In this article, we want to talk to you about a fundamental aspect that you need to know even before thinking about the drafting of your content, which is the purchase process.
By knowing the phases that distinguish the purchase process, you will be able to better understand the needs of your users and for this reason, you will be able to write more optimized content, which will be able to increase your conversion factor to purchase.
How do we choose to purchase a product or service?
The study of the optimization of advertising campaigns has led many marketing experts to ask themselves this important question. The answer that these studies have highlighted is that before deciding whether or not to buy a product of our interest, our brain goes through a series of progressive phases, each of which has the task of answering a specific question.
Let’s see this process together and try to analyze it to understand how to exploit it while writing our content.
The purchasing process in detail
- Recognition of the need: In this first phase, we realize that we have a need that cannot be solved at the moment. For example, we find that we don’t have a microwave oven at home and we realize that owning one could make our life easier. We, therefore, decide to investigate microwave ovens.
- Search for information: At this stage, prompted by the recognition of our problem, we take care of collecting information about our needs and we find out about the pros and cons of making the purchase that we have considered. In the case presented to you in the previous point, for example, we will evaluate the pros and cons of using a microwave oven in our kitchen.
- Evaluation of alternatives: at this stage, we focus on evaluating all the alternatives that the current market offers us. We evaluate the quality/price ratio of each possibility and compare it with our real needs.
- Purchase decision: If we get to this stage, it means that the evaluations we have made up to now have been successful. This is where we REALLY decide to buy the product.
- Purchase: At this stage, we process the purchase of the product and begin to use it, evaluating it from an objective point of view.
- Post-purchase behavior: Post-purchase behavior is the phase that follows the purchase of a product. At this stage, we build our personal opinions on the product we purchased and on the company from which we bought it.
Take advantage of the stages of the purchasing process for our Affiliate Marketing campaigns
Knowing the stages of the buying process will help you improve the structure of your content. Now that you know how users to shop (on the web or in person) it will be easier for you to write optimized content for your products.
Specifically, let me give you some advice to make the most of the stages of the purchasing process within your content:
- Always contextualize the product (s) you are promoting. This will help your users better understand if that product is right for them or not.
- Explain the pros and cons of your product, in order to help your users get a clear idea of the type of product they are documenting.
- Offer more or less expensive alternatives, in order to allow your users to have a range of possible choices.
- Optimize your content based on the keywords that a user would search for during the “Evaluation of alternatives” phase as you will have more chances of getting traffic from users who are really interested in buying your product.
Conclusion
Now that you know the steps of the buying process, you should have learned something useful to optimize the writing of your content to maximize the conversion factor.
Remember, always keep in mind how the online purchase process works and you will see that you will be able to quickly increase your profits.
