Audience research is easier when your audience wants something. What happens when they don't?
I’ve spent my career thinking about buyer journeys and buying committees. Trying to understand the people involved in deciding what gets bought, what matters to them, and what they need to know along the way.
Now I'm a buying committee of one — I control a large portion of the financial decisions that happen in my home/family, and I'm wondering what brands think my buyer's journey looks like.
I’m betting they don’t really know. At least not the whole picture. If I’m looking to buy something, I’ve sent signals. I’m in your funnel.
Because the in-market customer leaves a trail marketers can follow.
The out-of-market person has a life marketers need to understand.
Let me explain.
I’m living my life. Thinking about a potential family trip. Noticing a new skincare product. Seeing a dress I like. Ordering the same pet food I always order. Reading something about exercise. Noticing some leggings that might go with the exercise. I'm not necessarily ready to book, buy, or work out. I'm looking. Noticing. Window shopping.
I’m educated, experienced, have money to spend, strong preferences, and very little patience for brands that don't understand me.
So how does a brand catch my attention and keep it, so that when I’m ready to buy that jacket, pull the trigger on a family vacation, or update our patio furniture, I’ve already got an idea of the brands I like?
I’m part of a very valuable audience with substantial buying power, making decisions across many different product categories. At any particular moment, though, I’m probably out-of-market for almost all of them.
And that breadth matters. One of the reasons women like me are such a valuable audience is because we’re making purchasing decisions across so many different categories. But that’s also what makes us challenging to understand. No single purchasing category or behavior defines us particularly well. There is no neat way to define us as an audience, to say, “Here are Deb and the women like her.”
For instance...
I may have encountered a brand that sells bags I thought were cool months before I was genuinely interested in buying one. I might follow someone who occasionally talks about the brand that sells the bag I noticed months ago. A friend might own it. I’ve seen it mentioned in a newsletter, and I’ve even walked past its store. I might have formed an opinion about it without ever visiting its website.
Then one Tuesday, my dog ate a hole in the side of my favorite bag.
Suddenly I’m in-market. But my buyer's journey didn’t start when my dog realized I had left a half-eaten bag of pretzels in my bag. It started months ago, when I noticed the brand with the cool bag. If I “noticed” one cool bag, there are probably a few more, and these are the brands that will be on my list. And there are probably brands I've already ruled out, too. Before I've searched for a single bag, some brands are already in, and others are out.
I’ve already decided where my buying journey for my next bag will start, and it’s with the brands that I’m already paying attention to.
So then, I’m wondering which brands are trying to understand how they get my attention before I’m interested in buying their product.
Where did I first see the bag? Who introduced it to me? What made me remember it? What gave it credibility? Whose opinion mattered? And does the brand selling the bag I like have any idea that any of this happened?
Probably not.
By the time I search for the bag, visit the website, read reviews, or sign up for an email, a lot has already happened.
My accumulated awareness and trust did a shitload of the work.
And that’s the part I’m interested in.
I was valuable long before I was a lead.
So how do brands understand all of the stuff that happened before I became one?
Who am I beyond an age demographic?
Where do I actually spend my attention?
Why do certain people, places, and brands earn my trust?
And what could a brand do differently if it actually understood those things?
Don't wait until I'm a buyer to decide I'm worth understanding.
