Independent marketing agency Boutique, who specialise in representing brands and retailers in the Home & Garden space, have developed a new way of making sense of the consumer purchase journey. They believe that the key to success for businesses in the sector is to understand not just the steps that customers go through before buying, but also the thought-processes behind them, to help gain advantages in an ever-competitive market.
We spoke to Sophie Cork, Senior Planner at the agency, about the importance of understanding audiences and the advantages it can offer to brands in the sector.
Tell us about the process you go through to help Home & Garden brands better understand their customers…
Before we get underway with any specific projects or campaigns, we spend a lot of time talking to our clients about their audiences – who they really are, how they think, what they do – because we really feel like it’s time worth spent. We believe that only once we truly understand the consumers, can we start thinking about how to talk to them and where to advertise to them. It sounds obvious, but we always start with data. We look at what the company has available – whether that’s postcode sales data, website analytics or previous customer surveys or brand studies, and then plug in the gaps where we need to help us get to the full picture. We have a huge amount of tools and resources to help us with this. From there, we apply these audiences to our Customer Buying Cycle model to illustrate how these customers come to make a purchase.
What’s the Customer Buying Cycle?
This is our own unique approach to the traditional awareness ‘funnel’. While the old funnel model typically goes from Awareness to Consideration to Purchase in a simple linear way, our Cycle, as the name suggests, is cyclical in nature and illustrates the complexities of the modern customer journey. It maps the different stages buyers of a brand go through, and are custom made depending on the specifics we found out about the customer types.
How can brands use this to their advantage?
Unlike the traditional funnel, the Customer Buying Cycle details not just the actions that consumers go through when deciding what to buy, but the goals and tactics brands can employ to help them get to the next stage to purchase. It includes real actionable advice that can help businesses understand, and crucially, acquire more customers.
How can brands find out more about it?
Reach out to us! We love talking to new brands and building new connections with businesses in the Home & Garden space. We’ll also be discussing the Customer Buying Cycle in detail in the next edition of our Home Report, our own research report that covers the shape of the sector, trends, insights, helping brands to build marketing strategies to grow their business. This is launched at the face-to-face conference, which will happen this year in May 2024 in Leeds.
You can sign up via the Boutique stand below and also request copies of the previous Home Reports.
