Effective marketing materials move the buying process forward. By understanding the customer’s buying process, we can increase sales
With marketing dollars as tight as they are, our customers frequently ask how they can maximize the return on their marketing investmenthow they can generate marketing pieces that are efficient and, most of all, effective. One of the most basic yet most underused strategies is to plan marketing efforts to match the different steps in the customers typical buying process. We refer to this as the two-phase marketing approach.
The Buying Process Whether or not they are aware of it, customers follow a repeatable process when they decide to buy. We break down the steps as follows:
-Goal Setting
-Problem Recognition
-Information Search
-Evaluation of Alternatives
-Decision
-Post Purchase Evaluation
-Repeat Purchase
Not every step in the process is followed for each sale; new or complex purchases tend to follow this path most directly. And you may even want to encourage the compression of the process by helping customers skip steps. Yet however the process proceeds, it cant begin without the first step: problem recognition. If the customer has not recognized a need, there is no chance of a sale. Surprisingly, even experienced marketers often overlook this simple and intuitive concept. They focus marketing efforts on showing customers how good their product is. They demonstrate all the bells and whistles. Or, they concentrate on building a winning brand image. But they neglect to focus on the needwhat the product will do for the customer. No matter how good your product is, no matter how technically advanced the product is, and no matter how cool your image is, customers will not buy if they dont see the need.
And, we cant assume that the need is obvious to our customers. Often, the need is latent. Latent needs tend to run constant and, as a result, may not to register immediately with customers. These include issues like reducing costs, increasing sales, increasing efficiency, speeding product development, or reducing exposure to regulatory or legal risk. All customers, theoretically, are interested in addressing these issues. But they may not know of new technologies that can help them, or of potential risks that change these needs from nice-to-haves to must-haves.
In the first phase of two-phase marketing, the goal is to help potential customers recognize their need. The second phase then fills it by providing further information to set customers comfortably into the buying process.
Phase 1: Making a Latent Need a Recognized One
To make customers realize their need, your message must be simple, focused, and compelling. You are not trying to sell product. Rather, you are selling an ideathat customers have a problem that needs to be solved, and you can help them solve it.. Consider the following messages:
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