How to Become an Expert on Your Buyers

You’re at an event and someone jumps up with their phone and shoots a group photo with you and everyone else in it. When they post it on Facebook, who is the person you look at first?

We look at ourselves of course, because when it boils down, everything is ultimately about us. So where do you think your customer is looking in the group shot they are in? What’s more important to your customer, you, or herself?

That’s where many of us get marketing wrong. We focus on what we believe the reasons our products or services are so valuable.

We focus on all the reasons that we think customers should buy our stuff based on what we know about the product. While we may be right, by only doing this we are missing out on so much, because we are not buying our stuff, they are.

In my last post we covered the steps to identifying your best buyers. Now we will take a closer look at identifying their buying motivations.

Research has shown that those who map and manage their customer journeys enjoy 79 per cent higher cross-sell and upsell revenue than those who don’t.

How do we find out Buyer Motivations?

We need to have unscripted conversations with our buyers who have recently purchased from us. Interview your buyer conversationally about the situation that initiated their decision to seek your offering. Ask questions about their journey leading up to the purchase, the problem they were looking to solve, and what they wanted to believe your product would deliver.

Of course the line of questioning will depend on what you sell. Ask great open ended questions, and ask relevant follow up questions to get deep into their thoughts and feelings.

Listen for what they thought worked in your branding, marketing messages, website, packaging, etc. Ask questions to discover what was missing, gaps in the market, speed and timing issues, disappointments and so on.

Find out how they felt at each stage, listening closely for the language they use to describe their motivations and decision. This language is what you need to consider using in your messaging so it’s a good idea to record the interview as you will want to focus on the conversation.

What you will learn from this research ensures that you become an expert on your buyers, not just your offering. It gives you the power to market using the voice of your buyer. Referring back to the group photo, this is where your buyers are looking. Doing this builds trust and leads them into your buying process, making your sale easier and quicker.

Your exercise this week is to have three or more of these types of interviews. Over the next few weeks it is important to complete more, make it a routine. What you learn will be invaluable, and you will notice your shift towards buyer focused thinking.

Once you have done 15 or so interviews, with a little bit more research which we will cover in the next post, you will be ready to develop your buyer persona guide to effectively engage with this buyer through your marketing.

That’s all for this week. If you want to know more, we have a 4 Point Targeting Checklist which you can download for free. It will give you a bit more insight into the grand scheme of precision marketing.

Make sure you let me know how you go.