Post-purchase marketing—3 strategies to engage with Gen Z and millennials after they've bought your product

Branding has always had its place throughout the purchase funnel—the theoretical journey a consumer travels on the way to purchase—but the funnel has changed and it’s time that branding changes, too. In the old funnel model, the stories and narratives of a brand evolve as people move from awareness to interest to desire to action—and the more perceived value and emotional investment a brand can create as people reach the bottom, the more likely the purchase and loyal the customer. Yet as we know, the funnel isn’t linear anymore for most Gen Z and millennial consumers. It’s now an endless loop of inspiration and exploration. By way of influencers, a nascent social shopping scene and general information overload, millennials and Gen Zers are skipping a lot of the brand connection that used to happen before conversion, and instead shifting it to after conversion. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs When 50% of global consumers do most of their brand research after they buy, and 78% uncover things that attract and make them loyal to a brand after purchase, pre-purchase is increasingly dedicated to price and feature research. It’s therefore clear that post-purchase is where real branding begins. But you’d be hard-pressed to find many brand leaders that prioritize post-purchase branding in their own companies. It’s time we changed that. The greatest opportunity for brand-building is increasingly happening after the first sale is made, not before it, and that means new rules for making sure your brand is connecting with your user: Lean into post-purchase rationalization Post-purchase rationalization is one of the most powerful cognitive biases we have as humans, and it’s also one of the most important ones to keep in mind in a post-funnel world. After making a purchase, humans have a natural inclination to keep looking for proof that they made the right choice. We’ll look for stories and signals that we bought the right thing in order to avoid the emotional discomfort of buyers' remorse. This bias is especially pronounced when it comes to expensive or spontaneous purchases. That immediate window after conversion, when your user is already looking for a connection, is exactly when your brand should be stepping in. It’s a perfect opportunity to shape perceptions, tell deeper stories and create branded experiences that historically would have happened before purchase. It may go against conventional wisdom, but your brand needs to sell the hardest after the sale is made. Create loyalty to the group first, brand second Community is quickly becoming the first layer of brand, and in a post-funnel world where consumers are researching price and features before anything else, community might be the only chance you get to imprint your brand before your user buys anything. We already know community is often where consumers get their most trusted reviews and recommendations before converting. It should also be where you signal what your brand is really about. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that the truest and most valuable form of community is not in the relationship between the user and the brand, but rather between and among users themselves. Most brands fail to realize this, and many willingly ignore the fact that the strongest predictor of a thriving community is the rate at which members connect with each other. When you’ve created and stewarded a community of brand enthusiasts that genuinely connects people to one another, you’re not only creating a stronger group—you’re sending a branded signal that reaches people before purchase with more relevant, trustworthy, branded content at the time they are most likely to be looking for it. Highly networked communities create a gravity around them that draws people in no matter where they are in the funnel. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Go deep, fast Start with presumed intimacy. When so much of branding takes effect after purchase, you don’t have time to drip campaign yourself into a meaningful relationship with your customer. Create a reflective and deep storytelling experience that assumes your buyer is already invested in the brand. Even if it's their first direct, unmediated touchpoint with you, people in a post-funnel world are already primed for deeper levels of engagement. Consumers want to understand who they’re supporting and the larger business they’ve bought into. They’ve been conditioned to search for the truth behind a company’s leadership, its business model, its position and its vision—and they make a judgment call on those signals very quickly. Make it too hard for them to find those signals, and your brand will pay the price. Your most valuable asset at this point is your honesty and clarity of character. Don’t make people search for the facts. Make it the forefront of your narrative. When you have less time to make a meaningful brand association happen, you have to go deep quickly. Our new paths to purchase put more pressure on brand strategy, but they also give us a chance to fast-track brand relationships in ways that we couldn’t reasonably do before. We have the privilege of serving a more sophisticated, willing consumer that’s trying to navigate a much noisier world, and in that way, the golden rule of brand strategy has remained the same: Make people care when and where it matters. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here

Post-purchase marketing—3 strategies to engage with Gen Z and millennials after they've bought your product

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