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Category : Customer Experience

Making Decisions Simple

This is the second part in a two-part post on the importance of simplicity to the decision to purchase. For the first post, which explains why simplicity is important, see Make Purchasing Decisions Simple.
By simplifying the purchasing decision you can not only gain more customers, but create more satisfied customers as well.
As scientists are presented with ever increasing options and information, the traditional purchase funnel model is breaking. Research has shown that as consumers are overloaded with information and choice, more are adopting a dynamic buying cycle, adding and dropping products from consideration nearly continuously as they progress towards their decision. Others are focusing in on a single brand, excluding any others from consideration. Furthermore, overabundance of choice is decreasing consumers’ satisfaction with both the purchase process and their purchase. There is a way to benefit from this, however. In doing so, you’ll obtain more customers and increase their satisfaction: Make their purchasing decision simple. But how do you do this? The answer comes in three parts.

First, users must be able to easily navigate your product information. Independent of format, they must be lead to the information that they need easily and the information must be presented neatly. In many cases, this means that you’ll need to present information for many different applications, but finding the information for each application must be obvious. It should come as no surprise that the easiest format to provide such a broad amount of information is on your website. Users must be able to find as much information as they want without being overwhelmed. Good navigation will provide easy access to a lot of information with a lot of opportunity to move to the next step.

Secondly, users must be able to trust the information they find, which means that life science tools companies need to provide trustworthy information. Some level of trust will be built by validating your marketing messages with data and other proven information. Testimonials may help somewhat. Reviews and information from independent scientists on third-party websites will imbue even more trust. (Want to lead people to content on external websites then easily guide them back to your website? Ask us about our solutions.) However your company attempts to build trust, your marketing and sales teams need to take a proactive role in doing so.

Lastly, life science tools companies need to make it easy for customers to weigh their options. Note that weighing options does not mean comparing all the options that are out there – again, too much information and choice is often the problem and not the solution. However, over the course of providing customers with information, you’ve likely established many choices (even if they are all your own products, as may likely be the case). Now you must assist the customer in making the final decision. Does your product have multiple models? Help select the one that is best for them. Are there different feature sets available? Help guide customers through the process of choosing which features are right for them. This can be a hands-off or hands-on process, depending at what point you generally convert prospects into leads.

By providing easily navigable, trustworthy information, and helping customers weigh their options, life science marketers can make their purchasing decisions far simpler. By being the one that does so, you not only gain the opportunity to tilt the scales heavily in your favor, but you ultimately increase customer satisfaction by making your customers more certain that the decision to buy your product was the correct one.

"Does your life science marketing make scientists purchasing decisions simple? Are you getting a lot of visibility but not generating a lot of leads or sales? BioBM Consulting has develops custom solutions, specifically designed for small life science tools companies, that leverage the best practices in life science marketing without costing tens of thousands of dollars to implement. Contact us to learn more."

Make Purchasing Decisions Simple

Scientists may be getting overwhelmed with too much information, having effects on how they make purchasing decisions
Researchers from the Corporate Executive Board analyzed results from multiple surveys that totaled over 7,000 consumers, as well as interview with hundreds of marketing experts and executives, trying to figure out what makes a product “stick”. They looked at over 40 variables, trying to figure out what is most important in the choice of one brand over others. The results, discussed in a recent Harvard Business Review article, may surprise you. The key wasn’t frequency of interaction with the brand, nor was it price, nor was it the consumer’s initial perception of the brand. In the end, the purchasing decisions are most influenced by which company makes the decision to purchase simple.

Just so this doesn’t get taken out of context, we’re not talking about making the purchase simple. Putting up big red flags that says “buy this here” isn’t going to help you. We’re talking about making the decision simple. As Spenner and Freeman describe it in the HBR article: “the ease with which consumers can gather trustworthy information about a product and confidently and efficiently weigh their purchase options.” The reason for this? In a new world of marketing flooded with choice, driven by content, and with staggering amounts of marketing messages, many customers are simply overloaded with information. They’ll reward the brand that best helps them make things simple again.

How great is this effect? Spenner and Freeman created a “decision simplicity index” that graded brands on how easy it is to gather, navigate, and assess information about them. Those that scored in the top 25th percentile were 86% more likely to be purchased and 115% more likely to be recommended to others than those in the bottom 25th percentile. That is awfully dramatic.

Now all of this requires our usual grain of salt (I’m a scientist by training as well and as such am a naturally skeptical creature). These are general-purpose consumers that were studied and analyzed. The scientist is not the average consumer. The scientist is more skeptical, more analytical, and more capable of dealing with large amounts of information. However, even scientists will have a threshold at which an abundance of information will become too much information and the effect that decision simplicity has on the purchase decision will be significant. As the growth in the life sciences in general leads to the growth in life science tools, an abundance of options may eventually lead to information overload for all scientists, and those who simplify the decision making process will be rewarded.

Even now, however, life science marketers stand to benefit from making decision processes simple. We’ll be following this post up with another on how to simplify the purchase decision. Be sure to check back for more information.

"If you’re following the traditional methods of life science marketing, you are likely not to get the desired results, or may be facing diminishing returns and decreasing marketing ROI. Don’t let that happen. BioBM Consulting has life science marketing solutions for small life science tools companies that transform their marketing based on the newest scientist-consumer trends and information, helping you to drive demand and accelerate your sales. Contact us to speak with one of our professionals about how we can help your life science company."