subject: What Is Your Customer Call To Action? [print this page] As any retailer or marketer worth their salt knows, having a call to action is what puts money in tills, food on tables and builds brands. Customers are essentially lazy and want to be told what to spend their money on, whats hot, whats not and whats going to be worth shelling out for. Attention spans for shopping are actually very short, despite the widely known fact that a lot of women spending hours partaking in the hobby and if theyre not grabbed straightaway, convinced to try things on, buy now or regret it later or shown exactly whats new and in fashion, youll probably lose their business.
So how do retailers get the attention of potential big spenders? Quite simply, a combination of external and internal marketing and advertising; its all about constantly building brand awareness and then delivering once the customer has bought into it. If you say something enough it starts to become fact so if you tell someone enough times that your shop is the best on the high street for ladies fashion or for the latest technological gadgets and you deliver what you promise, people will buy into it. This is an ongoing process and those who think they can build a brand and then just leave it are sadly mistaken.
Lets leave external advertising and marketing to the experts and focus instead on in-store promotions and point of sale advertising, converting interest and brand awareness into sales. As a consumer youd be amazed at the amount of research that goes into your behaviour, from why you enter a shop and which way you go first, to what catches your eye and how long you spend browsing and your spending habits are closely scrutinised too. Advertising will be tailored to the habits of existing customers and will try and entice new customers too and this will often be done by analysing competitor data to see why people are choosing them over you.
Words such as latest, free, sale and new are used to lure you in, as are simple calls to action like buy one get one free, buy now and while stocks last and these will all be displayed prominently using A boards, pavement signs and all sizes of snap frames so while you think youre doing your own thing, youre actually following a carefully laid trail of breadcrumbs, all leading to that delicious house made of sweets.