The buying decision – it’s a Quick Step not a Power Walk
Regular readers of this blog, or anyone who’s seen me speak, will know that I’m a big fan of the six step model for mapping out a buying decision. That is, when a person is deciding to buy something high value, high risk, or high involvement, they go through six different stages. The particular model we’re fans of here at Clear Thought is one from Kotler that maps a person going through a process a bit like this:
- Awareness: Knowing who you are and what you do
- Interest: Seeing something that’s relevant to a thought or issue they’re having
- Evaluation: Working out if you meet their criteria
- Trial: Getting a sense of what it’s like to work with you
- Adoption: Coming on board as a customer
- Loyalty: Buying more and telling the world how great you are
To ensure a watertight process that delivers solid sales results, the marketer needs to provide a tool or a technique that acts as a stepping stone from one stage to the next all the way through that decision. But, what’s really important to bear in mind is that this process is much more like dancing the Quick Step than it is pounding a Power Walk.
What you’ll find a potential buyer doing is taking two steps forward, one step back, going off to the side, back again, etc. Depending on what you’re selling, this process can take six minutes or six months. What you’ll also find is that you’re rarely the only dance partner they’re flirting with.
So, what does this mean to the marketer? It means that you need to be flexible and responsive to where a person is at any given moment, and give them options to step forwards and backwards elegantly at will. To do this, you need a variety of content and tools at your disposal to bring into play at different times. And, if you need to keep someone dancing for six months, there will be a lot of little steps to move them through the whole process.
In practice, this means having a regular stream of activity made up of a mix that spans the whole process, for example:
- Awareness: Press coverage, social media reach, referrals, networking
- Interest: Blogs, how-to guides, snappy videos, email newsletters
- Evaluation: Case studies, lengthier papers, web seminars
- Trial: Demonstrations, hosted events, pilot programmes, free trials
- Adoption: Hospitality, proposals, contracts, personal selling
- Loyalty: All of the above in the context of a relationship
It’s also important to note that you may not know where someone is in their decision. This is particularly true if you have a larger audience, or if people buy online without talking to someone. They may only be a number on your web analytics until they pick up the phone or pop in their credit card details. So, you need to make sure that appropriate fresh material is there when they want it… which might be at any time.
This is just one of the reasons that your small business needs to maintain your marketing momentum. You really don’t want to drop someone half way through a dance. It’s not a great way to win Strictly and it’s certainly not a great way to win a customer.
By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | @bryonythomas | www.clear-thought.co.uk
If you liked this, you may also enjoy the following:
- Video: Managing emotion through the sales process
- Blog: Why keep marketing when you’re already busy?
- Blog: Coordination = colours; Integration means business
Clear Thought Consulting works with small businesses, equipping them with the marketing strategies, suppliers, skills and set-up that they need to become bigger businesses. We do this by planning and delivering 12-month marketing transformation programmes – supporting a small business through a step-by-step process to making marketing pay. We firmly believe that when you can’t out-spend your competition, you have to out-think them.
Published on 13 April 2011
