Picture this: every customer who walks into a bar orders your brand, no questions asked. A marketer can dream, right?
In reality, nearly one-third of customers walk into an on-premise location undecided, leaving brands to battle for attention amidst intense competition.
There’s a way to avoid a metaphorical bar fight as your brand vies to win the impulse shopper. The secret? Behavioral science.
By leveraging proven behavioral science principles, you can tackle on-premise challenges head-on and capture the impulse customer’s heart—and their dollars.
Challenge 1: Competing with Other Brands for the Purchase
With countless options to choose from, grabbing customers’ attention and delivering a memorable experience is vital—especially when you have only seconds to influence their decision.
Solution: Use Priming Psychology
Priming is a powerful behavioral science tool that marketers can use to subtly influence consumer behavior by tapping into the subconscious. It lays the groundwork early, positioning your brand favorably in the customer’s mind before they make a decision.
This decision happens in a matter of seconds, as customers process multiple stimuli that compete for their attention. Without the right cues, your product may get lost in the noise.
Direct attribute priming helps your product stand out by associating it with key attributes that you want customers to notice and prioritize.
In the end, the effectiveness of your priming can be the difference between winning or losing an impulse buy.
Challenge 2: Deciding Where to Prioritize Investments
Determining where to allocate your budget for maximum impact is challenging. Prioritizing investments requires a deep understanding of the moments when customers make purchasing decisions and their journey from entry to choice. Lacking this insight makes it difficult to ensure your spending is truly effective.
Charting this course will offer a clear roadmap for maximizing your investments to have the greatest impact on impulse customers.
Solution: Know and Own the Moment of Truth
The key is to identify the pivotal instant when the customer evaluates your product alongside an alternative and makes their choice, otherwise known as the moment of truth. To effectively prioritize your investments, center your strategy around this decisive moment and work backward from it.
Begin by mapping out the on-premise customer journey in clear, numbered steps leading up to the moment of truth. For example:
Charting this course will offer a clear roadmap for maximizing your investments to have the greatest impact on impulse customers.
Challenge 3: Optimizing the Key Moments of Communication
In on-premise settings, where decisions are made quickly, creative must grab attention and convey a compelling message quickly. The difficulty lies in standing out amid a crowded environment and addressing diverse consumer preferences. Yet, high-quality creative can significantly influence consumer choices and set your brand apart.
Solution: Evaluate Creative Using the 4C’s of Creative Effectiveness
Command the customer’s attention
This is your opportunity to make your brand shine among the rest. The goal is to stand out in the environment, draw the viewer in and create an intentional focal point.
Connect using brand equity
It isn’t enough to just capture the customer’s attention. They must also resonate with the stimuli. Your creative should establish a connection between the viewer, brand, and category by using distinctive assets and category cues. Ensure that the brand and variant are clear in an instant.
Convey a strong story
Now that the customer is locked in, it’s time to get your message across. Aim to convey a single-minded message. On-premise point-of-sale (POS) material should engage and tell a compelling story, whether functional, emotional, or promotional.
Close the sale
Make your brand the obvious choice by overcoming the purchase barriers and inviting the customer to act.
As you design your next on-premise creative, use SellCheck’s proven behavioral science methodology to capture the consumers who could leave the store with your product in hand.
While navigating the competitive world of on-premise environments, it’s clear that securing a customer’s impulse decision takes more than hope—it requires strategy. By applying SellCheck’s behavioral science principles, you can turn that brief moment into a lasting impression.
The journey doesn’t end at the menu—it starts there. Use these insights to ensure your brand is the one customers instinctively order, turning that marketer’s dream into reality.
Ready to turn undecided customers into loyal fans?
Discover how to win over impulse shoppers in a competitive on-premise environment with SellCheck’s webinar. Watch the recorded webinar now and transform your approach to capturing impulse customers.
