Intent-based brand strategies to get your first 100 customers

The best way to understand your consumer’s psychology is to crack intent. Intent is the first item a brand strategist should look at, because when there’s intent, there’s desire, when there’s desire there’s a push to purchase.

Consumers like to make informed buying decisions before purchasing, and when you understand intent — you grasp not just what consumers want, but why they want it.

Source: https://clearbit.com/blog/b2b-intent-data

Consumers of today are looking for products that meet their needs, but they also desire a deeper understanding of the product benefits before committing to a purchase.

It’s only natural there’s a desire to make an informed purchase, and with that there are four main intentions:

Informational intent: Learning/exploration

Navigational intent: Specific resource/how-to guide

Commercial intent: Researching options

Transactional intent: Purchase intent

What happens when companies decode intent?

When you decode intent, you’re able to crack the consumer code — making your brand the most favorable in their eyes. This means you build relationships, brand, and business.

According to a study by Bain & Company, loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase. This statistic underscores the importance of understanding not just what consumers want but why they want it.

By leveraging intent data from understanding consumer behavior, brands can increase the relevance of marketing collaterals, and at the same time talk to the audience set who are at critical stages of the decision-making process.

Understanding intent

1. Psychographics and purchase behavior

When we think of our consumers in sets, we understand their mental state, as well as take a deep dive into what their goals and values are. Understanding what your consumer’s mental states are you understand what they’re looking for when they’re thinking of buying your product, therefore helping helps you build a brand with precision

Let’s dive into the types of intent across the buyer journey:

A low-intent purchase is toothpaste — here they’re looking for basics and some more.

A medium intent purchase is a cosmetic — here they’re looking for what’s inside the product and how it makes them become a better version of themselves.

A high intent purchase is a house or car — lots of research pre purchase with a long sales cycle that’s based on trust builders and the exchange of money and value.

All of these goes to show how linking emotional benefits with tangible benefits and crafting messaging that resonates with these insights, can effectively capture your audience’s attention, and build brand in a complex market space.

Use a tool like Google Analytics on your site to look at metrics like bounce rates, session duration, and user flow to understand how consumers interact with your site. Or Hotjar which can help you visualize user behavior through heatmaps and session recordings.

2. Emotions and perceptions

Positive emotions such as happiness, excitement, and nostalgia can change purchase intentions positively, while negative emotions like fear or anxiety can deter them. When you put these two together you work on your brand strategy — making sure it resonates with your audience, fosters loyalty, and drives sales.

The how behind this

1. get clear on your target audience’s view point with market research
2. clear your positioning
3. storytelling to keep the brand relevant

When your brand puts out positive emotions, you create a sense of belonging among consumers. They begin to feel that this brand is meant for them, and satisfies all their needs. Your brand strategy will create emotional connections that resonate deeply with consumers.

When your brand helps reduce negative emotions such as fear by posting customer testimonials, and guarantees you help reduce the negativity around the brand, you encourage consumers to move forward with their purchases. When your strategy alleviates fears and builds trust, you mitigate their fears.

The interplay between emotional influences and brand perception is critical for creating effective brand building strategies.

Use a survey tool like SurveyMonkey here which allows you to create surveys that can help gather insights directly from your target audience.

3. Cognitive biases

With a multitude of brands that exist, and will come to the market by the day — consumers are not always correct in their judgement of a brand.

These biases often lead consumers to make judgments based on incomplete information or preconceived notions rather than objective evaluations.

How they feel about your brand will decide the purchase — not what’s in the product, unfortunately.

Take a peek at some cognitive biases that exist which influence consumer behavior and purchase habits

1. Confirmation bias: Every consumer set has a few beliefs that they believe in so deeply, they will perceive brands that don’t match that as ‘good’. However, for brands to break this cognitive bias — putting out positive signals in the ecosystem can work to counteract this.
2. Availability heuristic: This bias leads consumers to rely on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating options. You can break this bias with a brand strategy that has consistent, resonating messaging on different channels.
3. Loss aversion: Pain is often felt harder than wins or the pleasure of that win. The thought of losing something when buying a brand, leads consumers to not look at that some brand as favorable. One way to overcome this is to frame offers in a way that makes consumers feel they’re losing out on something exclusive — short-term offers, discounted prices and so on.
4. Social chatter: A friend’s recommendation about your brand can strike up brand recall and favorability marginally. When buying something recommended, inherit trust exists and therefore they’re considering the brand amongst others. Brands can use UGC/ reviews to beat this battle

Use a tool like SEMrush for SEO + intent data. SEMRush will help you create content that aligns with what consumers are actively looking for on your website.

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, brands that recognize and adapt to the intricacies of consumer psychology will be better positioned to influence purchasing decisions and build lasting relationships with their customers.

Strategies to leverage intent

1. Use data to analyse search trends, social media chatter and purchase inhibitions. Understanding this makes your brand more likely to be considered when it’s time for a purchase.

Use a tool like Crunchbase to research competitors and similar businesses to understand market positioning and consumer intent.

2. Use personalization to enhance engagement and a feeling of belonging between consumer and brand. Personalization is not putting a first name on an email, it’s instead sending a particular consumer a set of messages that resonate with their last purchase. Their last purchase will define and direct their next possible purchase

3. Mental availability where your consumers are — whether through social media, email campaigns, or content marketing, brands need to be active multi-channel, ensuring that where the consumer is buying is where you’re present. Brand marketing is after all a tactic in building favorability and likeliness with your brand

4. Feedback structures -when you create a system for gathering feedback from customers about their experience with your brand, you refine your understanding of intent and improve future marketing efforts.

Why does intent matter to a growing brand?

1. Differentiate your offerings
2. Laser-targeted prospecting
3. Identification of high-value prospects
4. Hyper-relevant content creation
5. Optimization of your marketing funnel for maximum ROI
6. Keeps you ahead of the curve by revealing emerging trends and interests
7. Reduced wastage of resources and time for marketing and brand marketing

In conclusion, understanding intent signifies the transformative shift founders need to indulge in when it boils down to their marketing and sales strategies.

Sales, brand and marketing are looking to stay on top of their game. By deep-diving into customer behavior and intent at each stage, brand marketers can then create targeted campaigns that address specific needs and concerns, ultimately guiding customers toward conversion.

There’s no immediate ROI on this. Investing in intent-based brand strategies will not yield immediate sales results; however, it will enhance brand equity and visibility over time. It’s a long-term play always with brand.

Therefore, those brands that prioritize understanding intent will stand out from the competition — creating meaningful relationships that lead to long-term success.

Thanks for reading! I’m the founder of The Fingerprint Labs, a strategic brand studio for challenger brands. We’ve worked with 100+ brands in DTC/E-comm/FMCG and Tech to create, build and evolve their brands.

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