Adjusting To Buyer Expectations

I might be stating the obvious here, but all businesses would be nowhere without their customers.

The whole point of most businesses is that they solve pain points for customers in return for money. However, getting customers is the tricky part. While both customer and business might agree on the end goal, they can have very different ideas about how they get there.

In this post I’ll be sharing how I analyzed buyer behavior for a client to understand what these buyers were expecting from their purchase journey.

Trying To Sell To Buyers Who Aren’t Ready To Be Sold To

Psycom defines cognitive dissonance as “a mental conflict that occurs when your beliefs don’t line up with your actions… In the moment cognitive dissonance can cause discomfort, stress, and anxiety.”

To examine this concept from a marketing angle, we can look at common consumer behavior. Many studies have shown that B2B buyers believe that it wouldn’t be wise to make a large organizational purchase on a whim, so they take action to conduct research before committing to spending thousands of dollars. I’ve seen this reflected in data when working with my own clients.

Understanding that B2B buyers need to conduct research, at one point a long time ago in marketing history, brands started developing eBooks to help buyers learn more about their offering. This was great because buyers could get a free resource to help them make a tough decision, and brands could capture some information about a potential prospect. Despite a strong start, this symbiotic relationship didn’t last very long.

Eventually some brands decided that bombarding leads with sales emails after they downloaded an eBook would be a good way to accelerate pipeline generation.

The only issue is, if a prospective buyer took action to engage in sales conversations before they had completed their research, they would be behaving inconsistently with their beliefs.

Enter cognitive dissonance, scaring potential customers away from working with brands that take this approach.

Working With Buyer Tendencies, And Not Against Them

When working with a client on promoting an eBook recently, we understood this effect, but only to a certain degree.

We didn’t set up heavy email campaigns trying to sell people on a fully fledged product just because they downloaded a PDF. The goal was to start a relationship with a valuable resource. Despite genuine intentions, this campaign didn’t perform the way we had hoped.

Sure, I made a handful of optimizations across audience, ad type, creative, copy, etc… but we didn’t see the volume of downloads we were hoping for. My theory around one of the factors that impacted performance is that buyers have become jaded to this tactic.

Do you find yourself hesitant to fill out a form for a free resource because you dread the incoming spam emails? I’m sure our audience certainly did.

Even though this client would have never sent those untimely sales emails as a part of this campaign, the targeted audience didn’t know that, and their experience with eBooks may have already been ruined.

That’s why my client and I are pivoting our approach here to focus on sharing thought leadership content with their target audience, without an ask from buyers. The goal here is to build trust and authority in the space that this client operates in, so that when buyers are ready to align their actions with their beliefs and start a conversation about making a purchase, they’ll already be thinking about this brand.

Wrapping Up

Every business needs customers to stay afloat, and getting new customers is difficult enough as it is. Therefore, it makes sense to craft a buying experience that is both relevant, and helpful.

My hope is that this example of how I used buyer behavior insights to pivot paid media strategy can help you adjust your marketing plans in other relevant applications!

Have questions, considerations, or critiques? I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this via email, just hit respond. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn and X (Twitter).