Landing Page Optimization and Buyer Modalities
I’m in the middle of reading the book Web Analytics 2.0by Avinash Kaushik (very good book by the way…). In the book, Kaushik (very briefly) brings up the topic of Buyer Modalities, and it reminded me of a project I had worked on a couple years ago around the topic.
After being reminded of the project, I thought it would be a perfect idea to write about here, so What I plan to do is actually a series of posts that discuss the different buyer modalities, and share examples of the project.
To get things started, I’ll first give a brief summary of how I interpreted the subject. To get a much more detailed explanation of Buyer Modalities, I’ve been recommended the book “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark” by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg… I will admit, I haven’t read it yet, but it’s high on my list. Anyways, here’s my take on it…
The concept of buyers modality basically says that there are several types of buying behaviours that online (and offline) shoppers have. Competitive, Humanistic, Methodical and Spontaneous. I found a good way to remember the names is the acronym “CHuMS“, since understanding them, they can be your friends.
Here is the very short and sweet definition of each… I hope to discuss them in more detail in the future posts.
Competitive – The competitive buyer modality is essentially the Keeping up with (or beating) the Jones’. Competitive buyers look for reasons why your product is the best, or how your product can make them the best.
Humanistic – Humanistic buying types relate well to family or lifestyle imagery and messaging. They look for products that can be used for their family.
Methodical – The methodical buying behaviour is very detail oriented. They are comparative shoppers, and tend to do more research on products than the other modalities. They like comparison charts, and stats.
Spontaneous – The spontaneous buyers are looking for immediate satisfaction. They are less concerned with the intricate details, and just want what they want, and will find a reason to buy it.
So, that in a very small nutshell is the concept of Buyer Modalities. In the following posts, I’ll dig much deeper into the what, why and how to appeal to these different behaviours. The first step in the process is defining what type of buyer your audience is, and how to appeal to each one. Just like the old addage says, “you can’t please all the people all the time”, it’s the same is for marketing… “you can’t market to all the people all the time.” Which is why understanding buying behaviours and how to market to them is very imporant when it comes to Landing Page optimization.
