Don’t become a boiled frog: How to adapt your marketing to changing consumer behaviors

TV ads, direct mail, billboards, even email marketing — these once-popular marketing platforms just don’t resonate with consumers like they used to. Buyers have cast their vote, and they want one-to-one engagement on a smaller platform – their smartphone. If you don’t adapt to changing consumer behaviors, your customers are going to ignore you.

Think Blockbuster, Sears, JC Penney, Toys “R” Us — these once-lucrative businesses are either already gone or dying thanks to instant, anytime, anywhere, one-to-one engagement on a phone. Tech companies like Netflix and Amazon have created a seismic shift in the way we interact, engage, and do business. The smartphone is now the connective tissue between your business and your customers.

When customers are forced to take too many steps or are overwhelmed, they shut you out.

Don’t fool yourself into believing that because your company offers a service rather than a product, new technology won’t affect you. It will. Remember the boiling frog? Well in this case, businesses are the frog. And the rapidly evolving technology is the rising water temperature that will eventually boil your business. You are that frog. Are you ready?

Changing consumer behaviors

Let’s take a look at the numbers. According to HubSpot, more than 55% of people spend less than 15 seconds on a website. Mailchimp says 8 in 10 people don’t open or read their emails. Google reported that each step a user must take in a buyer journey equates to a 20% drop out. Social media posts have a lifespan of less than a day. Friction and noise cause your customer to turn a blind eye to it all.

When customers are forced to take too many steps or are overwhelmed, they shut you out. If you are stuck in the traditional way of marketing, your messages aren’t being seen or heard. Today’s buyers want to keep marketers at arm’s length. They do not want to constantly be interrupted. They choose their own interests and will gladly message you about those interests. As Peter Lisoskie, founder of CREATION Inc, and inventor of Openless apps puts it, “The technology conditioning that video games has provided drives buyer’s behavior to choose their own journey.” Give them a chance to choose, investigate and discover on their own, without pushing your business marketing agenda on them.

Buyers also want to be able to control the conversation through messaging and text. Many times, consumers do not want to talk to a live person. Keep in mind, we’re talking about millennials and Gen X. These generations have grown up with smartphones in their hands and the Internet at their fingertips. Your marketing must adapt to these core groups. Consumers want one-on-one engagement about the things they care about. As Lisoskie says, “this is where the world has gone, and we are not going back.”

What is the marketing solution to these monumental changes in customer behavior?

Openless apps

Openless apps provide a one-stop-shop for the buyer and provide the business with a powerful dashboard of real-time data. Openless apps allow for a new kind of user experience. Using point-here technology and active attention design with animated avatars, Openless apps are an all-in-one hub for you to educate, communicate and engage with your customers. Openless means no downloads, no friction, and instant one-to-one engagement.

Imagine your website, social media and emails all in one place where you can interact with and engage your consumer while collecting qualified leads, nurturing those leads and eventually converting them into sales. From a business perspective, the benefits include having a dashboard for both analytics and real-time engagement with buyers. We can search and filter consumers by their interests and send them push or text notifications while they are in the experience (Openless app) – physically or mentally.

Do we have your attention? Keep following us as we explore the world of Openless apps and the technology that can help save you from the fate of the boiled frog.

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