Every Sunday afternoon, I race through the grocery store picking the same items off the shelves that I purchased the week before. In preparation mode for another busy week, my only consideration is how much time this shopping trip is taking! This is routine shopping that doesn’t require extra thought or information besides opening our weekly calendar and thinking about what tastes good for dinner. We all have many routine shopping trips like this week in and week out, but we also have plenty of considered buys, and how we approach those purchases is much different.
A considered buy is the term for a purchase that has a significant amount of financial and/or emotional risk or reward attached to it. Considered buys are for items or services you obtain that would result in great disappointment if you went the wrong direction. The perceived financial and/or emotional risk or reward will dictate the amount of research, thought and effort one will put into the pre-buying process. Obviously, the more that’s on the line for the outcome dictates how much consideration one will give to the purchase.
Considered buys do not discriminate. They span multiple industries and purchase types. Some good examples of considered buys are: furniture, computers and other technology equipment, automobiles, wedding rings, homes, appliances, travel arrangements, investments, business software, and non-routine healthcare procedures. Considered buys appear in B2C as well as B2B scenarios. Service providers such as law firms, PEOs, and data-service providers are considered buys for their target audience.
A considered buy encompasses items that can be bought online as well as those that must be bought offline. Regardless of where the purchase takes place, the online content must be available for the research component of the buying process.
Netsertive completed a survey of 500+ U.S. consumers in 2018. One of the primary findings was that more than 79% of consumers research large purchases online, but buy in-store (for business-to-business think "in-person").
“Consumers today are entering businesses’ digital door before entering their
physical one,”
Brendan Morrissey, CEO and co-founder of Netsertive.
(source)
According to Google, 78% of people in the United States looked to the internet first when they need to research something in 2018. That’s an overwhelmingly high percentage that will likely climb as the paperless world of mobile devices continues to dominate.
Understanding that considered buys go hand-in-hand with online research is the key to understanding why it is important to pair a considered buy offering with inbound marketing.
As a refresher, inbound marketing is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. While outbound marketing interrupts your audience with content they don’t want, inbound marketing forms connections they’re looking for and solves problems they already have (HubSpot, 2019).
The key here is that inbound marketing puts the valuable content out that consumers are looking for. A purchaser is looking for content if she is pursuing a considered buy. When you utilize digital marketing, you are catering to your exact audience. Inbound marketing is most efficiently executed with software such as HubSpot which can help integrate all the activities.
If you aren't on board the inbound marketing train for your business yet, you need to jump on. The people buying your products and services are searching the internet for your solution. You need to be where they are looking. Contact us if we can help you.
