7 Secret Buying Motivators — Part 2

What do you need to know about your customers, so they’re guaranteed to buy from you over and over again?

This is the question we posed in Part 1 of this article.

When it comes to buying anything, from simple needs to expensive machinery, different buying motivators influence the decisions people make. Understanding what makes your customers tick, simplifies any niche marketing strategy.

Now let’s discuss the Seven Secret Buying Motivators. As you seek to understand what makes your customers tick, be careful not to make the mistake of judging your customers.

Your job is to understand them!

When you read through Seven Secret Buying Motivators, you might well find yourself pondering exactly what kind of person is driven by a given need. However, this isn’t an exercise in value judgment. This is about understanding your target audience. That’s the value in studying buying motivators.

You don’t have to identify with a motivator — which means you, as solopreneurs, service providers, or marketers of any kind, don’t have to feel the way your customers do. There’s no law that says a company that caters to people with a strong need to nurture, for example, has to be owned and staffed solely by caregivers!

You simply have to understand the buying motivator and make it easy for your customers to fulfill their needs (hopefully with your products/services)!

Understanding buying motivators also helps you avoid making mistakes when you reach out to your target audience. When you know what resonates and empowers your customers, it’s not difficult to extrapolate what will also repel them.

For example, a customer who’s driven by the need to “Belong & Trust” would not want a product that makes them feel isolated, solitary, or alone.

As you read about the Seven Secret Buying Motivators, bear in mind that they are not in any order of importance. They all have equal power to influence a customer. It’s your job to discover which of the Seven Secret Buying Motivators mot influence your target audience.

Buying Motivator #1: The Need to Belong & Trust

The need to belong and trust taps into one of the most fundamental aspects of humanity. We all want to be part of something — a family, a team, a club, the cool kids. We’re social creatures. We crave connection with others who are like us.

To form these connections, you have to trust. Trust is the glue that makes groups stick together. Remove trust from any relationship, and it quickly falls apart. If you cannot trust the people who work for you, they’re unlikely to stay around for long.

What Makes Someone Trust?

Sometimes the desire to belong manifests as an urge to join with or be accepted by a group of people who differ from you. This motivation drives an awful lot of purchasing behaviors, as an individual strives to outfit themselves with the ‘right’ clothes, accessories, shoes, jewelry, electronics, car, house…the list is endless.

Understanding the groups your target audience wants to or actively belongs to will help you grasp what values and behaviors are critical to your customer base.

When you’re reaching out to a customer motivated by the need to belong, you want
to emphasize how their purchases will help them achieve, secure, or enhance a position within the desired group.

However, belonging alone is not enough. Tied intimately to the need to belong is the need to trust.

Today’s customers are skeptical. The younger they are, the more cynical they’re likely to be. Generation after generation of overexposure to advertisements, and letdowns by everyone from politicians to sports stars, and back again have made it difficult for the average consumer to believe that there’s a company out there that they can really trust.

Individuals motivated by the need to trust value an organization that keeps its word, is accountable for its actions, and is transparent in its business dealings.

This is especially pertinent with the Internet and online marketing. Industry research tells us that over 90 percent of customers do research online before making a major purchase. They want to know what they can expect — and they don’t trust you to tell them! They need external validation of their experience, from rating and review websites, personal blogs, forums, and social networking sites.

Another way to effectively market to the customer, who’s motivated by the need to trust, lies in your return policies and guarantees. You build trust with your customer base when they know they can return items they’ve purchased, or that you’ve guaranteed one hundred percent satisfactory service.

Bear in mind, returns and guarantees are worthless if you don’t honor them! When you create return policies and guarantees, think through how you’re going to implement them. If you drag your feet in this area, you’ll completely destroy any trust you’ve built.

Buying Motivator #2: The Need for Excitement and Fun

The need for excitement and fun is growing more and more influential in the business world. We’ve become an entertainment-based society. We want the show, the circus, the concert, and the fireworks display, all rolled into one.

People with this motivation want — and more importantly, expect to be entertained every moment of the day. It doesn’t matter what type of business you’re in, people buy from people they like (and trust). Providing excitement and fun is one way to ensure your customers like you!

This motivation dominates even the most serious transactions: all things being equal, buyers will opt for the purchase that affords them the most fun.

Bear in mind that it doesn’t have to be the merchandise or service itself that’s fun. It can be the atmosphere in which the product or service is delivered, the people selling or providing the product or service, or even the packaging!

Reaching out to customers who have a need for excitement and fun is simple. You simply have to convince these groups that they’re going to have a good time! The definition of ‘a good time’ varies by target audience.

Fun Can Be A Differentiator

One way your company can differentiate itself from the competition is using fun and excitement as highly visible branding concepts. Using fun fonts in signage, upbeat and exciting language in sales copy and online advertising, even clever taglines for email marketing, helps convey the impression that you’re your company embraces fun.

Don’t be afraid of fun. Remember you can definitely do serious business while having a really good time.

Buying Motivator #3: The Need for Easy

In our time-pressed, stress-filled society, many individuals are motivated by a need for life to be easy — or at least easier than it currently is! This often boils down to convenience: these customers seek out products and services that can save them time, money, and effort. These are the people who want merchandise they don’t even have to think about: the pre-packaged meal you can throw in the microwave to speed up eating time; the software that automatically updates; the digital recorders to record all of the best TV shows, one season at a time.

The need for “easy” is especially prominent in the B2B (business to business) community. With an ever-increasing number of new and emerging businesses appearing every year, entrepreneurs are looking for any, and everything that can make them better business people without having to expend any extra effort. The need for “easy” is a huge buying motivator for entrepreneurs wanting results, in half the time, and with half the effort!

Making it easy for your customer starts right from the very first minute you engage with them. Is your advertising easy to read and understand? Keep copy to a minimum, use
lots of pictures, and design your marketing especially, your website pages, so questions get answered BEFORE the customer asks them.

In Part 3 we’ll cover the rest of the Seven Secret Buying Motivators.