Consumer Decision-Making: Help Them Choose You

Every-day decisions are made. From what sweater to wear, to major business deals, each decision is governed by similar principles. Prospects of your gym are challenged to pick between many options for a fitness facility. It is important to understand the various elements of the customers’ decision-making process as you develop your sales and marketing plan. In doing so, you can use this awareness to drive actions in your favor. Help them choose you each and every time.

How do they make decisions?

The consumer decision-making process has many elements, including information processing, problem recognition and evaluation. In processing information, four factors serve as influencers:

What they have once been exposed to.
What they normally pay attention to.
How they interpret the information.
How they remember data.

Branding plays a large part in the success of each of these elements. The goal is to position your business’ image properly, so that it will be exposed well, correctly interpreted, attention grabbing and memorable.

The next part in decision making is problem recognition. Identifying the problem can often be part of the problem to begin with. This portion of the process requires one to reflect on the situation and ask questions about the solution. For instance, a trial member may have a difficult time realizing the true nature of his fitness concern. Create marketing tools that may communicate his struggle and highlight your gym as the hero.

Lastly, a decision ends with evaluation. Evaluating a decision can be like trying variables in an algebraic equation. If the constants or ultimate goal have been agreed upon, different variables or scenarios can be “plugged in” to see how they would affect the result. During the time when the situation is being analyzed, information is gathered. Varying components are influenced by the facts: what can be changed, how the purchase will affect others and what information is unknown. If the prospect is a good decision maker, he will gather all the information and objectively examine it from every angle.

How to help them?

Use this information about the decision-making process to improve your sales and marketing strategy. Your initial responsibility is to discover the main decision makers and who or what influences their decisions. For example, in the family dynamic, a parent may be the primary decider, but would be heavily influenced by the opinions of the children involved. Each member of the family may be motivated or interested in a different element in the membership scenario. Similarly, if a mother is expecting or a major change like moving to a different city is foreseen, the factors of consideration are paramount.

Although the elements of the consumer decision-making process are the same for each person, they will each have different values which could lead to a different decision by each. From there, develop the appropriate strategy given the situation.

How to keep them happy?

Customer satisfaction should have a major influence on your decisions when developing your sales and marketing strategy. Various methods of marketing research can be used to discover information about your target market and their needs, trends, demographics, etc. Take the time to learn about their needs, how to meet those needs and how well your facility has done to previously meet those needs. Members are the number one reason you stay in business and are successful. They must realize their importance to your organization. Open communication between them and your team creates trust and brand loyalty.

When a consumer is attempting to make a decision about choosing one gym over another, help them choose you. You can drive the results by properly playing into the stages of a prospect’s decision process. Ultimately, the satisfaction of both you and the customer are optimum.

Terrell McTyer is the Marketing Monster of Affiliated Acceptance Corporation. He can be contacted at 573-374-9970, or by e-mail at Terrell.McTyer@Affiliated.org.