Figuring Out What Motivated Your Customers to Buy

If you were asked the question: "Why is Tumblr so successful?" as a hacker/geek/early adopter the obvious answers to this question might be:

• It’s the easiest way to set up a blog
• You don’t have to worry about messy Wordpress installs
• You can have a great blog design without having to hire a designer

But if you ask David Karp, the founder of Tumblr, to explain why his startup is so successful he would simply answer: Self-expression.

What matters to the 16 year old who stumbled across Tumblr is how he can show the world he is an interesting and creative person. Self-expression matters.

When we build products in the tech world, we obsess over the logical benefits of our software:

• "Our software will make you 20% more efficient"
• "It’s the easiest way to share x with your friends"
• "Our app is simpler to use than the other guys"

All of this stuff is great on the surface, but it misses the deeper underlying motivations that drives users to sign up for your site.

We too often try to sell the steak, not the sizzle.

Evolution

A lot of research has gone in to figuring out why customers buy products. I recently read a book recommended by Dave McClure called "Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumers" that provides an interesting look at this question.

The author tries to figure out why we buy from an evolutionary psychologists perspective. The thesis is that we’re all deeply social creatures and we’ve evolved to have a strong desire to show others how we are interesting, intelligent, socially saavvy, financially secure, etc. These are strong motivators for why we buy products.

This was illustrated in the classic post "Groupware Bad":

Tumblr's sucess can largely be attributed to their ablility to focus their product vision on that deeper underlying need. They focused on becoming the best platform for self-expression instead of just the best all-around blogging platform.

Traditional marketing advice tells you to focus on benefits not features. I would go one further and figure out exactly what psychological motivators drove your customers to want your product, and focus your product/marketing on satisfying that.

For example, if I you're selling a B2B product, most marketing material is full of bullet points like "increase the sales pipeline by 20%". This is great for the company, but is it enough to motivate the individual corporate middle-manager to champion your product at their company?

On your sales site you could profile an individual who was fundamental in getting your B2B software adopted at their company and was rewarded for their foresight. Getting appreciated at work is a big motivator to buy.

I’d like to point out that this isn’t just about appealing to the users vanity or focusing on shallow aspects of the product while ignoring the more tangible benefits.

Things like ease of use, efficiency, etc are all necessary. They are the meat and potatoes that will drive the experience of the site. But there must be some emotional draw to your product.

Big Picture

When I was building CareLogger I received an email from one our customers where she explained to me why she signed up:

What motivated her to take out her credit card and subscribe was that she became fed up with having poor health and she could picture herself becoming a healthier person by using our logbook.

Up until then all of CareLoggers marketing material had been about how "our online logbook is easier than paper logbooks" or how "we generate useful graphs".

From then on we started off our pitch to users with "CareLogger helps you get your diabetes under control."

It became something that appealed to their emotional need to become a better person rather than being completely about logical value propositions ("we’re the best logbook evar!").

Some Examples

• Easy to use accounting software
• Automatically chase late payments

• "Look professional in front of your customers" (with great looking invoices)

• Create good looking photos with zero effort
• Use cool filters to make your photos look older, warm, etc

• You can show your friends how you are artistic and creative

• Track your progress with charts/graphs
• Plan your jogs on google maps

• Find the inspiration to improve your fitness and become a healthier person by joining the Runkeeper community
• Publish your progress on Twitter/Facebook and show the world you’re an active and healthy person