Understanding Customers To Curate Your Content

The success of any brand is contingent upon one thing: the bottom line.

If you’re looking to sell more (which, news flash: most brands are), you need to understand your customer.

Getting to the root of their wants, needs and desires and speaking to those three core states of mind is the key to not only servicing your existing customers, but reaching new prospects. Using this psychology of the consumer mindset is the key to creating the best content for your audience.

First thing’s first: people care about themselves, not companies.

Everyone has seemingly endless needs, wants and desires, which they shop to service. Customers, in short, only care about your products when they have a specific need to be fulfilled.

Second, people are emotional creatures.

Consumers purchase based on emotion. Only after the fact do they justify their purchase with logic. It takes only seconds to make a purchase decision, and in the wake of that the dopamine rush begins.

Emotions rule, the card is tapped, dopamine recedes and buyer’s remorse sets in. Then customers use logic to justify their emotional purchase. (“It was a great sale, I couldn’t pass it up!” “Sure it was expensive, but I got it before anyone else!”)

No matter your age, nationality or gender, everyone is motivated by the same wants and desires.

American author Drew Eric Whitman describes the eight primary and learned desires we all experience.

The primal needs we feel compelled to fulfill, no matter who we are, where we live or what we do:

1. Survival: Live a long and healthy life
2. Protection: Safety, care and protection for yourself and loved ones
3. Freedom: Freedom from danger, fear and pain
4. Comfort: Comfortable living conditions
5. Pleasure: Enjoy food, beverages and experiences
6. Relationships: Sexual relations, companionship and compatibility
7. Success: To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses
8. Likeability: Social approval, being part of the “in” crowd

Whitman also notes a secondary set of nine learned desires that not everybody may be influenced by, but are certainly prevalent in society, and relevant to your customers:

1. Efficiency: Maximum productivity with minimal effort
2. Convenience: Saving money, time or effort
3. Dependability and Quality: Higher standards and reliability
4. Cleanliness: Clean body and surroundings
5. Beauty and Style: Expressing yourself, pleasing the senses
6. Intelligence: To be informed, understanding and intellectual
7. Curiosity: A strong desire to learn and discover
8. Profit: Buying and selling for profit or making something for profit
9. Bargains: Purchasing something below retail value

On top of these, a further three desires have been found to guide consumer behaviour:

1. Scarcity: If something is difficult to possess or we’re told we can’t have it, we want it more and attribute a higher value to it. Something is more valuable if it might get taken away.
2. Values: We purchase products that align with our personal values. We buy products because they are made in Australia, sales are donated to charities, or to support a local business.
3. Individuality: The desire to stand out from the crowd, to be different. It can take many forms – to be first in the know, to create something viral, to have something before anyone else does. Essentially, buying into hype.

Now that you know what drives people to buy, your next step should be to spend time thinking about your customers. Identify their desires, how your product satisfies their desires and how you can speak to them through your content.

The key takeaway? Effectively communicating the value of your product in the face of your target customer’s wants and needs.