How to Discover Your Customer’s Buying Motivations
What was your most recent purchase? Why did you buy it? Did it make your life easier? Was it a necessity?
These questions are what any consumer will subconsciously ask themselves in an effort to determine whether they want to purchase the product or service they are prospecting — including you. Anticipating the answers to these questions is important to understanding the motivating factors that cause your customers to make the final decision to buy your product or service.
What are buying motivations?
Simply put, buying motivations are the underlying factors that come together to influence your potential customer to consider purchasing your product or service. There is a full range of both rational and emotional factors behind purchases, so it is important that you identify considerations on both spectrums (source).
A few examples of emotional purchasing factors for your customer could include the following:
Liking the design and aesthetics of your product
Purchasing something to reduce anxiety
Using the product or service to improve or enforce a personal brand
Wanting fun and perks
Increasing a social connection with your product
Rational purchasing factors would be influences that help to save time, contribute to growth and development, or improve overall quality of life.
How do you determine buying motivations?
Here are three things you can do to discover what would motivate your customer base to purchase your product or service:
Determine whether your company has a B2B base or a B2C base
This will help you to focus on identifying if the majority of your customers are making decisions using rational business-oriented purchasing factors or emotional purchasing factors.Put yourself in your customer’s shoes
What problem are they trying to solve? What part of their business are they trying to improve with your product? Make a list of the questions your customer base would ask before buying your product or service and utilize the answers to these questions in your messaging.Perform a competitor analysis
Complete a brief competitor analysis to see what type of messaging your competition is using to market to your audience.
Once you’ve done some brainstorming on the ideas above, you’re ready to put the Stormboard Buying Motivations Template into action.
Using Stormboard’s Buying Motivations template
The Buying Motivations Template helps you identify who your target customer is and their motivations for purchasing your product or service. This is a key factor in determining how you market your product.
Stormboard’s Customer Buying Motivations Template
There are six key categories that any motivation will fall into. Desire for Gain is for those people who are looking to save money or have something that will last longer than similar products, while those that have a Fear of Loss are looking for a guarantee or to save time. There are those buyers who are seeking Comfort and Convenience in their purchase, while the Security and Protection buyer is looking for something that will relieve pain, worry, and loss. The last two motivations include those looking for Pride of Ownership in their purchase, and those that are hoping for a Satisfaction of Emotion.
How to fill out each section
Desire for Gain
This section identifies customers who want to gain something from your product or service. They desire to have a long-lasting product or service that will be beneficial and reliable for them over a long period of time.
Fear of Loss
This section identifies customers who want something that is guaranteed or who want to save money. They don’t want to lose what they have, so a guarantee will make them feel more secure. They are also motivated by lower cost because they fear losing money.
Comfort and Convenience
This section identifies customers who simply want both comfort and convenience from their purchase. It needs to be easy to buy because of where it is located, how it is used, or the price point. If they are comfortable with something, they are more likely to use it or buy it again in the future.
Security and Protection
This section is to identify customers who are looking for security and protection from a product or service. Security is essential because the majority of consumers want to feel like they are safe and will not be compromised in any way.
Pride of Ownership
This section identifies customers who want to have pride in the product or service that they purchase. Essentially, they want to be proud of what they have, whether it be to show off to others or just to enjoy for themselves.
Satisfaction of Emotion
This section identifies customers who hope to get emotional satisfaction out of owning/using your product or service.
Conclusion
Your product or service might not make sense for each section, or you may not want to market it as a fit for customers that would be leaning more towards a certain buying motivation.
This process is there to determine all of the angles that a potential customer may come at you from, and help you decide which ones are the right fit for your marketing plan.
Do you want to try Stormboard for your next buying motivations brainstorming session?
Stormboard is offering 30-day FREE trials to Enterprise and Business Teams that are looking for remote solutions. Sign-up and learn more about the features that we offer here.
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