The Customer Buy Cycle

How do you get your customers to buy your product? That's a question that everyone in business wrestles with. Many people assume that advertising is the answer. It's not. Most people who've tried it know that. To gain some insight, let’s look at the purchase process from your customer's perspective. Every purchase decision goes through three basic steps in your customers’ mind, what we call the Customer BuyCycle:

• Awareness,
• Consideration, and
• Conversion.

Stage 1: Awareness. People must be aware of your offering and the fact that it comes from you. But, in reality, very few people are actually in the market for what you sell at any given time. They don't have a need for you -- yet. Stage 2: Consideration. When someone does have a need, they begin to consider options. They begin to look for sources of a solution. They may search the Yellow Pages, or (more likely) Google. You want to be on the "short list". Stage 3: Conversion. This step is when they convert from a prospect to a customer -- they decide to buy. Good marketing gets the right messages about your product out to your target market to create awareness and gain consideration; a good sales process takes consideration and converts it to a sale. (NOTE: For “big ticket” items, this process can take months or years; the other end of the spectrum is the “impulse buy”, in which the three steps happen virtually instantaneously.) It is very difficult for a vendor to move someone from awareness into consideration. That's why advertising so rarely "works" -- if you define "works" as generating revenue. Advertising is part of your marketing mix, and is almost exclusively to gain (and maintain) awareness. Advertising "works" if customers immediately think of you when events conspire to create a need for your services. Why do we call it a "cycle"? Because it happens again and again. Here's a tip: Great customer service can help you bypass the first two stages in future (repeat) purchases! Lesson: Understanding the way people make purchase decisions can help you better focus your marketing and sales investments. P.S. New products or new companies (and especially new products from new companies!) face a big battle in creating awareness, much less consideration and conversion. That is one reason that a niche approach to marketing is widely perceived to be the recipe for success for start-ups. Solve one particular problem very well, and you will “own” a market niche that you can expand from.