Imagine if you could just tell exactly what your consumers will do and when they’ll do it. Think of all the things your brand can do with that information. Things like sending more targeted outreach, offering more relevant suggestions, and sending the right message at the right time. As a marketer, understanding how and, more importantly, why your consumers make the decisions they make is critical to serving them. 

Consumer behavior evolves as quickly as consumers themselves. Influenced by a number of factors including pricing, brand loyalty, psychological factors, and so much more, keeping a beat on consumer behavior can be a full-time job. 

At Marketing Resources Inc., we have nearly 30 years of experience helping brands and agencies better understand and connect with their consumers. Our targeted promotional marketing campaigns and next-gen digital services offer the valuable consumer insights you need to better understand your consumer’s behavior. 

What is Consumer Behavior?

“Consumer behavior,” generally defined as the study of how and why consumers make the decisions they make, baffles and fascinates scientists and marketers alike. In general, it’s known that several key factors influence consumer behavior: 

• Cultural
• Psychological
• Social
• Personal

Consumer behavior influences every action your consumers or potential consumers take with your brand. It attempts to define how and why people engage with the products or services they engage with.

Understanding consumer behavior allows marketers to better serve their target audience, and thereby meet their goals. When you understand what your market wants, you can offer it to them with greater accuracy, increasing the likelihood they’ll convert. 

How to Use Promotional Marketing To Understand Consumer Behavior

Promotional marketing campaigns make for an exceptional way to better understand your consumer behavior. Whether you’re looking for basic demographic information like the age and gender of your target audience, or more granular information like consumer sentiment or expectations, there’s a digital promotion to help you find it. 

However, before you can begin and launch your campaign, you must first identify its objective. Just because you can solve any number of marketing problems with a targeted promotional marketing campaign, doesn’t mean you should take aim at all of them. Rather, focus on the most important obstacle to overcome and plan your campaign around that. 

In this case, our team of promotional marketers including Vice President of Client Strategy, Matt Early, share their expertise in how to use promotional marketing campaigns to better understand consumer behavior. Even further, we’ll tell you exactly how to use your new understanding of consumer behavior to improve your marketing efforts. 

Most promotional campaigns exchange value between consumers and brands (or agencies). Not to be too reductive, but, that’s what we do boiled down to its most basic explanation. But, of course, we’ll explain more. 

Promotional campaigns offer consumers something they value or want in exchange for something a brand values and wants. A sweepstakes campaign offers the chance to win some prize, usually in exchange for a consumer’s contact information. A contest typically exchanges a prize for some sort of information or content from consumers. 

Your consumers willingly share information about themselves with your brand, in exchange for something they want. As a marketer, you can leverage this exchange

Gaining Insight from A Sweepstakes

As mentioned above, a simple sweepstakes is usually the most basic of promotional campaigns. A quick exchange of info, usually contact information or basic demographics, consumers enter for the chance to win a prize or reward. 

However, your brand can use a sweepstakes entry as an opportunity to dive in and learn more about your target market’s behavior and motivations. Instead of asking basic questions and gathering basic information, your brand can collect valuable consumer insight right from your sweepstakes entry. 

For example, inquire about consumer motivations right in your sweepstakes entry form. Your brand can easily include a quick question or two regarding consumer behavior, while still offering a fast and seamless user experience. 

User-Generated Content to Learn About Consumers

Take things a step further with a promotional contest to unlock even more insights about your consumer behavior. 

Promotional contests are exceptional tools at generating content directly from your target market. Common examples of the types of content your brand can collect include:

• Essays
• Photos
• Recipes
• Much more. 

As you develop your promotional contest, consider ways in which you can construct your campaign to better understand consumer behavior. For example, if you choose to conduct an essay contest, select a prompt that will encourage participants to share their motivations with you. Ask them questions about why they engage with your brand, what they expect from your brand, or even what they hope to see from your brand. You can frame your promotional contest in a number of different ways to gain access to a number of different consumer insights

Promotional contests, in general, require a greater level of “consideration,” or effort from your participants. Because of this, participants tend to expect a greater value prize or reward. Use this expectation to your advantage and ask more valuable, thought-provoking questions. 

Our team of promotional marketing experts can help you identify the most effective way to learn more about your consumers’ behavior. 

Using Purchase Validation Methods to Tie Consumer Behavior to Your Campaigns

An effective purchase validation method connects actual consumer behavior (purchases, store check-ins, adding items to a cart) to a promotional campaign. There are several types of purchase validation methods, including physical and digital variations. But, all methods attempt to do the same general thing; associate consumer behavior and ROI with marketing efforts. 

With a solid method in place, you will always know exactly which marketing efforts triggered what consumer behavior. For example, if your digital promotion prompts consumers to scan their receipt post-purchase in order to win a prize, you can assume that consumers who scanned a receipt were adequately motivated to behave a certain way. 

When your brand is able to discern which promotional campaigns triggered which consumer behavior, you can be more targeted and provide more relevant offers. Take the guesswork out of connecting ROI to your campaigns and understanding your consumer behavior with an effective and targeted purchase validation method. 

Understand Your Brand’s Consumer Behavior With Marketing Resources Inc.

Clearly, your brand can employ any number of promotional campaigns and tactics to better understand consumer behavior. Between the information you gather, how you gather it, and the technologies your consumers use, promotional marketing campaigns offer unprecedented access to your brand’s consumer insights.

Make sure you ask the right questions and collect the right information for your brand with our team’s expertise and experience. With over 50 years of collective experience administering award-winning promotional campaigns, we know exactly what it takes to best understand and anticipate your consumer’s behavior. Contact us to launch your own campaign today.