There is a reinforcing cycle of engagement with a product that a customer will go through, from first hearing of it to becoming a repeat paying customer. The best way to optimise this cycle is to consider its stages from a customer perspective. What are the necessary conditions for a customer to complete a purchase?
Head
The first step is for a customer to hear about the product. This means learning about its existence and attributes; what it does, how it works, its price, a comparison with the competition. A full brand positioning exercise in frames of reference, points of parity, and points of difference needs to be communicated.
For a B2B product, provenance, technical capabilities, ISOs and regulatory approvals may be needed. For a B2C product, the name, logo, associated images, packaging, and tagline will all need to be communicated.
Heart
Once a potential customer knows about the product, they have to want it and like it, meaning in turn that they will want to buy it. Believing in your credibility to deliver straddles Head and Heart.
High involvement products involve a process of learning about the product before a customer makes a purchasing decision. A TV or car is an example, and the clarity of the data available is often as important as the data itself. Low involvement products might include kitchen paper, which is not researched and predominantly influenced by branding and marketing.
If a product is experiential, then the results will only be known after the product is consumed. A customer won’t know if they will enjoy a certain movie at the cinema until they actually go and see it, by which time it is too late. On the other hand, a tin of white paint normally does what it says on the tin.
Hand
Finally, a customer puts their hand in their pocket and actually pays you money for the product. They have now begun a behaviour, which will hopefully be repeated in the future. As well as causing inertia, preventing customers from moving to a different product, this helps by verifying issues of trust and delivery a customer may have had about your product. Habit is as strong an ally as it was a barrier at the start.
Blockers and Drivers
The Head Heart Hand cycle can be used to determine the list of conditions or stages required before a purchase. If customers are failing buy, identify the exact stage at which they are stopping, and remedy it.
- Awareness: media, messaging, advertising
- Interest: targeting, positioning, branding
- Consideration: features, perception
- Intention: pricing, differentiation, channels
- Action: distribution, incentivisation, merchandising
Don’t treat customers like a nuisance, who will start purchasing if you can just get the right introduction to the right person who will tell them to do so. Separate their journey into the stages provided in this article, and investigate your success at each one. Spending more and more on a bigger and better product is rarely the solution, as bottlenecks often lie somewhere between interest and intention.