Once upon a time (not very long ago), marketing used to be one size fits most strategy where companies would create campaigns around the majority of their consumers. Fast forward to 2019, and marketing is more personalized than ever. In fact, marketing is now centered around getting the right message to the right person at the right time and a large part of understanding how to achieve that is by understanding the behavior of consumers. Consumer behavior studies the purchase and use behavior of consumers and digs deep into their emotional, physical, and mental responses around their activities. Understanding what consumers need is only the surface of their behavior, and how marketers need to know additional information that influences how consumers make their decisions.
Revisiting the idea that marketing is now a fully customized approach that marketers use to reach individual consumers opposed to masses of them, the idea of personalization is key to executing a successful marketing strategy. The reality is, is that consumers are tired of feeling like a number to organizations and crave high-touch approaches where they are recognized as individuals. Personalized marketing efforts should go beyond a first name line tag in an email and instead, should extend to personalizing the content that is purposeful and relevant to the consumer based on their previous behaviors and interactions with the company.
For example, as part of a cybersecurity and compliance initiative in my company, I am currently studying the buying habits of decision makers in the financial services sector. By analyzing their emotions and logic behind technology purchases, FUDs (fear, uncertainty, and doubts), and driving motivators, then I can create content and events that would actually convert for those roles. Although my use of consumer behavior is more on the B2B side, marketing to businesses is still about personalization, which can only be achieved through ample consumer behavior research.
