Don’t Forget Impulse Buyers in your Marketing Plan

Fall is in the air and merchants are already displaying the upcoming holiday season items. I often wonder if consumers are really thinking about Christmas shopping before Halloween. Part of the magic of shopping for any holiday item is shopping in the season not pre-planning the purchase months in advance, but purchasing that terrific impulse item that fits the recipient of your gift perfectly. Oh the anticipation and excitement of watching an impulse gift being opened. Doesn’t get much better than that does it?
The art and science of creating marketing/advertising campaigns for impulse purchases is often overlooked or minimized by items displayed at the checkout line. However, when you get right down to it, impulse buys make up a large portion of Retail Company’s bottom line and they are not all small ticket items. The tricky part is how to segment the impulse buyers from the pre-planners by season, price point, demographically and geographically. What is appealing to impulse buyers versus the buyer that does their research ahead of time and only goes into the store to purchase one or two items. Marketing to these unique profiles should be part of your marketing plan and marketing message. Assessing buying behaviors in the past will help predict buying behaviors in the future thus help support the ROI of your marketing campaign. So next time you are out shopping and throw a few extra items into your buggy, remember a profile of your buying behavior can be determined and marketed to.