Buying Cycle

Placing an ad in a magazine one time or trying a social media campaign for a  month – and then stopping – can be ineffective and wasteful. This is equivalent to trying to boil water, but turning the heat off every 2 minutes. Marketing works cumulatively and needs to be present at every stage of the buying cycle, gaining momentum from previous tactics.  If you want to see results, keep the heat on!

Create A Presence In Each Stage Of The Buying Cycle

Check out the infographic above.  Take some time to review the first four stages of the buying cycle.  Now that you know the breakdown, it’s time to start taking advantage of it by breaking down the tools needed to attack a buyer’s attention at each of these levels of interest. 

The smart business owner

The smart business owner knows that each stage needs careful analysis.  Smart business owners understand that marketing nearly always has a start in the Awareness stage.  That is because potential buyers move through it each and every day.  In this stage,  buyers generally see little of the actual product that is begging for attention.  The marketing here is small and frequent messages like banner ads in social media, billboards and TV/radio commercials.  The marketing tactics are just waiting until some type of event has triggered a need with the consumer, now the consumer is fully engaged – the hook is set – the awareness marketing efforts have done their job.

The consumer then moves on to the next level “Interest.”  Good marketers know that this is the place to spend money to get a good ROI.  The consumer is now researching, comparing, window-shopping websites, and downloading white papers — the hunt is on.  They now notice all the small ads that have competed for their attention…all lending some influence to the decision.  The “who should I buy from” list is getting smaller and smaller.  They are nearly ready to make a final decision.

Now in the trial or consideration phase, the consumer goes back to social media and the web…what do my friends think?  Who got the best review?  Which website looked the best?  Who has the best customer service?  Should I buy on price alone?  The factors are weighed and a decision is made.  The smart marketer got another sale!

Versus the dumb business owner 

They bought an emailing list of 1,400,000 names and figured that the worst the company could do is sell 1/10th of 1 percent of the recipients — easy and cheap, right?  Instead, no one responded to email, countless hours were lost, the domain was blacklisted, and they learned there is a law against SPAMMING called CANSPAM.   Not to be dissuaded, they worked out a deal with the local paper to have a 1 page ad for a 1 day sale.  Unfortunately, no one was looking to buy a snowblower that day; however, the next weekend it snowed like heck.

Then, as luck would have it, this business owner met met Slick Willie at a bar.  He had all the answers, he made “millions” and will show this business owner just how easy it is — no effort at all.   Slick will charge only a fraction of what dumb business owner thought it would cost.  Matter-of-fact, it was down right cheap…well, you know the end of that story.   Just in case you did not know the ending…Slick only charged $2000, but no one called.  Slick then told the business owner they should do it 2 more times to be effective…nadda thing happened!

Moral of the story

If you were not part of nearly every phase of the buying cycle…you lost.  Crazy, one-shot schemes and marketing tools that look too good to be true are just a waste of perfectly good money.  Good marketing needs a persistent effort in all phases of the buying cycle and a lot of hard work.

While it’s common for  business owners to always focus on the sale, it’s important to remember that your flock of customers are scattered across the field. By herding them through the right gates using your marketing, you’ll be able to enjoy a much more dependable customer pipeline and save a ton of money.