When buying is easy the customer can look past the buy moment and begin to imagine their life with the product. The dream becomes real! Unfortunately, many companies mistakenly associate easy buying with quick buying – the two couldn’t be farther apart. When a buyer gets caught up in the process of buying, the future is impossible to imagine and the emotion associated with a great purchase suddenly is difficult to see – this is a death sentence for an activity that is emotionally based and emotionally powered.
There are 3 rules required for easy buying:
1. Nurture All Potential Customers. Outbound marketing cannot differentiate between the different buying schedules that customers travel down to get to the final purchase. If an individual is 8 or 9 months away from buying a car, they are still going to buy a car. However, outbound marketing (billboards, commercials, junk mail, etc.) is simply focused in the insta-buy candidates – this is not a sustainable business model in the new economy. You can’t ignore a large portion of the market and get away with it.
2. Allow Easy Access to Content and Information. Content is everywhere and can be acquired easily by both legal and illegal means. It’s useless to sell a product and not provide all relevant information associated with it. People will just go somewhere else.
3. Don’t Push. Why do people generally dislike the used car salesman, or ignore junk mail, billboards, and commercials? These strategies cost money but are generally looked upon as being annoying and useless in the overall buying picture.
These outdated strategies are focused only on pushing the prospect closer to the buying decision as quickly and efficiently as possible. This strategy used to work well before easy access to information, but today anyone anywhere can find out anything about any product, anywhere. It’s time to make the move to new economy strategies.
