Your customer’s perception is your reality!

Last week, I focused on how your mindset can affect the success of your brand. This week, the spotlight is on how your customers’ mindset can impact the brand/business/organisation’s success. Much research has shown that customer mindsets significantly impact buying decisions and if that wasn’t enough let’s not forget that mindsets can change from day to day or from hour to hour. One day, a customer may be in a relaxed state of mind carefully navigating your website or social media page to make a purchase. The next, they’re stressed about something and behave completely differently by navigating quickly through pages to find what they need; on the other hand, a customer within a store may be searching for a particular item to meet an immediate need, while others may be browsing. The fact is customers have different goals when they enter your establishment or when they visit your website or social media pages and as such, they will approach their decision to buy with a different mindset that can affect how they shop.

Despite this, you should note that every customer leaves clues behind about their mindset each time they interact with your brand, e.g., the online scrolls, the app taps, the zooms all add up to build a profile of a visitor’s ‘digital body language’. Consider this, a mindful customer will take their time navigating your website, scanning each page through calm mouse movements and scrolls, whilst frustrated or rushed customers will scroll frantically, moving back and forth between pages randomly and click or tap on them repeatedly. Here are two tools you can use to understand your customer’s mindset:

Journey mapping – I would say this tool is one of the most effective tools that can be used. It entails detailing the customer’s path to buying by stepping into your customers’ shoes and seeing the business from their perspective – it’s a visual storyline of every engagement your customer has with your service, brand or product. Journey mapping is also very helpful in improving your customer service; you will find that once you outline your current processes, you will be able to visualise what a customer is experiencing in real time and you can unveil certain issues that need to be addressed.

Surveys and customer focus groups: Without data, you are operating blindly. Through these tools, you gather valuable statistics about how your target audience views your brand, how they see the business in comparison with the competition and how other customers influence them. Your brand’s decision to have a focus group can also influence how people view the brand.

Candice Sealey is the Founder & Principal Consultant at Ignite! a Full-service Marketing & PR Consultancy that helps businesses/brands to stand out and communicate the right message to the right people at the right time through Strategy, Marketing, Media services and Design solutions. She is also a freelance content writer, advertising copywriter, voice-over talent, media personality. Follow us on FB & IG 784-432-2223. E-mail: igniteresults@gmail.com