How Digital Marketing Affects Consumer Behavior

The key to effective digital marketing is to appeal to consumer emotion and convert their experience into a purchase or some other specific action. Sounds simple enough, right? However, executing a successful campaign requires precision, a well-thought-out strategy, and a keen understanding of your market. You also need to know a thing or two about how digital marketing affects consumer behavior.

Digital Branding: Developing Consumer Loyalty

The purpose of branding is to stand out, not fit in. As such, your goal should not be to do it better. Instead, it should be to do it – whatever it is – in a way that is unique and innovative. Digital marketing helps you develop brand loyalty by distinguishing your company from the myriad of other companies that are competing with you.

There are five core elements to digital branding that can help your digital platform stand out:

1. Sincerity

Does your website or social media page project honesty and authenticity? Is your message authentic, or are you merely trying to sell a product? Your digital marketing strategy must include convincing consumers that you can about their needs are genuinely interested in solving a problem.

2. Excitement

Content may still be king. However, content alone will not generate excitement. What are you adding to your website, emails, or social media pages to get people talking about your products? Are you taking advantage of videos, images, blogs, or other forms of media?

3. Competence

One of the biggest frustrations that website visitors have is bad user experience (UX). Slow load times, complicated sitemaps, bad links, or faulty online tools can destroy brand loyalty. You must optimize your site’s performance at all times.  

4. Innovation

Remember that consumers are driven by emotion. As a result, your site design and product presentation must be charming, romantic, glamorous, powerful, compelling, and sophisticated. Having the best product is no longer good enough. You need to learn to roll out the red carpet with a mind-blowing website layout. 

5. Resiliency

Will your product or service stand the test of time? Will it transcend all product and marketing trends? If so, your website must feel timeless and exude stability. It needs to balance a fresh vibe with something that feels familiar and relevant. Even if a visitor doesn’t remember the name of your company, the logo, colors, or other design elements will stick with them. 

Disrupting the Industry: A Hallmark of a Good Website

Whether you are an entrepreneur, executive,  or someone in marketing, you’ve probably heard the term, ‘disrupting the industry.’ In the world of business, it means that your company offers a deceptively simple product, is changing user behavior, or is cornering an underserved segment of the market.

One of the ways that digital marketing affects consumer behavior is through disruption. More specifically, there is something unexpected in the website design or function as opposed to what viewers expect to see. Websites within the same industry often follow similar formats. Whether it’s law firms, medical facilities, real estate agencies, or auto body shops, visitors know what to expect before they land on a site. Therefore…

If you want your potential customers to stay on your site, then you must give them something they’re not expecting.

There are several ways you can achieve this, including:

• Creating a completely different site concept that looks nothing like your competitors’
• Adding videos, photos, or graphics that highlight your company’s uniqueness
• Changing the style or tone of the content while maintaining a professional edge
• Finding ways to improve user experience, making it easier for your audience to navigate your site
• Creating a brand culture instead of just selling a product
• Using bold designs, big ideas, and eye-catching color schemes

The best way to disrupt the industry is to research what your competitors are doing with their websites and then head out in a completely different direction. 

Understanding the Psychology of Digital Marketing

To learn how digital marketing affects consumer behavior, you need to understand consumer psychology. This can range from the proper use of color and choosing words carefully to making your customers feel connected and creating a killer digital shopping experience. Creating a psychological connection involves scrutinizing every element of your brand.

For instance, when it comes to logos, Apple’s white and grey colors project a sense of clean design and advanced technology in a way that resonates with electronics geeks. Ford’s “Built Tough” brand combines a classic logo, which emulates stability. The color blue inlaid inside a silver frame and lettering has often been associated with safety and security. Likewise, Starbuck’s green logo and design are intentional. The message embedded within the logo is sustainability, fair trade, and corporate social responsibility.

Beyond the logo, these companies utilize digital marketing to foster a psychological connection with customers in the following ways:

• Highly interactive websites
• Messaging that incorporates actionable thoughts and ideas
• Tangible user experiences on all digital platforms
• A razor-sharp focus on their target audience
• Organic connections that promote long-lasting relationships

Whether you visit their websites or social media pages, the companies make the best use of all digital media to shift the narrative, answer their critics, and stimulate the viewer’s imagination. 

Innovative Digital Marketing from Lucid

Lucid Advertising leverages all aspects of digital marketing to expand your market reach and help your business generate more revenue. Whether it’s your website, social media page, email campaign, or other platforms, we can optimize your content and help you connect with your audience. To find out more about our digital marketing services, call us at 850-760-0478 or fill the contact form, and we’ll be in touch.