3 Steps to Influencing Brand Preference

Brand preference is built by listening to consumers and addressing both their immediate and long-term needs. With those insights now available, retail marketers can surpass the old goal of delivering the right message at the right time through preferred channels. Now, they can leverage insights to inform and inspire consumer action. Retail marketers and consumers are on a new journey together; the goal is to make it a mutually profitable trip.

Understanding is the first step in engaging consumers, but it alone doesn't build brand preference. Connecting with consumers on a personal level and helping them successfully address a need is the root driver of brand preference which, in turn, presents brands with the opportunity to influence shoppers’ decisions and actions.

To succeed, retailers need to understand that influencing a shopper's brand preference is a three-legged stool: understand the consumer, decipher intent and enable the purchase journey.

Achieving True Customer Insight
Today's consumer is in complete control of their purchase journey. Based on their needs and preferences, they define what constitutes a meaningful brand experience and determine if a brand is trustworthy. This self-directed approach has forever changed the rules of brand engagement.

Retailers "know" their shoppers by building deep, data-rich customer profiles of behavior patterns, preferences and needs. These unified customer profiles drive every aspect of a brand's marketing strategy; it's the decoder ring to success.

Successful brands use these data-rich customer profiles to drive personalization and omnichannel engagement campaigns. Personalization means more than using the shopper's name. It means leveraging behavioral data to mirror the shopper's tone and preferred channel and type of interaction. Coupled with omnichannel campaigns, consumers stay engaged for longer periods of time with brands that focus their interaction strategies on consumers’ intent rather than channel. That means starting and driving engagement across all channels, not just email.