Building Curiosity in Consumers

Curiosity compels us to act on not just functional need but a desire to learn more. Consumers have become browsers and discoverers, wandering around stores or searching the internet to find new and interesting facts, ideas, and products.  Curiosity can guide consumers to discover and engage with your brand.  Generating curiosity about a product through marketing tactics can increase consumer motivation, boost brand awareness, and lead to an increased desire to find out more. How do you leverage curiosity for your brand? Put simply; teach them something they don’t know. When a consumer is curious, there is less need for sales workflows or standard funnel presentations. Curiosity leads to immediate interest in a product and the motivation to ask you to teach them. Create a brand experience, not just a product display.  By including exploration and play into product education, potential customers are more likely to engage and spend more time with your company.  Try providing consistent introductions of new product versions and themes, or tell a story, pause at a climactic moment, and then delay the conclusion leading customers on a quest around your website. Use teaser advertising for a pre-launch to ignite excitement about a new and upcoming product. Introduce a concept with an unexpected outcome that brings interest from new consumers. Technology, technology, technology! With all of the latest technologies available at your fingertips, the expanded reach and novel concepts that can be employed in marketing plans is practically limitless. Develop your own or participate in relevant virtual environments and learning labs that fit your company and products. Giving consumers a visual look into how products work can stimulate curiosity better than explanations. Using big data to learn more about consumer behavior can be helpful to create virtual experiences as well. Know your audience and what they are most likely to respond to, and then give them more of that. Feeding off of the well of technology, design a strategy to drive and maintain brand loyalty. Start with videos, your company website, regular blogs, and creative social media posts. Then steer curious consumers to product comparisons and reviews, where they can learn even more from like-minded consumers and colleagues. Finally, offer live chats and Q&A sessions that answer more specific questions once they have directed their curiosity.  Once brand loyalty is created, offering rewards cards and exclusive opportunities maintains curiosity in what consumers can earn and get back from using your products. Leading loyal consumers to become consumer advocates can help you stimulate others’ curiosity and start the cycle again. Curiosity opens up the possibility of surprise, provides something new, and encourages the desire to explore. By offering something unanticipated, curiosity can drive consumers wherever you want them to go.