Big Brands

How These Big Companies Handle Consumer Sticking Points

One of the most challenging aspects of running a business is figuring out your consumers. That’s partly why we advocate stringent data collection and analysis so strongly – it helps you understand your audience’s behaviours and form hypotheses about their needs and objections.

Armed with a strong understanding of your audience, you can make marketing and other business decisions with a reasonable understanding of what the effects will be. This is extremely powerful because it means that you can invest money wisely and plan for strategic and continuous growth.

But understanding your audience can be complicated. It can take a lifetime to understand just one person, so how can you expect to understand an entire demographic in a short timespan?

You can never go too granular when it comes to understanding your audience – the more you know, the better. However, you can be efficient in your testing and gain important learnings quickly.

Some of the most important learnings you can get pertain to your audience’s objections. What’s preventing them from engaging? What’s blocking their path? What can you do about it?

There are a myriad of reasons an individual may not be ready to engage with your business. But almost all objections boil down to one of two things: Caring too much or caring too little. If a consumer cares too much, they experience anxiety and indecision. Too little, and they simply don’t care enough to act.

Here are some of the ways the biggest businesses in the world have handled these objections:

Caring too little

Most businesses start with a consumer base that cares too little. People simply don’t know who you are, aren’t convinced they need what you offer, or don’t understand why they should choose you over your competitors. But even as your business grows and gets more recognition, apathy can persist. Inspiring someone to act or care can be tricky business.

Solving the problem – McDonald’s, Clean Up Australia, and The Project

McDonald’s recently launched a campaign in which they had actress Mindy Kaling challenge consumers to guess which brand she was representing. Gamification and curiosity can go a long way, and McDonald’s used these ideas brilliantly to engage people’s minds and entice them to play along.

But one of the most common strategies to tackle apathy is to reduce the amount of effort required to act. One example of a successful application of this is the “Ban The Bag” campaign, where Clean Up Australia and TV’s “The Project” campaigned together to ban plastic bags. They generated over 100,000 signatures in just a week.

After successfully making people care by highlighting the need for the ban and introducing a competitive aspect between states, they made it easy to engage by making the online petition incredibly quick and easy to sign.

Caring too much

When a consumer is faced with so many choices that they default to making no choice at all, it’s called “analysis paralysis”. It’s a very real sticking point for people, and comes as a result of being too overwhelmed by the effort required to make a decision.

But analysis paralysis isn’t the only aspect of caring too much that businesses must be aware of. Sometimes, price or commitment or some other such issue can freeze a consumer in their tracks. They simply don’t have the information or the trust to follow through.

Solving the problem – Aldi and Kendra Scott

Aldi addressed anxiety by extending their inventory by hundreds of product lines, reducing the concern customers had that their time might be wasted should they fail to find what they need in-store. However, they were smart to avoid analysis paralysis by maintaining a limit on choices within certain product types.

Jewellery designer Kendra Scott recognised the need to ease anxiety by addressing the environment of the retail stores selling the products. She’d noticed that many consumers felt intimidated by the idea of having to deal with “snobby” employees. To combat this, she created a retail environment with a focus on warmth, fun and approachability. The business is now worth more than one billion dollars.

The next time you’re considering your own audience’s sticking points, ask yourself if it’s an issue of caring too much or too little. Hopefully, the ideas we’ve talked about will inspire you to come up with a clever solution of your own, resulting in happier consumers and a healthier business.

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