Are You Marketing to the Person Who Buys or the Person Who Uses?
Sometimes the person who buys your product is the person who uses it.
Sometimes they aren't.
That distinction sounds simple. But when the buyer and user are different, getting it wrong can affect everything from your positioning and messaging to your sales approach and ability to grow.
Think about diapers.
The baby uses the product. The parent or caregiver buys it.
Cereal adds another layer. A child may be the user and influence which brand they want, but the parent ultimately decides whether it goes in the cart.
The same thing happens with more complex purchases.
Hundreds of employees may use a product. One person recognizes the need. Another researches the options. Someone champions the purchase. And an executive may ultimately decide whether the problem is important enough to justify the investment.
Does your strategy reflect who actually makes the decision to buy?
Same Product. Different Definition of Value.
The person using your product may care about the experience, how well it works and whether it makes their life easier.
The person buying it may care about cost, risk, productivity, results or whether the investment is worth making.
If you understand the user's needs but don't understand the buyer's motivation, you may have a great product and still struggle to sell it.
But the opposite creates problems too.
If you win the buyer but disappoint the user, you can create adoption, retention and renewal problems.
This isn't about declaring the buyer more important than the user.
It's about knowing whose decision you're trying to influence, what matters to that person and where they are in the decision process.
Do You Know Who You're Really Selling To?
Before spending more money trying to reach your audience, make sure you understand:
Who uses what you're selling?
Who influences the decision?
Who ultimately decides to buy?
And does each of them define value the same way?
Because reaching more people won't solve the problem if you're speaking to the wrong person or giving the right person the wrong reason to buy.
Put Your Buying Decision to the Test
Take one of your most important products or services and think through the buying decision from beginning to end.
Who actually uses it? What problem are they trying to solve? What matters most to them about the experience?
Who influences the purchase? Who researches, recommends, advocates for or potentially blocks the decision?
Who ultimately makes or approves the purchase? What matters most to that person? What makes the problem important enough to act on?
Does everyone define value the same way? The answer may be no. If so, does your strategy reflect those differences?
Where could there be a disconnect? Are you speaking primarily to the user when someone else makes the buying decision? Or are you winning the buyer without delivering what the user actually needs?
If you can't answer these questions clearly, or if your leadership, sales and marketing teams would answer them very differently, that's worth paying attention to.
You may not have an awareness problem.
You may be trying to influence the wrong person with the wrong message.
Is Something Getting in the Way of Growth?
Sometimes what looks like a marketing problem is actually a deeper strategy problem.
I work with CEOs and growth-stage companies to identify what's holding growth back and determine what needs to change before adding more marketing.
If you're trying to figure out what's getting in the way of your next stage of growth, let's talk.
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