Chewing Gum and the Purchase Funnel

I had a good question posed to me a few days ago - which actually coincides with a pitch we’re working on here. The question was; how do you use online media to drive people down the purchase funnel of a low involvement purchase? That is to say, a low involvement or impulse buy that doesn’t have many unique attributes, lets say chewing gum, doesn’t call for many online actions to help make the purchase. Compare that to a high involvement buy, like a car or computer, in which users are almost certain to visit sites for information, comparisons, or purchases online.

Well, I think one obvious answer to that question would be some type of contest or promotion that draws people into buying a product and registering online to win something. But those have a limited longevity, a few months or so in my experience. The promotions peak due to the initial buzz created and soon after begin their slide down the steep curve towards obscurity. To be honest, I sometimes doubt the ROI on online promotions is worthwhile but that depends on a mess of stuff that’s usually (thankfully) beyond my scope.

The way I’m handling the pitch we’re working on, which is for a product that’s a similar low involvement purchase, is by focusing more on creating online interaction that is almost completely about the lifestyle around the brand rather than the product itself. Yes, we’ll be talking about the actual product… somewhere, but the majority of the site will be about getting visitors to interact with a damn funny lifestyle concept we’ve come up with.

The lifestyle brand isn’t a new idea in communications, but I don’t think it gets applied to online as much as it should. I think that more often than not, when brand managers or web developers are given the option to present a lot of information or background about their product they take it.

So, my answer on how to drive people down the funnel of this kind of buy is to look around, or beyond the brand and not at it. Develop an interesting, or funny, or ‘sticky’ interaction focused on the lifestyle of the brand that will stay with someone the next time they’re standing in line at the cashier and that impulse hits them.