Customers don't just buy. Their purchase decisions are shaped by their entire buying experience, from the initial spark of interest to the final purchase.
Each stage of the customer decision-making process is crucial. If you want to succeed in today's cutthroat market, you'll need to learn and leverage the subtleties of consumer behavior at each stage.
Understanding why, when, and how your customers make buying decisions will help you create memorable customer experiences, remove obstacles, drive more conversions and improve your business processes.
In this post, we'll examine the many phases of the consumer decision-making process and uncover secrets to win customers over at each level. We’ll also share some practical, real-life examples and templates that’ll help you along the way.
The consumer decision-making process is a series of steps an individual undergoes to make a purchase. It is also called the Buyer Decision Process and covers the five stages a buyer goes through before, during and after buying your product.
The consumer buying process begins when with the buyer recognizing their need and ends with them evaluating their purchase decision. Each step of this process allows you to make smart moves that position you properly and ensure the buyer chooses your product at the end of their decision-making journey.
Having a good knowledge of how your customers make buying decisions allows you to create more targeted marketing strategies to interact with them at each stage of the decision-making process.
Here are some more reasons you need a grasp of the consumer decision-making process.
Throughout the buying process, your customer will inevitably consult a number of various resources for information. It is your job to make sure that information is readily accessible when they are ready to process it.
Let’s explore what’s going through a buyer’s head from the moment they identify their need to when they make a purchase.
This process isn’t always linear. Some products go through this process swiftly, while others go progressively. Buyers may quickly decide to purchase a low-cost or low-involvement product without investing much time or effort in the decision-making process.
For example, a buyer may spend little to no time comparing the prices and colors of snacks in a vending machine. What they are most interested in is satisfying their hunger.
Compare that to a B2B company interested in buying enterprise software. They would spend more time researching the features, pricing, reviews and whether it fits their needs.
Below are the 5-step processes most buyers go through when making a purchase.
The first step in the consumer decision making process is when the buyer recognizes that they have a need or a problem and require a solution.
Problem recognition may be influenced by internal factors such as new needs, interests, beliefs or external factors like learning, dissatisfaction with current products or advertising.
When people become aware of a need, they feel compelled to find a solution, and they devote more time and energy to exploring their options.
Your focus at the problem recognition stage would be to identify the core need behind customer needs and position yourself to be seen as a solution to that need.
Let’s take Native Deodorants as an example. Native identified that consumers were becoming more conscious of the ingredients used in deodorants and the health risks they posed. Thus, the core need of their customers was a deodorant that didn’t contain harmful substances like aluminum.
Native positioned itself as a solution that offered natural deodorants that were aluminum-free, paraben-free and made with recognizable ingredients, emphasizing product benefits.
They went on to create awareness using social media, influencers and advertising. They even engaged with consumers to build trust and offered incentives to encourage them to try the product. At this stage, the consumer recognized the need for a safe deodorant. Also, Native identified their customers' core needs and created awareness of their products as a solution.
The next step the buyer will take after identifying and accepting their need or problem will be to search for a solution. Research shows that 87% of shoppers start their product searches online. In most cases, Google may be the first port of call!
At this stage, they want to know what products and services exist to fulfill their needs.
The consumer researches and gathers information by;
While the consumer is actively looking for information, your goal at this stage should be to put out as much information as needed about your product or service. You may want to optimize your website and content for search engines or leverage social media.
The goal is to be present when your target audience comes searching. In other words, make it easy for your target customer to find you or find information about your product or service.
You can also take advantage of paid advertising to target buyers who are searching for products you offer. Actively encouraging satisfied customers to leave positive reviews for your products will also let prospects perceive you as a trusted solution.
Warby Parker established a strong online presence with an e-commerce website showcasing prescription glasses and providing detailed product information. They optimized their website for search engines and shared valuable content related to eyewear and fashion.
In a competitive market like New York, Warby Parker utilized smart sales skills and strategies like geotargeting, paid ads and promotions. This put them on the radar of consumers in the area who were in the information search stage.
Warby Parker made it easy for customers to find them and positioned themselves as a trusted source of information. This ultimately increased their chances of being considered and chosen by consumers needing prescription glasses.
Now the consumer has gathered information on potential products that may solve their needs. Yours is one of them. In this stage, they compare and contrast the various options and alternatives they have at their disposal.
Depending on the complexity of the products, a few factors your target audience may be looking out for include, but are not limited to:
At this stage, you can take advantage of sales collateral to showcase the value of your products. Examples of sales collateral you could use are sales battle cards, product demos, product sell sheets, videos, case studies and more.
You can share deal-closing insights with your team using this sales battle card template below:
There's also a case study template you can use to showcase your brand's performance:
This product sell sheet is a valuable asset for highlighting your product’s key features and benefits:
Hurray! The buyer has gone through three buying stages of the consumer decision-making process and has now selected a product they believe will solve their problem best.
If this product is yours, your customer will head over to your online store, purchase page, or retail store to buy the product. While this is an exciting moment, you must remain aware of some obstacles that may arise at this stage.
These obstacles may hinder a smooth sale, so information must be put out to handle them before the need arises. Some obstacles that may occur are:
Knowing this step can help you prepare and provide content, materials, or strategies to combat these hindrances and ensure a smooth sale.
A good example is the sportswear company Nike. Nike offers a seamless checkout process and allows its customers to make up to four interest-free payments for products. This immediately eases the stress on their customers, who may not have had an initial budget for the product.
Nike also offers free shipping and free 60-day returns for its members. During the purchase decision, this can encourage customers to go ahead with Nike instead of alternatives, as they would feel secure with their purchase.
A great step you can take for consumers at this stage is to project the various obstacles that may hinder a good sale and provide solutions ahead of time. This will make your customer more comfortable and secure with your product.
Using this modern infographic, you can detail the specific features your customers gain with each pricing plan.
This last step in the consumer decision-making process is the post-purchase evaluation. This step is very important in the buyer's decision-making process because it determines whether or not they’ll move forward with your brand.
In this step, your customer will probably ask these questions:
Your customer is evaluating the use of your product to assess if they made the right choice or not. This evaluation can influence their loyalty to your brand, future buying decisions, or even recommendations.
But you don’t have to leave it all to chance. You can provide post-sale services that keep your customers happy and satisfied with their purchases.
A brand that understood this consumer decision process model and effectively applied it is Bombas. Their help center offers a ton of information that guides their customers even after a purchase. Customers can get answers to questions like “How do I wash my socks?” or “How can I recycle my Bombas?”
They also have a section to keep customers happy called “Happiness Guarantee”
According to Bombass, the happiness guarantee is dedicated to ensuring that every Bombas customer is satisfied through generous replacement programs.
Understanding what sort of value or services your customers will appreciate and implementing them post-sale will boost your customer loyalty, referrals and revenue.
You can create engaging customer feedback forms with Visme Forms to evaluate purchase satisfaction.
Visme has some professionally designed templates to help you better understand your audience and refine your sales strategy. We'll take a look at them.
But first, hear what the Polly, a creative director at IBM has to say about her team's experience with Visme.
““Visme is something that I would highly recommend. It made us look a lot better in our clients’ eyes because it's something that's visually effective as a marketing tool. It’s a great tool to facilitate sharing that information in a much more visually-friendly and user-friendly method.” - Polly Brewster | Creative Director of IBM's Talent Acquisition Optimization & Recruitment Team
If you're short on time, use Visme's AI Designer to generator a document for you. This AI Document Generator is designed to create personalized templates in a matter of minutes.
Here are some of Visme's templates that'll help you understand your customers better:
Capture essential information and requirements about your ideal users and visualize their common characteristics and traits with the help of this template. It has a visually appealing design layout, complete with high-resolution images, icons and dynamic content blocks provided by Visme. Automatically customize this template with your brand assets using Visme's brand wizard.
When it comes to gaining valuable insights into how your customers interact with your product, a user journey map is an invaluable tool. This helps to outline your ICPs business buying decision and more.
Our template is designed with visually appealing graphics, arrows, icons and layouts that make it effortless to translate insights from your user journey into actionable information.
With simple customization options such as color and font editing, you can easily tailor the template to align with your brand. You can also add Visme’s icons, stock photos and videos to make your design more appealing.
If you have trouble finding the perfect image use the AI Image Generator. Simply enter a detailed prompt and let the AI share several output styles: photos, paintings, pencil drawings, 3D graphics, and more for you to choose from.
With this whiteboard template, you can create and visualize realistic user personas for the key decision-makers involved in purchasing your product or service.
Dive deep into their needs, behaviors and motivations to craft targeted marketing messages that resonate with your audience. Featuring beautiful colors and stunning fonts, this fully customizable template can be tailored to reflect your brand's unique aesthetic, helping you create compelling marketing campaigns.
It's important to create a user persona that closely portrays your buyer or user. This could mean collaborating with internal stakeholders by sharing this template with them to contribute their input.
If it's solely on you to create one and you're struggling to fully capture what to say about your user persona, you can use the AI Writer. This AI-powered tool will help you create detailed personas effortlessly, ensuring your marketing messages are always engaging and precisely tailored to your audience.
Lastly, Use Visme's Dynamic Fields to easily update information on this template and throughout your projects.
Use this template to provide a clear visual representation of how your customers navigate through your business.
With its sleek and intuitive design, this infographic is perfect for business and marketing presentations by professionals who want to effortlessly interpret and illustrate crucial touchpoints and areas that require improvement in a customer's journey with your business.
Whether you're fine-tuning your business strategies or highlighting key moments in your marketing campaigns, this infographic template is a great tool to convey your message with impact.
Use this brainstorming template with your team to collaborate with your team as you discuss insights about your customer decision-making process. This template will aid collaborative learning and visual thinking. You can include charts, graphs, maps, widgets and other data visualization tools to showcase data.
You can better serve your customers, remove roadblocks, increase conversions, and fine-tune your operations if you have a firm grasp of the factors that influence their purchasing decisions.
Visme can assist you in increasing sales, fostering relationships and streamlining the sales process with appealing and professionally designed visual content.
Create visual presentations, training materials, graphics and other print and digital materials for sales support, marketing, human resources and other uses with Visme. Our easy-to-use software allows people of varying design skills to create professional work that’s engaging and within brand guidelines. So, you don't have to worry if you're not a professional designer.
Utilize tools for collaboration, live sharing, presenting and more to understand your audience, unite your team and produce outstanding sales content.
If you're looking for tools to help your team sell more effectively, you can also browse through these unique sales templates and learn more about selling with Visme here.
