Whether your customers are consumers or other businesses, understanding their buying behaviour is one of the important aspects needed for small business marketing success.

Customers will base their buying decisions on both rational and emotional reasons. Usually customers will look at a category on a rationale basis eg. buying breakfast cereal and then decide, especially for repeat customers on the brand eg Kellogg’s Corn Flakes on an emotional basis.

To get your customers to have an emotional attachment to your brand is one of the keys to keeping them loyal and them not being influenced by competitors’ offerings of lower prices or other incentives.

Gaining a better understanding of your customers’ buying behaviour is based on knowing the following:

Awareness
How aware are customers of your brand or business compared to your competitors?

Reasons for buying
The reasons include the rational which I call the head part eg. convenience and the important emotional reasons which is of course is to do with feelings eg. happiness.

How often do they buy?
Such as weekly, monthly etc and this information can aid you with the timing of your marketing tactics.

Current usage
This is helpful because sometimes the person buying the products or services may not be the person actually using the products or services. Think of parents buying for their family.

Reasons for usage
This is simply the main reasons why they use or consume your products or services and again the reasons will be based both on a rational and emotional basis.

What do they buy?
If you have a range of products and services it is a good idea to understanding which particular products or services they buy on a regular basis.

Where do they like to buy?
This refers to the distribution channels eg. via your website. Understanding this will assist you to decide where you need to focus your attention.

Where do they gather their buying information?
Today there are so many sources of information it is helpful to understand where they get the information to help with their buying decisions eg from friends or colleagues.

Are they an exclusive customer?
In some product or service categories the customer may have a set of three or four brands they choose from and this may give you more information about your competitors.

The more you understand about your customers’ buying behaviour the easier it is to strengthen your relationship with them and focus your marketing strategies and tactics to grow your business.

About the Author:  Susan Oakes

Susan Oakes is the founder of Marketing for Business Success Pty Ltd and M4B Marketing. Susan helps small businesses get and stay on the path to marketing success. The core is building and strengthening key customer relationships and keeping marketing simple to get greater results.

Link to Susan's website for more info.