Marketing to consumers: A mystery

Originally posted on LinkedIn on March 25, 2023

Recently, a recruiter asked if I’d ever marketed to consumers. I paused for a few seconds then answered “yes.” I’d brought to market consumer services while at Dell, some of the Microsoft Learning courses that I peddled were targeted to office workers and consumers, and I’d produced communications for Office365.

Despite this work, the consumer market is a mystery to me.

For a couple of days, I thought about what constitutes a consumer. At the high level, it’s everyone from a rocket scientist, stopping at a grocery store on the way home from work to the mall worker, buying a pair of shoes on their lunch break. Equally, it’s a teenager purchasing components and software for the robot they’re building, homemaker producing weekly podcasts and videos, and octogenarian using CAD software for a home remodel project.

The dictionary defines a consumer as someone who purchases goods and services for personal use. Sixty or so years ago, it was easy to visualize the average consumer, a diorama from a Dick and Jane primer. Dad drives a clunky black sedan, goes to work every morning, and does home improvement projects on weekends. Mom fusses over her family’s nutrition and health, cleanliness of her home, and keeping Dick, Jane, and Sally entertained.

While the task of maintaining a house and raising children is similar today, the means of doing it are vastly different. Consider that around 76% of U.S. adults shop online[1] with 72% of online purchases in the US made via a smartphone and 26% from a desktop PC.[2] Nearly 68% of people now use mobile payment apps like Apple Wallet and Google Pay.[3]

The sedan may be a minivan, SUV, or truck, traditional gas, diesel, hybrid, or fully electric. Both parents or partners probably work and not necessarily a Monday-through-Friday, eight-to-five job, and they could be part of an extended family that includes ex-partners and grandparents. Homecooked meals might be the exception, replaced by frozen, packaged, take-out, and restaurant meals, possibly ordered online and then delivered.

The predominant differentiator is the integration of technology into every aspect of life. A cherished TV with a handful of national channels, radio with local stations, and hardwired rotary telephone have been replaced by a myriad of not only electronics and devices, but apps, games, channels, capabilities, and oceans of information.

New consumerism

Yesteryears’ families sat down to watch or listen to a program, today’s families and consumers are immersed and enmeshed in technology with a smartphone usually within arm’s reach, digital assistant ready to respond to the sound of one’s voice, tablets and PCs for doing everything from accessing entertainment to researching information, and devices that simplify monitoring and vacuuming your house, remotely turning on appliances, and responding to environmental changes from lowering window coverings to switching on the air conditioning.

These technologies have not only transformed the way people work, live, and engage with others, but complicated consumerism. Shoppers have gone from passive to perpetually engaged, pelted with stimuli from pinging phones and appliances to ads, news, and announcements popping up like persistently triggered jack-in-the-boxes. Author Seth Godin recently wrote, “Algorithms are pushing spineless profit-seekers to bombard us with junk, junk that shows up on the home page of search engines, in our social media feeds and in our email.”

From a marketing point-of-view, new personas have emerged, and are constantly changing. Teenagers (and even children) are conceivably more technically savvy than their parents, and thereby, more inclined to research and purchase applications, devices, and services. There’s no assuming that an older person is tightening their purse strings as they move toward retirement when they could be doing the opposite, going back to school or starting another career.

Contributing to the challenge of determining consumer personas is changing perceptions, rapid adoption of technologies, and unanticipated occurrences. COVID-19 was an unexpected disrupter, turning on-site work to remote, in-person instruction to online, and common household goods like toilet paper, hand sanitizer, cleaning wipes, thermometers, board games, puzzles, bread yeast, sewing machines, and loungewear into binge purchases. It also created a new market for commercial and handmade masks.

Other disruptors are more subtle, but no less difficult to discern the impact and potential market. The logical market for Impossible brand meatless products would be vegetarians. However, nine out of ten people who choose their products are meat eaters.[4] While the assumption is home security cameras are primarily used to monitor outside surroundings, 38% of users say they monitor delivery workers and 29% keep an eye on kids and pets.[5]

With perceptions increasingly tied to influencers and social pressures, there’s a need to continually adjust marketing approaches. Data shared by Google shows nearly half of young people look to TikTok or Instagram for answers with social media platforms – not search engines – becoming the preferred way for younger consumers to start their purchase journey.[6]

That’s a lot to unpack. Imagine some teenagers and young adults exclusively referring to TikTok videos and photos instead of product sites, consumer reviews, articles, and digital ads to learn about the products they’re considering. How would you reach this audience unless you were able to amplify your content on a platform with 1.8 billion active users in 154 countries with 1 million videos viewed daily in 75 different languages, and the most followed individual on the platform is Charli D’Amelio, a competitive dancer, turned social media personality.[7]

Just for fun, I typed “best earbuds” into Instagram, and was surprised by the volume and variety of accounts with links to videos. And to be truthful, I landed on a review site, and was tempted – several times – to click to the site on Amazon. Who doesn’t need a tiny vacuum for their car, illuminated earbuds that pulse to music, and a poker chip-sized digital rolling ruler?

Speaking of Amazon, Google also found 55% of product searches now begin on Amazon.[8] It’s an interesting insight. Ages ago, people went to malls to both purchase items and see what’s new. The plethora of catalogs that overflowed consumers’ mailboxes in the 1980’s made it easy to shop from the comfort of one’s couch. The mushrooming of dotcoms in the late 1990’s launched the era of online shopping.

Initially an online marketplace for books, Amazon made an entrance in July 1994. And today, is a universal shopping mall and experience for every imaginable product as reinforced in its logo with a swoosh that points from “A” to “Z.”

Confounding consumerism

The truism that best exemplifies marketing to today’s consumers is the need to constantly move and adjust the goalposts. An appearance by a celebrity, tweet from an influencer, popular TV series, environmental occurrence, supply chain blip, or even event, such as a political movement or boycott can sway consumer demand or disdain. Equally, the preference for a marketing or sales channel over another can determine whether consumers “kick the tires” or take out their digital wallets. It’s not uncommon for consumers to visit brick-and-mortar stores, and then return home to place an order over a PC or smart phone.

To be successful in marketing to consumers, you need to dive into the data to uncover insights that can inform decisions, sometimes daily. Many of the marketing roles I held included web, social media, and direct response, which provided the opportunity to immediately assess the response to messaging, and then quickly pivot, changing wording, moving the placement of a call-to-action, revising navigation, switching out images, and experimenting with tone-of-voice.

When I think back on those experiences, I realize how little is relevant today. In January 2018, just over five years ago, there were 54 million users on TikTok. It’s now the fastest growing app on the planet, with 67% of its users ages 18 to 24.[9] These users, along with Generation Z and Millennials, are the consumers of today, and tomorrow, and for many decades to come. Reaching and engaging them is a confounding task.