therefore encouraging them to become a part of your brand’s journey.
1. Rethink your product packaging from a values-centric perspective
With a high volume of purchases, a lot of packaging material risks being wasted during the holiday season. In fact, it’s estimated that American consumers produce 25% more waste during the Thanksgiving to New Year period than any other time of the year – this amounts to about one million extra tonnes of waste per week!
To combat this, you could take an ethically conscious stance by using recyclable materials for your product packaging in 2019. Mention this responsibly, either on your e-commerce app or at your brick-and-mortar store so that your customers are aware of the initiative. Another way to achieve this is by leveraging digital marketing – informing customers that you have replaced paper coupons with QR codes and email promos in a bid to reduce waste.
2. Participate in your customer’s charitable efforts
The holidays are a great time to donate, and your customers might have causes and charities that are close to their hearts; this is where you could make a difference. Conduct a pre-holiday season survey and understand which causes your customers value the most. This can be integrated with your marketing strategy, with a small amount being donated for every purchase.
Example: PayPal gained significantly from driving a values-driven campaign last year, with donations on the platform crossing $1 billion. While the company didn’t directly benefit from the transactions, PayPal’s #GivingTuesday campaign urged consumers across the world to donate, and they collected nearly $64 million in one day alone. The impact on PayPal’s brand image was incredible.
Learn More: To Maximize Consumer Engagement This Holiday Season, Embrace Personalization
3. Leverage video marketing to implement goodwill
Video is now a necessity for most marketing campaigns, and this applies to your holiday shopping initiatives as well. Instead of an ad talking about your product, build a story around how your brand helped and changed the lives of consumers.
Example: Check out this ad by Microsoft, where a family uses the surface tablet and Microsoft’s Translator to share wishes in different languages. The video indicates that Microsoft empowers everyone – but magical reindeers are beyond even Microsoft’s capabilities.
Microsoft’s Translator Ad Video
Nearly every big brand in the world now launches a holiday season-specific video designed to resonate with customer values. Apart from YouTube, you can also share short clips via Instagram/Facebook Stories to build brand recall at this vital time of the year.
4. Pay attention to the micro-interactions with your brand
A micro-interaction can be defined as small elements on any user interface that gives the customer feedback. For example, after adding a specific number of products to their cart, customers can view an animation that says, “Wow! Your cart is filling up!” Micro-interactions can help to add more meaning to the customer experience, bringing a level of personalization even when making purchases over the internet or using mobile apps.
During the holiday season, your intended audience will majorly shop online. Micro-interactions are a great way to strengthen these relationships and keep them coming back for future purchases. This is particularly true for values-driven buyers, as they are aren’t likely to be converted only by promos and discounts. Micro-interactions ensure that sense of “oneness” with the brand that is so important for this group.
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How to Understand Customer Values? Leverage the Power of AI
The first step to marketing to values-driven customers is to learn about their focus areas. You can conduct in-depth surveys throughout the year and apply the insights gained when designing your holiday marketing strategy. AI makes this easier by unearthing trends and patterns that were previously overlooked.
“Nearly half of the holiday purchases in 2018 were either completely or partially unplanned, and even if many consumers knew what they wanted to purchase, they were still undecided on where they wanted to shop,” said RJ Talyor, CEO of Pattern89. He went on to say, “the challenge is connecting with a newer, younger base of customers who have different expectations, preferences, motivations, and values. AI simplifies the process.”
AI can help build that all-important connection between your product and customer values. It can analyze customer conversations and mine the text to highlight key patterns in sentiment and behavior. But remember to apply this strategy beyond the holiday season – the chances are that your customers will be influenced by values to a greater or lesser degree, all year long.
By consistently gathering data generating intelligent insights, and studying the implementation results, you can finetune your marketing plan for the most meaningful impacts.
Are you ready to sell to the values-driven consumer, this holiday season? Tell us all about it on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.
