Tag Archive for Purchasing Decisions

12 Apr 2010
Marketing Strategy • Saving Money

Tips for Print Buying

We are all being pressured to produce more with less. More powerful campaigns, more cutting-edge designs, more targeted pieces, more tangible ROI, more pizzazz than your competitors’ materials, more pressure to deliver faster with less money in your marketing budget.

These tips should apply in any economy, but right now it is so important to save every possible fraction of a cent.

  1. Maintain a list of vendors and their capabilities, they offer different services at different prices, this is due the differences in press sizes and other equipment features. Also track information about concerns, list the name of the vendor, dates and any possible problems.
  2. Get recommendations from other buyers and designers who produce similar types of materials, ask about pricing, service, ability to meet deadlines.
  3. Don’t expect printing to be done overnight.
  4. What matters most to you, delivery date, price, print quality or “wow!”? Know your priorities and share them with your printer.
  5. Get quotes from new suppliers and develop relationships during times when you are not busy, the more details you provide a potential printer, the better estimate you will receive.
  6. If you plan to mail the pieces, think about schedules, post office regulations, designing for mailing, USPS rates/costs, mailing lists, mailing houses, fulfillment, and so on. Dean’s Mailing is happy to review proofs before they go to press to look for possible improvements.
  7. Take advantage of payment terms and discounts.
  8. Consider direct paper stock purchases, paper is the biggest cost factor of a print job.
  9. Meet with paper vendors to determine what paper stocks can bring the most value and look for incentive programs.
  10. Work with up to five printers, don’t concentrate all your resources with just one vendor.
  11. Find the printers who can offer your more; creative ideas, lots of experience, current with the technology, and people who understand your business.
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26 Feb 2010
Buying Behavior

The Three Minute Rule

Harvard Business Review recently posted an article by Anthony Tjan, CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of the venture capital firm Cue Ball.

He suggested that one way to know and understand customers better is by studying the broader context in which your customers use your product or service. To do this, ask what your customer is doing three minutes immediately before and three minutes after he uses your product or service.

The examples included Thomson, a media and information provider, asking the questions about products provided to investment analysts with financial earnings data. Immediately after getting the data, a large number of analysts were painstakingly importing it into Excel and reformatting it. This observation led to developing a more seamless Excel plug-in feature. The result was an almost immediate and very significant uplift in sales.

In a study of female drug store shoppers, a significant number of women picked up a disposable camera after putting newborn diapers into their shopping carts. Follow-up interviews confirmed that snap-happy moms were often new moms. Placing disposable diapers close to inexpensive disposable cameras furthered this purchase pattern and would not have otherwise been an intuitive merchandising or cross-selling strategy.

In the book, Why We Buy, author Paco Underhill describes how shoppers who do not have a shopping basket or shopping cart go quickly to the checkout when their arms get full. A casual observer says that is obvious. A savvier approach might be to interview people in a checkout line with an armful of goods to ask where they were three minutes earlier and if they would have considered buying anything else if it hadn’t been so difficult to carry so many items. Underhill concludes that more establishments should consider putting shopping baskets in the middle of the store to keep customers in shopping mode longer (since research showed that few would go back to the front of the store to get a cart once engaged with shopping).

These situations illustrate how easy it is to fall prey to narrow thinking. In the Thomson example, they thought of themselves as a data provider, though they were really part of a broader workflow solution. In the cross-selling and shopping-basket examples, the three-minute rule reminds us that rearranging the context of a shopping experience to better meet customer patterns can be extremely effective. Customers seek solutions, but it is likely that your offering is only part of one. The three-minute rule is a mechanism to see the bigger picture and adjacent opportunities.

Are you thinking of what your customers are doing? Is there a way we can help you provide a more complete solution?

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17 Feb 2010
Marketing Strategy • Saving Money

Function for All

Trendwatching.com’s February 2010 newsletter highlights products that are simple, small and/or cheap. The products and services are designed for low(er)-income users in emerging markets, but manage to appeal to buyers in mature consumer cultures too.

Goods and services especially designed for emerging markets often incorporate one or more of the following characteristics:

  • Smaller and/or limited number of features, to keep prices low.
  • Simpler, or easier to use, for inexperienced consumers.
  • Energy efficient (or not using any traditional energies at all) and/or easy to repair and/or waste-reducing.
  • Robust, as some of them are used in rugged conditions.
  • Well-designed (the democratization of design is a global phenomenon).
  • Aimed at helping owners to generate income, or allow users to create self-sustaining systems.
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26 Jan 2010
Advertising • Buying Behavior

2010 Consumer Trends

Trendwatching.com published a list of key trends that they see for consumers in 2010. You may be interested as you think forward. We are  sharing a summary email that they sent out in November.

1. BUSINESS AS UNUSUAL The societal changes that will dominate 2010 were set in motion way before we temporarily stared into the abyss.

2. URBANY Urban culture is the culture. Extreme urbanization, in 2010, 2011, 2012 and far beyond will lead to more sophisticated and demanding consumers around the world.

3. REAL-TIME REVIEWS Whatever it is you’re selling or launching in 2010, it will be reviewed ‘en masse’, live, 24/7.

4. (F)LUXURY Closely tied to what constitutes status, which itself is becoming more fragmented, luxury will be whatever consumers want it to be over the next 12 months.

5. MASS MINGLING Online lifestyles are fueling ‘real world’ meet-ups like there’s no tomorrow, shattering all predictions about a desk-bound, virtual, isolated future.

6. ECO-EASY To really reach some meaningful sustainability goals in 2010, corporations and governments will have to forcefully make it ‘easy’ for consumers to be more green, by restricting the alternatives.

7. TRACKING & ALERTING Tracking and alerting are the new search, and 2010 will see countless new INFOLUST (consumers lusting after relevant information) services that will help consumers expand their web of control.

8. EMBEDDED GENEROSITY This year, generosity as a trend will adapt to the zeitgeist, leading to more pragmatic and collaborative donation services for consumers.

9. PROFILE MYNING (as in data and profile mining by its rightful owners, i.e. consumers) With hundreds of millions of consumers now nurturing some sort of online profile, 2010 will be a good year to help them make the most of it (financially), from intention-based models to digital afterlife services.

10. MATURIALISM 2010 will be even more opinionated, risque, outspoken, if not ‘raw’ than 2009; you can thank the anything-goes online world for that.

Some of these trends apply to you. How can we help you craft your marketing message to respond to what is happening now?

The trend for Mass Mingling also applies to marketing. Even though people are getting more and more information electronically, they are still responding to traditional communication channels. Mail can help cut through some of the electronic information competition and truly complement a multichannel communication strategy.

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19 Jan 2010
Buying Behavior • Direct Mail

The Mail Moment

Many businesses are re-evaluating any and all business decisions, including marketing decisions, during this economic cycle. They are looking at response rates to their marketing efforts and the costs to get those responses.

The US Postal Service published a study called “The Mail Moment”. This study was conducted a few years ago after most Americans had adopted new habits for shopping and gathering purchasing information using the Internet.

“The Mail Moment defines the highly interactive daily ritual that consumers devote to bringing in their Mail and discovering what it offers.”

“Right now – in a market you want to reach – your ideal prospect is just waiting for the moment. She’s eager to invite you in to see what your message can bring to her life. She’s even willing to set aside time to focus solely on what you have to say.”

“The study also found that Mail is placed where it’s seen and used and that it moves from room to room, allowing consumers to read it at their convenience. Mail may be the easiest way to reach household and financial decision makers.”

Mail is welcomed into people’s days and plays a unique and personal role in their lives. Mail offers you the opportunity to create an emotional connection with your customers.

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14 Jan 2010
Buying Behavior • Direct Mail

New Statistics About Mail

In a recent article in Target Marketing Magazine titled To Mail or Not to Mail author Pat Friesen cited some surprising statistics.

“Fifty-six percent of Americans surveyed by InnoMedia say receiving mail is a pleasure.”

“Sixty-seven percent of Americans feel traditional mail is more personal than Internet communications, according to research from the U.S. Postal Service.”

“Among Gen Yers (born 1977-1994) and Gen Xers (born 1965-1976), more than 70 percent sort their mail immediately reports the USPS.”

Young consumers invest time with their direct mail knowing it is advertising. They are motivated to receive information to help make buying decisions.

“Studies show direct mail is favorably received by young consumers because it’s tangible-they keep and browse through catalogs; it’s private-there’s an advantage to NOT being able to forward it to everyone in someone else’s address book; and it’s secure-58 percent still prefer receiving and paying bills by mail.”

“There are people who are more comfortable receiving and responding to direct mail than e-mail, even when they have e-mail addresses. For example, marketers of products and services for older seniors (75+), continue to use direct mail to generate leads and sales. These seniors are motivated readers that open and keep direct mail. NOTE: Don’t assume that because you have e-mail addresses for any age group, e-mail is the preferred medium for hearing from you.”

“Mail is more private than e-mail according to 66 percent of those participating in a recent U.S. Postal Service study. They said the Internet is not a substitute for mail. Sixty-eight percent also said mail is more secure.”

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20 Nov 2009
Buying Behavior

The Way Consumers Make Purchasing Decisions Is Evolving

According to an article extracted from McKinsey Quarterly by Harvard Business Publishing, customers are controlling more of the buying decision process and actively “pulling” information helpful to them. McKinsey research found that during the phase when consumers are considering a purchase, 2/3 of the touch point moments (that is, instances when customers learned more about a product) were actually driven by the consumer rather than the seller. These include reading product reviews on the Internet, discussing a product with friends and family, or in-store interactions.

Traditional marketing, including direct mail, remains important, but more in building brand and awareness, before customers are decide exactly what to purchase.

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