Brand Engagement in the UK: Consumers are ‘toughest nuts to crack’
If you’re marketing to your customers and prospects the same as you’ve always been, then you really don’t know your audience.
To help our clients better understand what motivates consumers’ attitudes towards engaging with brands and their willingness to share their data, in partnership with Marketing IQ, we surveyed consumers across three very distinct regions – the US, UK, and Singapore. Of particular interest, we found consumers in the UK are the least likely to engage with brands outside of transactional activity.
That UK consumers are the ‘toughest nuts to crack’ only emphasises the importance of taking advantage of (and building upon) the engagement opportunities that are available, especially as data regulation tightens and consumers more closely guard the information brands need the most.
Across the countries surveyed, consumers are united in their belief that brands need to step up their games and start building actual relationships rather than one-way dialogues. Substantial generational differences are common, but specifically prominent in the UK, where those aged between 18-29 as they are much more likely than older generations to engage with their favourite brands and do so for a greater variety of reasons.
Social media is the most popular way for those in the UK to engage, with 64 percent of 18-29 year olds ‘following’ their favourite brands, compared to 10 percent of those aged 60+. Women are more likely to engage with their favourite brands; the one exception being brand tutorials, which are more likely to be accessed by men.
The older the age group, the less willing consumers are to share their data. Signing-up for loyalty or reward schemes (44 percent), and when answering polls or surveys (35 percent) are the engagements that UK consumers of all ages are most willing to volunteer data. Those under 30 are 113 percent more likely than those aged 60+ to share their data during checkout online, emphasising the importance of effective point of purchase engagements!
Armed with knowledge of which consumers are open to relationships with brands and the ways they wish to engage, marketers can focus their time and budgets on initiatives that yield the most impactful results. Seizing engagement opportunities to earn data from willing consumers requires an understanding of how, why, and when they’re willing to interact and share data, and acting to provide the best possible experiences to make it happen.
The research shows that consumers want and expect a mix of ways and reasons to engage, and it’s important they do. The future of marketing will depend on consumers volunteering their information as the days of data scraping and inference are numbered.
Brands must establish open, honest, and mutual value exchanges; put simply, they must take advantage of organic engagement opportunities and use the right approaches to earn relationships and data.
The research sheds light on those preferences and resulting behaviours and is completely free to access, we hope you find it useful!