The three types of buyers — Which type are you?

No matter what product you sell, research shows that you can categorize buyers by the “pain” they experience when buying products.

Scientists have defined user spending patterns as a process of “spend until it hurts,” and neuroscientists have identified three types of buyers. Being able to understand the different levels of pain points is paramount to maximizing your potential paying users: The three types are.

• Unconflicted (61%): Users that spend around the average amount
• Spendthrifts (15%): Users that are able to spend more (on average) before they hit their maximum purchasing pain.
• Tightwads (24%): People who spend less (on average) before they hit their maximum purchasing pain.

Of the three types of users, you maybe be able to guess that the tightwads are the most difficult to convert.

Tightwads comprise almost one-quarter of your potential paying customers. So you should now learn ways to minimize purchasing pain for your “tightwad” users.

I know which category I fit into. I am a tightwad. I will read everything, I’ll second-guess a website. Only last week I found a lovely pair (so I thought) of CAT boots on Amazon. They were in my size, and they were being sold by CAT. They even had 4000+ reviews with something like a 4.6-star average. I really liked them and they were on sale at almost 60% off. So what did I do? I procrastinated on it, I told myself I’d buy them before I went to bed. At 11:30 PM I’m just watching some football in bed I think I’m too tired to decide and I tell myself I’ll sleep on it and do it first thing tomorrow. Can you guess what happened the next day? Yes, the sale was over and back to full price! And I never purchased them. Was it the company’s loss or mine, I actually think I lost more. :-(. Or did Amazon not do enough to encourage this tightwad?

The not-so-secret secret boils down to using content that appeals to a tightwad’s apprehensive nature. It’s not surprising that science and brain imaging has been used to show that minimizing buying pain for tightwads (and everybody else) can be accomplished by incorporating the following three strategies.

1. Show the value in a lower value

We’ve all seen the “only $1 a day” adverts, this is taking this science to the most minor value point. Let’s be realistic, most people get paid weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, so tapping into any of these schedules should resonate with your users most, As an example If you see a product that costs $16,000 over 4 years, that’s a lot of money to think about, you could say any of the following

• $4,000 a year
• $334 a month
• $77 a week

That’s because $16,000 isn’t a Starbucks coffee, far from it. In the mind of a conservative spender, it’s MASSIVE, even $4,000 is still not peanuts, but let’s say for leasing a car, a $ 77-a-week fee is a lot more palatable.

While this reframing method is effective for buyers of all types, it is most effective when targeting conservative spenders (tightwads). If you’re offering something that has a recurring cost or that can be broken down into smaller increments, be sure to investigate how you can utilize this information in your pricing model.

2. Bundle it up

Director of the Center for Behavioural Decision Research expert George Loewenstein notes that all consumers prefer a single packaged purchase rather than having to buy multiple accessories separately.

A car purchase is a great example of this, a car costs let’s say $50,000 for the base model, upgrade to the Sports package for only $5,000 is an easier decision than deciding to purchase all the individual parts of that package, Sports trim = $,2000, Paddle gear changers $2,500, Furry dice $50, and not forgetting $500 for front tinted windows. Deciding on each one of those adds four more pain points and each becomes hard to justify. Going back to the Sports package gives the tightwad (and nearly all other buyers) just the one pain point to think about.

Loewenstein’s findings go further and note that a good percentage of buyers are willing to pay more for complete bundles. Not only are the pain points less but it speeds up decision-making and I’m sure it reduces procrastination too.

3. Devil is in the details

Many people say “not to worry about the small stuff”, but small stuff does matter. A single word can change the whole mindset of conservative buyers. In a strange but very insightful experiment, it was proven the addition of a single word could and did convert more tightwad buyers.

In the experiment on tightwads where they added one word to the shipping charge on a free DVD trial offer. From “A $5 fee” to “A small $5 fee”, they found a staggering 20% increased response rate.

A $5 fee for shipping

Vs

A small $5 fee for shipping

A big change for such a ‘small’ word. This does just prove that we should sweat the small stuff, especially with conservative buyers. This can also play out with other words. Do you know that removing the currency sign before a price on a menu from $7 to just putting 7 next to it also increases purchases? This is due to the brain not associating the 7 as an expense, it’s only when we add the currency sign that we see it more as an expense.

Final word (pun intended)

Choosing content with tightwads in mind and writing content targeted to them is going to increase your sales, remember tightwads are the hardest to convert of the three groups and they can count 24% of the eyes on your product. I could say “You should act now!”

Instead, I’ll say

“You should act RIGHT now!”