Celebrity Apprentice: Right Guard proves the buying process

Last week on the Celebrity Apprentice, the folks at Right Guard got asked a pointed question.  They first  instructed the celebrities that the Right Guard target market was young, sporty males and thus their advertisement needed to reflect that. One of the Celebrity Apprentice team members asked, “Should we market to the mom’s and wives who may actually be the ones who buy the deodorant?”  And like they should, Right Guard knew the answer.

That’s one of the things we drill in our local marketing workshops – the buying process. If you don’t understand how your customer comes to buy your product, how do you market to that customer?

So their answer was, “Mom’s and wives may buy our product but we’ve found the males in the house influence the decision”.

That goes directly to the effectiveness of your e-mails, your headlines, your blog posts and your in-store advertising. If you don’t know who your real customer is, what are building upon?

Imagine an entire campaign laid out in Woman’s Day Magazine, in Oprah Magazine and in People attempting to educate mom’s on the benefits of Right Guard for their sons. Do you then marry the message with the look? Do you take away the sporty, edgy feel and give it a more wholesome “good for you” quality? And are your contests then loaded up with “mom” prizes?

. . . Only then to find out that your repeat buys are next to nothing because the boys want the edgier, more heavily celebrity-weighted “Arm & Hammer” – the next time? Because in the end, the mom’s and wives want their men to actually wear the deodorant. “Good for you” or not, if they don’t wear it – they won’t rebuy it.

Don’t begin the process until you look deeply at your own customer. Ask yourself these questions:

  1. How does my customer first hear of my existence?
  2. What is my customer doing moments before they buy my product?
  3. What is my customer buying? (In the case of Right Guard, the name of the scent? the look? the brand?”
  4. What stops a similar person from becoming a customer?
  5. Finally, what does my customer overcome to become my customer?

Have you figured out the buying process of your customer? How did you come to that conclusion?

And; if you’re interested in learning more about the buying process, check out our other buying process posts.

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Your Web Page and The Buying Process

This is the third time I’ve written about The Buying Process in the last few months.  This morning I met with some folks who hadn’t really spent a lot of time thinking about the buying process of their consumer. So after talking about it a bit, I wanted to add a little bit more.

Please check out these two posts on the Buying Process as well:

Your First Time Web Visitors First Glance

From a “buying process” perspective, what process must someone go through internally to sign up and become a member?

Here’s my thoughts on that:

  • They must find the site
  • They must find it interesting enough to read something or browse and not press the back button
  • What they’re reading or browsing must be interesting enough to signal their brain that this is a good site
  • After they’ve decided it is a good site, they must also have the feeling that this site will be good for them tomorrow or next year
  • (We need them to take an action at this point). They must be able to see how to bookmark the site, send a link to a friend, sign up for the newsletter, or join.
    the human brain
    Image by missjdub via Flickr
  • (Ultimately, we MUST be able to contact them somehow. There is no option here. We must be able to entice them back to the site.) To fork over their e-mail for example, they must be a reason to do so (newsletter, gift or free report), they need to see NO SPAM language and be absolutely clear of what they’re getting.
  • Then when they get the “confirm you want this newsletter” e-mail, they must still be confident and happy that they signed up.

So when you look at your website landing pages (where visitors first come in contact with you), I wonder do they know they are the target market? Do they know they are welcome and part of the group? Do they know that your site isn’t directed at someone else? Do they know that this site pertains to them? Do they know this is a place they can feel comfortable and read – not a place to have their guard up and be ready to be “sold” at any minute? Can they smile and feel like they’re home? Do they know we welcome them and they can come back?

After that long diatribe (and if you agree with the above), what do we need to do to satisfy those steps in the buying process? Look at the website Pre-boomermusings. It’s a relatively new site, but the front page respects the buying process.

It says “for people born between 1936 and 1945”. That’s very clear. He could have said “A blog for us pre-boomers”, but chose to help the user understand they’re included. The photo of Don reinforces who it is for. The word “boomer” in there reinforces who it is for. There being no ads helps make you comfortable and not put up your “hide the wallet” guard.

Can you tell that a person born in 1938 might be interested right away? It’s no “mecca of web design”, but it does have a clear message.

Does your site?