Analyze the buying behavior of your customers

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What makes the difference between a successful sale and a customer who bails at the last moment? What does a potential customer think when he or she comes into contact with your company? How can you win him or her over with the Customer Journey accompany. Very different areas come together in the buying process, and interactions arise between marketing, PR and sales. This process is all the more complex because it is not a linear process.
In this guide, we will show you how to Set up analyses of purchasing behaviorwhat conclusions you should draw from them and how they can influence the final decision of potential customers in your favor.

PowerPoint Template: Effective Marketing Thanks to Customer Journey Map - Download

How to analyze the buying behavior of your customers

A potential customer will never exactly match an alias created on paper. Instead, we must assume that the individual experience of each client him or her consciously and unconsciously psychologically influence.
Psychologically one describes this term technically correctly as Bias, a distorted perception with which a potential customer deals with the variety of information presented. Such a bias is important, especially in the modern world of online marketing. Because first of all, information does not exist in a vacuum, neither in a competitive vacuum nor in a cultural vacuum.

If you analyze the purchasing behavior of your customers, it is important to Understand bias and use it to your advantage. Because not only can a potential customer better navigate the diversity of the web based on these psychologically rooted biases, but you can do a lot of work more purposefully.

With a bias analysis, purchasing behavior can be better understood.
With a bias analysis, purchasing behavior can be better understood (Fig: towardsdatascience.com)

The most important biases for online marketing at a glance

Product features - what a product is like and what features give customers a quick overview of comparable products. For processors, this is the gigahertz number; for smartphones and cameras, the megapixels of the sensor are important; for cars, it's the horsepower.
Even though these features may not end up giving an end customer the decisive advantages in use, they can be used as an easy comparison. And your marketing needs to reflect that.

Shortage - If only a few copies are still available, this is for many customers a decisive purchase incentive. Especially in the Retargeting this scarcity plays a decisive role - the advantage: Here you can particularly easily measure whether a potential customer is quick to strike when only a few copies are still available.

Availability - Similar to the shortage are also fast delivery and availability decisive factors. If customers need the goods quickly, they often look around for another store or prefer to pay a premium for fast delivery. Analyze your customers' buying behavior here by checking the drop-off rate on product pages with long delivery times.

The drop-off rate gives a better understanding of the bias of the potential customer.
The drop-off rate gives a better understanding to the bias of the potential customer (Fig. slideshare.net)

Expert judgments - How do sites like Stiftung Warentest assess a product, what seals of approval and certificates do goods or stores and companies have? In the case of expert judgments, trust in the judging portal is important; simple comparison sites tend to fall under social confirmation.

Social confirmation - The opinion of the community is comparable to the opinion of experts. Here, the focus is on stars awarded and data accumulated in the masses. Recommendation portals or links in social networks also create the link between social interaction and professional advice.

Bonuses - Not only better prices are an indicator that potential customers can easily use for comparison, but also a bonus. These can be free additions to the purchase, but also intangibles such as an extended warranty.

Understand bias, analyze it and optimize it in the right places

The principles of these six relevant biases interact to give you a Indicator for your brand perception and provide you with levers to optimize them and thus optimize the incentive to buyn.
Adjustment should be made via careful adjustments whose changes are easy for you to measure. In many cases, you don't even need to change anything to assess the effectiveness of certain biases on your target audience. Do shortages prove particularly promising, or are items with short delivery times especially popular? In which niche is it worth investing, where is there still room for improvement in your offering?

The bias gives you an understandable overview, which is limited to the most important adjusting screws and thus lets you react faster

The Messy Middle - between expansion and evaluation

An additional summary can be applied to the search for and presentation of information on the web. Here, the use of search service providers, social media, reviews, rating portals and other offerings is divided into expansive exploration (exploration mode) and reductive action and analysis (Evaluation mode).
Both processes are essential for an informed buying process. In the exploration phase, customers can obtain broad information about a desired problem solution and initially obtain a quantitative overview.
This is then refined in the evaluation phase by consulting expert opinions, assessments and analyses. The quantity of options is now limited again.

Between incentives, opinions, reviews and tests lies the Messy Middle. This is precisely where a potential customer makes purchasing decisions. But of course, this process is not to be regarded as stringent either, but rather runs in interactions. Incentives, research, information, further searches, evaluations - all these processes can be repeated any number of times until a purchase decision is made. If a purchase decision is made at all.

Alternating between "exploring" and "evaluating", the customer makes his purchase decision - in the "messy middle".
Alternating between "exploring" and "evaluating", the customer makes his purchase decision - in the "messy middle" (Fig: thinkwithgoogle.com)

Using this Messy Middle as leverage for your success is critical. Above all, keep in mind that your actions will be reflected in the unconscious of potential customers, and above all, you must be present. This can be done through Brand presence or you can do it by Targeting incentives more effectively and thus shorten the customer journey.

The Messy Middle presents a challenge in this regard, as it should not be broken by marketing efforts, but rather good marketing organically fits into the cycle of exploration and evaluation.

PowerPoint Template: Effective Marketing Thanks to Customer Journey Map - Download

Emotion, rationality and influence - how to analyze the buying behavior of your customers

Analyzing and understanding behavior is a process that goes beyond just collecting metrics. This is not just about statistics, but about the Exploring cultural and psychological processes. You need to be aware of the things a potential customer does on impulse and this requires not only analytical skills but also empathy.

The flood of information and offers makes it more difficult for companies to navigate potential customers into a classic sales funnel, which no longer exists in practice. Only via Targeted analysis and proactive action you can deal with the growing complexity of the purchase decision.

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