Psychographics
Facebook Ads Prove That “Targeting” Demographics Is Silly
Social media advertising isn’t just another fad. With all of that juicy customer info we give social networks each day, for free, businesses of all sizes are lining up to cash in by offering the right ad to the right person, guaranteed — or so they think.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Here’s the promise Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, made to media buyers last November:
With Facebook you will be able to select exactly the audience you want to reach, and we will only show your ads to them. We know exactly what gender someone is, what activities they are interested in, their location, country, city or town, interests, gender [etcetera, etcetera] . . .
Several months later, this is the result:
Apparently, David at Broccoli & Cheese wasn’t a good target for this ad:
As you read this, thousands of 18-34 year old men are watching Tampax commercials. Not because they want to, but because television is an imprecise medium that makes it hard to get the right ads to the right people. As a result, we’ve been conditioned over decades to expect irrelevance at the commercial break.
But wasn’t the Internet, and in particular, social media, supposed to turn that tide? Take Facebook—they know more about my day-to-day life than my parents do, and surely enough to serve me ads that I’d find remotely useful. But they’re dropping the ball. Big time.
[…] Will someone out there besides Google please get their [expletive] together?
If MarineCFO’s Chief Financial Officer is reading this, chance are s/he’s not thrilled with Facebook.
To be clear, I don’t think MarineCFO was silly to place this ad. It’s just that, like me and perhaps even you, we’re easily seduced by the promise of demographics. We like to think it’s sufficient.
Demographics are like catnip for marketers.
They make being wrong feel so right. They always seem to have the right answer. They help us justify lazy decisions. They give us such wonderful opportunities to prejudge our audience — specifically, how they define themselves and what they want to hear, see or read — based on a few scant details. Yet by themselves, demographics can never be accountable for anything because they’re based on correlation, not causality.
Marketers, and the advertising platforms that prey on them, need to look beyond the logistics of ad placement and stop thinking of “targeting” as a one-way, two-dimensional process. Demographics are important, but without the context of psychographics [define], they’re quite often useless. To paraphrase Mark Twain, to a media buyer armed with vague demographic data, everyone looks like a target.
I wonder where and how these ads would have been placed had they planned the campaign with personas.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Creating Personas 101
Want to take a stab at creating personas for your business? If so, you really should check out the most recent installment of SEOmoz “Whiteboard Friday” screencast.
In this 20-minute tutorial, Ian Lurie of Portent Interactive and SEOmoz founder Rand Fishkin discuss how to create simple customer personas and use them to boost the performance and relevance of your website.
As anyone who’s read Waiting for Your Cat to Bark may know, we have quite a bit of experience adapting the customer experience to fit the needs of personas — and I’ll share some more ideas for how to create them in a moment — but first…
Take a moment to watch Ian and Rand’s wonderful crash course on personas:
Ian’s first step is to “Brainstorm 7 to 10 people.” If you’d like some ideas on how to do that brainstorming, here are some specific steps you can take to get started.
Ian’s 3rd step is to measure and research. At Future Now we call that “uncovery” and it’s absolutely key to your success. Successful uncovery plus personas is how you go from knowledge to understanding.Ian’s 4th step is writing out the personas’ stories — usually 500 to 700 words — including who they are, demographics, and psychographics. (If you need some help with the psychographics part, read about the four personality temperaments; a great starting point for understanding how people make buying decisions and how they’re viewing your website.
Avoiding Stereotypes
In Ian’s 4th step, the issue of stereotyping comes up. Stereotypes are incredibly harmful to personas. Why, if stereotypes are based on common attributes shared by a group, how can that be all that bad? Well, stereotypes keep you from digging past a few surface-level facts to truly understand the real person. They are a shortcut used by people to try to understand those who are different from them. This shortcut prevents you from having real empathy for that person, especially since the majority of stereotypes are negative. Ian seems to send some (understandably) mixed signals on this point. On one hand, he explains that it’s not so cut-and-dry as it may seem. Meanwhile, he recommends giving the personas funny nicknames (like “Ian The Angst-ridden”) to help us remember their core motivations. Although this does help you get inside their heads, be careful that the qualities you lump onto your personas don’t end up causing new, unintended stereotypes just from the name you give them. But Ian’s right; it’s not as simple as it seems.
(NOTE: Ian and Brian Bond can discuss these finer points in their upcoming panel discussion on personas at the Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara. In the meantime, here are a couple more ways to get started with personas.)
Personas are powerful. Sure, some people claim they’re useless because they are artificial, not real people. But here’s the thing: Not everyone thinks or behaves like you do. (Yes, I hear the echoes of “Duh!” reverberating from your monitors right now, but how many times have you had an argument with a client or colleague because they want to run a commercial, create copy, or add functionality that they like. Personas give you a framework to have informed discussions about who your customers are, how they behave, and what they want.
Personas allow you to have empathy for customers who aren’t like you. Besides, if they don’t work, you can always fire them.
Finally, Ian’s 7th step is perhaps the most important: TEST your assumptions! Personas give you a framework for not only seeing what people do on your website, but for understanding why they do it. Think about it. You may run a test to see what happened, but do you really understand why? That’s where personas can really yield fantastic results.
P.S. If your personas aren’t working as well as you’d like, we can always help you optimize them.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
If Your Personas Don’t Talk, Fire Them!
“A lost wallet lies on a Manhattan street, stuffed with cash. A white middle-income male New Yorker, between 30 and 44, picks it up. Will he look for the rightful owner, or pocket the cash? Who knows? But if George Costanza, the white middle-income male New Yorker between 30 and 44 from Seinfeld, picks it up, everyone knows exactly what he’ll do. He’ll almost certainly keep the money, yapping endless self-justification to his friends at the coffee shop to conceal his feelings of guilt.”
This brilliant opening to Elizabeth Gardner’s Internet Retailer article, “Persona-lizing a Site,” shows exactly how personas [define] can lead to actionable insights that demographic and psychographic data alone can’t provide. But for me, her next example illustrates something far more important: How and why most of what passes for “personas” falls short. Here’s what she writes:
“It’s hard to target a message to a generic 35-year-old middle-class working mother of two. It’s much easier to target a message to Jennifer, who has two children under four, works as a paralegal, and is always looking for quick but healthy dinners and ways to spend more time with her kids and less time on housework.”
Of course, Elizabeth is just sketching her example persona to save space and to illustrate a broader concept, but you’d be surprised how many companies purchase (or create) “personas” that are little more than this kind of demographic segment with a name and photo attached.
Compare “Jennifer” from the last example to George Costanza, or any favorite fictional character, like Carrie Bradshaw or Atticus Finch. Can you imagine Jennifer speaking to you as easily as you could these other characters? Can you hear her express her likes and dislikes?
Of course not. Jennifer isn’t a living, breathing persona — she’s just a cardboard cutout, masquerading as a persona. She’s effectively mute, and that makes Jennifer all but useless.
If your marketing personas won’t talk to you the way your favorite fictional characters will, how can you possibly use them to plan conversations? How can you create persuasive content/copy for your personas if you can’t imagine their reactions as easily as you can simulate Costanza’s rationalizations?
Quite simply, you can’t — a point that Jason at 37 Signals drives home in his post on Personas. Notice that first on his list of things personas don’t do is “talk back.” Well, he’s right. Far too many so-called “personas” don’t talk back. And he’s also quite right in concluding that non-talking personas are all but useless.
But he’s stunningly wrong in two areas:
- (Real) personas DO talk back (and answer questions, have opinions, etc.). Three-dimensional characters, such as Costanza, do talk back. And while personas aren’t a replacement for real life testing and results, the insights and answers they provide can guide and direct testing far more effectively and profitably than any other method currently used.
- Personas are meant to facilitate persuasion, not usability. Good usability is generally a human thing. Effective design impacts all humans/users (within a given culture) similarly, whereas persuasion is very much an individual thing. What’s convincing to one person can actually be offensive to another — which can make relying on one’s self as a model for persuasion a particularly bad idea.
Without personas, we naturally tend to craft messages that are persuasive to ourselves; messages that often miscommunicate to our core audience. Even when we consciously try to account for the psychology of others, our abilities as intuitive psychologists often fail us; something that’s been well documented by social psychologists.
We’re all prone to misjudging others, especially those who are different; hence the need for psychological aids for creating empathy and motivational insight. And while personality theory and psychographics can help — as testified by their effective use by salespeople, marketers, politicians — theory has limitations when it comes to generating real, usable empathy.
Empathy created from less-than-conscious processing is different from perspective gained through conscious, cognitive analysis. In fact, according to research highlighted in Dan & Chip Heath’s book, Made to Stick, analytical thinking can actually impair empathy. This is why imagined simulation is a more effective vehicle for achieving empathy than conscious analysis.
So the “Costanza test” is actually a good litmus test for actionable personas.
For real people, talk may be cheap. But for personas, talking is really all they’re good for. And it’s these imaginatively constructed conversations that lead to persuasive messaging and improved marketing ROI. It’s talking that matters.
So if your personas don’t talk to you, fire them!
And then call Future Now 
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Written by:Jeff Sexton
Use of Personas Boosts Conversion by 400%
Countless once-skeptical businesses have changed their tune about personas [define]. The successes have been well documented, but a lot of smart people continue to scoff at the idea, thinking personas are a touchy-feely attempt to connect with customers on, like, a cosmic level — and that you’d have to be some kind of marketing hippy to waste budget on fluff like that.
Those attitudes are changing. This month’s Internet Retailer magazine shows how companies like Future Now are using personas to bridge the gap between business and customer*; not by targeting specific people, but by attracting them according to their needs and buying preferences. By speaking their language. By anticipating their questions ahead of time in order to answer them at the right time. By reducing friction in buying process. And it works.
Just ask Steve Franzman, founder of Detoxologie.com, a client who used personas to boost conversion by 400%, and get a 2 to 1 return on a floundering Pay-Per-Click campaign. Steve didn’t even go for the full-on, from-the-ground-up implementation (see also: Howard Kaplan’s “six-figure” quote in the article). Instead, the company did a low five-figure analysis of its current site and used just four simple personas to get enough perspective to rework the entire website.
When it comes to personas, the return you get depends on how much you’re able to implement. It’s why we encourage clients like Steve to think big by starting small. As with any marketing spend, the focus should be on spending the least amount of money to generate the best possible return on investment. Time and time again, personas have proven to be the most effective tool to plan multi-channel campaigns. But not all personas are equal.
An entrepreneur struggling with a lot of other tough decisions, Steve spent a month pouring over whether he should invest in personas. His competition was marketing themselves in ways that made Steve uncomfortable. They seemed successful, but he didn’t want to be like them. He felt he understood his customers better and had serious empathy for their needs — his website just wasn’t showing that, and he didn’t know where to start. Before personas, he says, “Our customers were everybody and we didn’t know how to deal with them.”
If you feel the same way, you’re not alone. To find out how the use of personas can boost your marketing potential, don’t be shy. Reach out and ask us anything and everything about personas. But remember, with personas, you are what you implement. It’s like having your own customers as a personal trainer. Personas can tell what to improve and what to avoid, but it’s up to you to take the first step.
[*Pay attention, B2B’s. You have customers, too.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Screencast: Does Your Site Appeal to All Buying Modes?
You may have heard the news that I joined the faculty at MarketMotive. I had a great time recording my first session, “The Power of Perspectives in Persuasion.” During the session, I explained perspectives (the four basic personality types) and how they impact what people look for on a website.
People View the World Through All Four Perspectives
At Future Now, we always caution people to be careful not to use this information to stereotype. While individuals operate from each of these perspectives, we do have preferences. It’s similar to right vs. left-handedness. For instance, people who would generally be considered Methodical can become Spontaneous at any moment. Just as it’s far easier to sign your name with your preferred hand, you can sign it with the other — even if the result is a bit awkward. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to design your website for only lefties or righties.
All Sales Are Complex
Since individuals each go through their own personal buying process, any sale has the potential of being a complex sale. As you’ll see in this screencast, the shift between a customer’s buying modalities, and the failure of a website to address them, can cause the buying process to break down. Companies must invest in understanding and planning for how these different modailities influence the buying process. This is why many companies have chosen to use customer Personas to help plan not just their websites, but entire multi-channel strategies.
When Personas Fail
Personas fail for a few sad-yet-predictable reasons. We’re often asked by potential customers to review and refine the Personas they’ve received from other firms in order to make them actionable, the way the Personas developed by Future Now are. It’s not always possible, but we try to salvage that investment. Oftentimes, the Personas they received elsewhere are nothing more than traditional market segments, lacking the types of nuanced personal insights it takes to really make them actionable. (Please contact us at Future Now if you want to learn more on about making your customer Personas actionable.)
In this screencast, I’ll show you a real life example of how — believe it or not — even my brother Jeffrey (also Future Now’s CEO) and I can shift from our own buying preferences to different modalities without realizing it at the time, or even consciously switch modes in order to complete a certain task. Everyone does this. It’s how Personas and buying modalities work together to create persuasive momentum.
Understanding Customer Buying Modes
(If video doesn’t load, click here.)
. .
[Editor’s Note: Want to know what motivates your customers to buy? We can help.]
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Below the Fold, Size Doesn’t Matter
The ClickTale Blog has some valuable insight regarding page length and visitor interaction.
According to ClickTale, total page length is not a strong factor in terms of how many people will scroll below the fold or reach the bottom of page.
- The average location for the fold is between 430 and 860 pixels down on the page.
- 76% of people will scroll below the fold.
- 15-22% of people will reach the bottom of the page.
- 64-68% of people will reach the halfway point of a page.
- 91% of pages are long enough to require scrolling.
This makes me wonder whether the same groups of people make it to the bottom of the page, regardless of where their web surfing takes them. This appears to relate to how different personality types interact with the web. Each type prefers to navigate in their own way, and particular groups, like Methodicals and Humanistics, are more deliberate in their information gathering and decision-making. These types make it to the bottom of the page far more often than their Spontaneous and Competitive cohorts, who demand instant relevance or they’re gone.
As the ClickTale article suggests, people are scanning and skimming a page’s content regardless of its size. Web developers should back away from trying to squeeze content toward the top of a page in order to supposedly make it easy to scan. Using proper amounts of white space, headers and sub-headers, along with bolded text and bullet points increases a page’s scannability for all personality types.
But keep in mind, shorter pages did perform slightly better. “Almost identical percentages of page views (15%-20%) reach the page bottom regardless of page height.” While the data was fairly similar regardless of the page length, shorter pages were closer to the 20% range.*
When it comes to critical elements, like calls to action, you don’t want 5% of visitors not seeing it. Pages have more power when they stick to one main idea per page. And remember, copy should be long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to be interesting. A site will generally get better search rankings by having highly relevant links from page-to-page. So, there are advantages to leaning toward shorter pages, but don’t sacrifice clear page design and layout to squeeze a few pixels off of a page’s length.
Bottom line: If you have good, well-formated web copy, they will scroll.
[*Note to Direct Marketers: Your ridiculously long, heavy-handed sales pages might be overkill.]
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Written by:Ronald Patiro
What Keywords Say About Your Visitors
I was reading an article in AdAge about Ian Ayres. He and his publisher were battling over the title of his new book. He wanted to call it The End of Intuition. His publishers wanted to call it Super Crunchers.
[His publishers said] “The End of Intuition” is a terrible name. So boring. But Ian Ayres didn’t believe it. That’s what he wanted to call his new book about how much better it is to test ideas through random trials rather than just trusting some marketing guru or focus group — or intuition. His editor thought he was nuts and insisted that “Super Crunchers” was a much zippier name.
So the two of them decided to do some random testing of his book on random testing. They took out a Google ad and half the time someone was doing a search on “data mining” or “number crunching,” a little ad on the right would appear for a new book called “The End of Intuition.” Half the time the same ad appeared for a new book called “Super Crunchers.”
Based only on this information, which title do you think won? Make your best guess, then keep reading.
To me, it’s pretty darn obvious; “Super Crunchers” had to perform much better if they keywords they targeted were “data mining” and “number crunching.”
Sure enough…
“Super Crunchers” got way more traffic — 63% — and thus became the title of his book.
I was actually a little surprised it wasn’t higher than 63%, but I don’t have access to the actual ad.
There are two types of people in customer research. There are Humanistics, who have a great ability to empathize with other people. They truly want to understand why people behave the way they do, what their deeper motivations are, and how to better relate to people. Then there are Methodicals. They’re superior number crunchers. They like statistics and spreadsheets. They base their decisions on facts (even if they’re merely justifying to themselves a decision that’s already been made based on emotion).
I’d be curious to see this test repeated with different keywords like “customer insight” or “customer research”or “understanding your customers.” These are keywords more likely to be used by Humanistics, who would be more attracted to the title “The End of Insight.”
If the subject matter of the book is truly aimed at more Methodical researchers, “Super Crunchers” is definitely the way to go. I’m not suggesting Ian change the title of the book. But never underestimate the power of words. The keywords you choose will affect your results.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Decoding Personality: Why We Compete, Reward & Buy
Recently, I’ve had several conversations with clients about rewards and why we compete. So, when I came across this snippet from Lifehack.org, it prompted me to share a different perspective:
Author of “Motivation from the Inside Out: Rethinking Rewards, Assessment, and Learning” and “Beyond Bribes and Threats: Realistic Alternatives to Controlling Students’ Behavior”, Alfie Kohn wrote this piece for the New York Times in 1993 about rewards in the workplace not motivating employees the right way.
Kohn suggests that these rewards act the exact same as punishments and create negative work environments.
I call BS on this simplistic presumption. The problem isn’t the reward itself. The problem is misunderstanding the person’s motivations and thereby offering the wrong reward.
Our whole lives are motivated by an internal sense of worth, measured by “rewards” — both internal and external. We’re each addicted to our own reward system. It stains every action we take.
The same applies to the buying process, and to your website.
Creating personas, profiles, and buying perspective for our clients is what we do each day at Future Now. This work is based on our instrument of choice, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Myers-Briggs is commonly used among psychologists, and has the largest database of respondents. Millions take this test annually.
According to the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (define) — which is based on Myers-Briggs but inspired by the ancient Greeks — people default to four primary temperaments:
- The Artisan (”SP”; Sensing-Perceiving)
- The Rationalist (”NT”; iNtuitive-Thinking)
- The Idealist (”NF”; iNtuitive-Feeling)
- The Guardian (”SJ”; Sensing-Judging)
In our work we focus tightly on how people prefer to behave in the buying process, so we label each temperaments differently to reflect just that. In Future Now-speak:
- The Spontaneous (”SP”; Sensing-Perceiving)
- The Competitive (”NT”; iNtuitive-Thinking)
- The Humanistic (”NF”; iNtuitive-Feeling)
- The Methodical (”SJ”; Sensing-Judging)
People tend to be surprised when they test themselves and find they’re an SP, SJ or NF. At this point, they’ll often say something like “Well, this doesn’t make sense… I’m extremely competitive!” Of course, most of the successful people we work with often are. Just because you’re not an “NT Competitive” doesn’t mean you don’t compete fiercely; you just compete for different reasons and different rewards.
The Spontaneous often competes and is primarily motivated by the thrill of the winning experience, the adrenaline rush.
The Competitive often competes and is primarily motivated by big-picture status, the trophy on the shelf.
The Humanistic often competes and is primarily motivated by the success of the team, one for all.
The Methodical often competes and is primarily motivated by the satisfaction of a job well done, winning is it’s own reward.
Of course, you’ll likely see a little bit of yourself in each of these — depending on the situation — but you may find one more appealing than the others.
Does this apply to your website? Of course!
Since buying usually triggers reward centers in the brain, these four types of motivations are relevant to the buying process. If you promise the wrong rewards, you’ll create a negative buying experience. Here’s somethings you can do in your product descriptions:
For the Spontaneous, briefly describe the thrill/experience the product provides.
For the Competitive, show them how the product will advance their goals.
For the Humanistic, show them how the product will positively affect others.
For the Methodical, describe in detail how the product will help them get things right.
If you have a minute, share some examples with us of websites that push your reward button — and let us know your temperament. Not sure of your own type? Take an anonymous (and free) online test.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
“Eyetracking, Heatmaps & Gaze Plots!” Oh My…
All you heatmap lovers out there, Uncle Jakob (Nielsen) has a great new post for you. Today’s Alertbox features a topic near and dear to the Grok’s heart: the overuse of fancy words in Web copy.
These “dollar words” are truly excellent… at going over your audiences’ heads while keeping them from accomplishing their goals by taking the actions you’ve set out for them. Anyone who’s taken our Persuasive Online Copywriting course would agree; Jakob is singing our tune in his discussion of a usability test he did on the U.S. Census Bureau website:
Beyond banner blindness, the major reason this homepage failed is that it used made-up terms or branded descriptions rather than plain-spoken words. Terms like “Population Clock,” “Population Finder,” and “QuickFacts” are not as descriptive as a simple line of text that says:
Current population of the United States: 302,740,627
Once Jakob goes beyond the heatmap, things really get interesting. He uses gaze plots (click thumbnail for image) to describe 4 main classes of behavior — “search-dominant,” “navigation-dominant,” “tool-dominant,” and “successful” — and gives insightful descriptions for each. If one were so inclined to look at the same observed behavior through the lens of the personality types or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, they’d see beyond the how people clicked, and into the why they clicked. It’s how they’re wired, naturally, according to their preference, or type.
A: The Competitive type — what Jakob observed as “search-dominant user” in this study; Using the MBTI lens we’d shorten their preference to operating in “NT” (iNtuitive/Thinking) mode- working at a fast pace, with a logical bias. The Competitive quickly scans and skims everything, looking for a clue as to how to solve the puzzle. Neither Active Window [define] content nor navigation seemed to be the path of least resistance. (Notice: Competitive type didn’t even look in the right-hand column; they’ve been trained to ignore it.)
The right and left vertical lines clearly illustrate the Active Window, where a Competitive is most likely to spend time. (The same goes for all types, but the Competitive does this more often.) Once this person struck out with copy in the Active Window, they aimed for navigation and, after quickly striking out there, went to search.
As a footnote, Jakob adds, this “user” (don’t get me started) mentioned the ability to search faster for the answer… at Google.
B: The Methodical type — Jakob’s “navigation-dominant user”; “SJ” (Sensing/Judging) on the MBTI — behaves with a logical bias similar to Competitives, but with a far more deliberate pace. You know the Methodicals in your audience. They’re not easily satiated by the answers you give them. They want more. No detail’s too small. They want it all. The good news from a marketing communications perspective is they’re willing to give you their time — provided you’re willing to give them relevant content.
The Methodical approach was to look everywhere; Active Window, left navigation, right-hand column (where the answer was actually sitting, cloaked in techno-babble and jargon), above the fold, below. You name it, they saw it. They just didn’t find anything that seemed like the answer until, finally, navigation appeared “most promising”.
C: The Spontaneous type — Jakob’s “tool-dominant user”; “SP” (Sensing/Perceiving) on the MBTI; — behaves at a fast pace, with an emotional bias. They’re highly experiential by nature. (Notice how Jakob describes this type as people who “like parts of websites where they can do something”.)
The Spontaneous visitor clicked around briefly, mainly focusing on the interactive features, before most likely leaving in failure. The gaze went everywhere, without focus, until a single feature grabbed their attention — that is, until another rabbit hole appeared (on another website) that was more entertaining.
D: The Humanistic type — Jakob’s “successful user”; “NF” (iNtuitive/Feeling) on the MBTI; — behaves at a slightly less deliberate pace than the Methodical, but with an emotional bias. Testimonials were created for this type. Show them how you’ve treated other people like them, and you’ll gain their confidence.
My assumption that Plot D represents the Humanistic is based on a few observations and is a shining example of the value of optimizing your experience based on a plan, rather than some out-of-the-box analytics package or testing platform. Had we planned this experience using a customer-centric methodology like Persuasion Architecture™ [define], we would have a context in which to view this gaze; to know how far off the execution was from what we’d originally planned. That would give us an actionable approach to making website improvements.
With Plot D, I see someone who’s spent more time than the other visitors — except, of course, for the Methodical — not just scanning and skimming, but actually connecting. I also see someone whose gaze fell oddly on the right-hand column; a behavior we typically see when people are capable of scrolling with their mouse without actually looking at the gutter to find the down arrow. They intuitively know the scroll bar is there.
Each of these experiences could have been planned better to achieve the task at hand, but that’s a post for a different day. For now, simply consider that people are wired to behave according to different preferences, their behavior fueled by their own momentum.
For you to achieve your goals, your audience must first achieve theirs. That means presenting what they want, when and where they want it — even if you have to make a single product page speak to 4 different “types” of people. But that’s the beauty of the medium. Online, it’s far easier to measure and improve your plan dramatically over time.
(Author’s Note: Anyone think my headline would’ve been better if it were “What People Do on Your Site and Why”? Now do you see the power of plain-spoken language?)
[Editor’s Note: Here’s more on persuasive copywriting by personality type and how to make your site reader-friendly. Enjoy!]
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
What Makes People Buy
At Future Now, we focus on Grokking people to understand why they do the things they do. Grok roughly means “to understand completely,” or, more formally, “to achieve complete intuitive understanding.” It was invented by science fiction writer Robert Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Grok, we’re told, is a Martian verb, meaning to drink or absorb on a cellular level, that was introduced to today’s English speakers thanks to a man raised by Martians.
Roy Williams qualified shoppers as operating in either one of two modes: transactional or relational, a few years ago. At that time some of us loafed around virtually, exchanging emails with friends, trying to complete a list of reasons that motivate people to buy things. (Thank you, Tom G. & Brett F.) More recently, we returned to compiling the list with the rest of my colleagues. Trying to understand these types of things is what drives us. It also benefits our clients.
The following is what we came up with, albeit likely incomplete.
Can you identify which of these motivations is relational and which are transactional? Can you see where they each fit within Maslow’s hierarchy of needs [define]? Will you help us find additional motivations?
Some of these are self-explanatory. The forces that influence whether people buy include:
Basic Needs - We buy things to fulfill what Maslow describes as the bottom of his hierarchy; things like food and shelter.
Convenience - You need something now and will take the easiest or fastest path to get it. Think about the last time you were running out of gas, or were thirsty and found the nearest beverage of choice. This could also be choosing the safe vendor (no one ever gets fired for hiring IBM), purchasing something to increase comfort or efficiency.
Replacement - Sometimes you buy because you need to replace old things you have (e.g., clothes that don’t fit or are out-of-date). This could be moving from a VCR to a DVD player.
Scarcity - This could be around collectibles or a perceived need that something may run out or have limited availability in the future. Additionally, there’s a hope to gain a return on investment, such as collectible or antiques; anything that accrues value over time.
Prestige or Aspirational purchase - Something is purchased for an esteem-related reason or for personal enrichment.
Emotional Vacuum - Sometimes you just buy to try to replace things you cannot have and never will.
Lower prices - Something you identified earlier as a want is now a lower price than before. Maybe you were browsing for a particular large screen TV and you saw a great summer special.
Great Value - When the perceived value substantially exceeds the price of a product or service. This is something you don’t particularly need, you just feel it’s too good a deal to pass up. (Like the stuff they place near the end caps or checkout counters of stores.)
Name Recognition - When purchasing a category you’re unfamiliar with, branding plays a big role. Maybe you had to buy diapers for a family member and you reach for Pampers because of you’re familiarity with the brand, even though you don’t have children yourself.
Fad or Innovation - Everybody wants the latest and greatest. (iPhone mania.) This could also be when someone mimics their favorite celebrity.
Compulsory Purchase - Some external force, like school books, uniforms, or something your boss asked you to do, makes it mandatory. This often happens in emergencies, such as when you need a plumber.
Ego Stroking - Sometimes you make a purchase to impress/attract the opposite sex; to have something bigger/better than others, friends, etc. To look like an expert/aficionado; to meet a standard of social status, often exceeding what’s realistically affordable to make it at least seem like you operate at a higher level.
Niche Identity - Something that helps bond you to a cultural, religious or community affiliation. Maybe you’re a Harvard alumni and Yankee fan who keeps kosher. (You can also find anti-niche identity by rebellion, assuming you’re pretty comfortable with irony.)
Peer Pressure - Something is purchased because your friends want you to. You may need to think back to your teen years to think of an example.
The “Girl Scout Cookie Effect” - People feel better about themselves by feeling as though they’re giving to others, almost especially when they’re promised something in return. Purchasing things they don’t need–or wouldn’t normally purchase–because it will help another person or make the world a better place incrementally is essential certain buying decision.
Reciprocity or Guilt - This happens when somebody–usually an acquaintance, or someone rarely gift-worthy–buys you a gift or does something exceptionally nice and/or unnecessary. Now it’s your turn to return the favor at the next opportunity. Examples:
- Event - When the social decorum of an event (e.g., wedding, bar mitzvah, etc.) dictates buying something or another.
- Holiday - ‘Nuff said.
Empathy - Sometimes people buy from other people because they listened and cared about them even if they had the lesser value alternative.
Addiction - This is outside the range of the normal human operating system, but it certainly exists and accounts for more sales than any of us can fathom.
Can you think back to the last time you bought something and fully explain the reason why?
These are the things we help our clients think about. We hope this list at least gets you started. And let us know if you need help understanding your customers motivations. It’s what we do. But in the meantime…
What do you feel motivates people to buy?
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ADDENDA:
Fear - From pink Taser™ stun guns to over-sized SUV’s to backyard bomb shelters–and even stuff so basic as a tire pressure gauge–are bought out of fear. So, before you go knocking “fear” as a motivator, ask yourself: Are you Y2K compliant?
Indulgence - Who doesn’t deserve a bit of luxury now and then? So long as you can afford it, sometimes there’s no better justification for that hour-long massage, that pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream, or that $75 bottle of 18-year single malt scotch other than “you’re worth it” (best when said to self in front of mirror with a wink and/or head tilt).
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
