CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR & DIGITAL MARKETING
Why Do We Buy? Part 1: Causal Mechanisms & Consumer Characteristics
Deliver more successful marketing results by understanding who shops with you, and why they convert.
What is it that makes people buy? How can one impression deliver a conversion, while another falls flat with a pair of like-minded consumers? Does fitting a defined archetype mean that a customer will inherently like a product or need a service? What else is at play in the contest to engage and convert consumers?
Let’s take a look into the differences and relationship between the characteristics of a customer and the causal mechanism that generates a conversion.
We tend to define customers based on archetypes or personas that we either imagine or understand through research. It’s easy to think that these definitions translate to being the key driver behind what makes consumers purchase — especially given that they form the definitions of targeting in a number of marketing platforms. Likewise, we design collateral that should appeal to what defines those customers, fits with current trends, and any format restrictions of our chosen platforms. But how much of that definition is what qualifies a potential customer, and how much of their decision to purchase is influenced by other variables?
What are Causal Mechanisms?
Think of a causal mechanism as the process that moves a customer into a state where they take action to learn more or commit to purchasing. The mechanism itself is realised through the appeal of a well-structured message at an appropriate moment in time. This is different from the root cause of a need. The causal mechanism for a customer buying hiking boots from a particular retailer could be triggered by the value proposition, price, or endorsement from another user; however, the root cause could be that the customer has just booked a holiday with plans to go hiking.
Seeing an ad for a product or service that will add value to, or remove stress from a relevant area of a consumer’s life generates interest and creates desire. Ensuring that the ad is structured as an effective messaging format facilitates the conversion of their new intent to an action. The action might be a click through to a website, a phone call, or a search for the brand.
What are Consumer Characteristics?
We can define consumer characteristics as behaviours and elements of either demo-, geo-, or psychographics by which it’s possible to group people together into audiences. Behaviours can be summed up as the identifiable actions of consumers. Demographics span the age, gender, income, education, and relationship or employment statuses of particular consumers. Geographic parameters define the country, state, region, city or town that consumers are located in. Psychographics include interests, values, and attitudes that consumers hold as individuals. Creating archetypes with elements of each characteristic enables a narrowing effect on the total targetable group within any wider population.
Some characteristics are mandatory parameters given your ability to provide service or deliver products, while others are optional inclusions that can act as core interests or attitudes that all targeted users must share. Depending on the size of a targeted audience, your total media budget, and your results to date, you may choose to increase or decrease that audience size. Tighter combinations create more specific, and therefore similar groups of consumers. A well targeted audience can provide increased relevance for ad impressions and deliver more cost effective results across a campaign.
Be wary of over-defining archetypes too tightly. Marketing platforms are only as good as the parameters you set. An overly restricted potential reach risks underutilising your media spend, leaving relevant consumers unaware of your offering, or even losing potential customers to your competitors. The best tactics to mitigate any loss of effectiveness are to:
- A/B test your own archetypes against platform driven targeting.
- Trial creative variants and landing pages tailored to the needs of archetypes.
- Monitor performance and optimise your activity as results populate.
Characteristics are less about why the customer converts at any exact moment, and more about increasing the propensity for users to convert. The target consumer doesn’t convert because they are broadly interested in a subject, happen to be 25–34 years old, or simply because they like another brand. They convert because of the value that’s being promised by a store, brand, or service provider in exchange for purchasing that particular product or service. What the right characteristics can do is affect the consumers propensity to buy when they are presented with a particular offer or creative type.
The Offer and the Target
In reality, it’s essential to pair a strong ad format alongside accurate targeting to reach customers with a higher propensity to convert given your offer. Successful efforts come through advertising in channels where consumers are active, offering connective value, and using formats that lay a path towards conversion. An understanding of customer archetypes informs what’s likely to generate engagement, where customers will be active, and how to target individuals with an increased propensity to convert.
An empowered understanding of both consumer characteristics and causal mechanisms works in tandem as a cycle of compounding positive effects. The value you are offering, what underpins that value, how it is presented, and who is exposed to it in the market ultimately increases the chances of meeting your campaign objective. Increased knowledge of who your customer is and where they are active can inform the creation of effective consumer touchpoints where mechanisms can produce conversions. More successful micro and macro conversions within your marketing ecosystem also increase the size of targetable audiences at each stage of the buying cycle. A larger overall customer base with longer purchasing history further strengthens customer archetypes, improving the potential performance of future marketing activity.
Setting Your Own Strategy
It’s essential to consider both customer characteristics and causal mechanics while creating your own marketing strategy. Make sure you leverage any audience breakdowns in owned channels, analytic sources, and research assets to inform you throughout.
- Identify the different customer archetypes that purchase your product or service.
- Research where these users are present, then create targetable audiences and platform adjustments that align to each archetype.
- Define the value that your product or service will deliver to each of these customers.
- Create appropriate messaging for each stage of the buying cycle including variants that aim to affect consumer decision making.
- Launch your activity into the market ensuring that each activation has the correct platform marketing objective and remarketing audiences in place.
- Monitor your campaign performance and optimise towards the most valuable audiences with the most effective ad variants.
- Revisit and develop your archetypes to adjust audience definitions and apply learnings from market research.
- Test and refine both audiences and offerings over time to understand what works best in the market.
- Always record your audiences, hypotheses, and test results as an asset to revisit and work from in the future.
Keep in mind that most online conversions are generated as a result of a multi-touch process. Consumers are served a number of impressions as they conduct research, consider alternatives, choose from variants, and even ask for a second opinion. This process is likely to occur across a range of channels, which should retain consistent voice and branding throughout. Similarly, audiences should be pushed between channels and platforms wherever possible to deliver a coherent path towards purchase.
Your consumers are all individuals, but they do share similarities. Characteristics can determine an increased likelihood of buying; however, it’s the critical connection at the point of impression in any channel that secures the step towards conversion.
That’s all for this look into how the causal mechanism and the characteristics of the customer affect conversion. When marketing is deployed with an understanding of both elements it has a higher likelihood of delivering successful outcomes. Thank you for taking the time to read through what I’ve written here. Stay tuned for Part 2 in the “Why Do We Buy” series, coming soon. If you would like to talk more about activating your own strategy — please feel free to contact me via my website or LinkedIn.
