Customers may fall in love with your brand, but only if you make a great first impression.
Perhaps you’ve experienced from time to time an immediate, visceral reaction to a product you found in a store or online – so much so that you thought to yourself: “I am so buying that.” You didn’t think about it. You simply saw it and knew you had to have it.
You could argue that this reaction is precisely the goal of marketers, especially in the high-end home category. Our job is to fuel desire and generate a purchase.
In my experience, there are some home-related products that require a long, studied path to purchase. I’m thinking of my geothermal heating and air client, where customers can spend a year or longer researching and evaluating options. But there are also products where the “love at first sight” effect is in full force. I remember the stories from a luxury furnishings client whose $2,500 antler lamps were being snapped up at a pace faster than he could manufacture them. Shoppers simply saw them and fell in love. If your brand falls into that latter category, “love at first sight” can be both a blessing and a curse.
It’s been nearly ten years since Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink, documented how buying decisions are often made in an instant. In fact, he built a fascinating case that spontaneous decisions are sometimes better than carefully deliberated decisions.
That said, sometimes you only have one chance for a good first impression, so your marketing efforts better be spot-on.
A survey from ClickFox, an analytics firm, suggests that nearly two-thirds of consumers fall in love with a brand at their first impression. The survey also makes the point that “companies have one chance to make consumers fall in love with a product, service and/or brand,” said ClickFox. “Consumers noted they decide when a brand becomes their favorite immediately after their first purchase or when the service begins (59 percent).” This is the third year running that respondents have stressed the importance of that first impression.
My take is that sometimes the path to purchase is a long, winding road. Other times, it happens in the blink of an eye. Your job is to know which path is most traveled by your customer – and to be prepared to shine accordingly.
If you’re interested in ClickFox, click here.
