The Impulse Buy

By: Elizabeth Coffey, Marketing G2 Digital Marketing Specialist

You’re standing in line at the grocery store when you catch wind of your breath and decide to buy a pack of gum. Everyone’s had the experience of buying something on impulse when they’re out and about and for many people the decision to buy a newspaper is impulsive.

Perhaps they liked the front-page story or they’re interested in that day’s sports section. Whatever the reason, they bought a single copy of the paper on their way out of the store.

Online, almost everything is an ‘impulse buy.’ The interconnectivity of everything on the internet lends itself to our impulsive nature if it doesn’t outright encourage it.

In fact, the only time ‘buying’ on the internet is pre-meditated is when you know your oven is about to break or you’re angry with your cable company, desperately searching for a better deal.

Print has capitalized on the impulse buy for years but when it comes to digital, there hasn’t really been an equivalent. News publishers online seem to want to make their readers submit to a subscription at all costs, even when it costs them revenue. Search is impulsive and so are clicks.

Capturing Impulsive Curiosity with Flittz

When curiosity strikes, it’s an intense but often fleeting feeling that drives clicks. Capture that curiosity, that impulsiveness of the thousands of people who are already coming to your site in search of something with Flittz. Instead of sending those readers away with a strict subscription paywall or worse, giving up and giving away your content for free, you could be converting those readers into revenue - ad revenue and reader revenue - and building your subscription funnel while you re-market other content to your readers.

If readers can buy a whole paper on a whim, why not individual articles? Stay tuned next week to read about the new news media unit of sale.

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