The ABCs of Customer Acquisition
Realtor's must understand their customers’ behavior in order to influence, acquire and serve them effectively. When it comes to understanding customers there are 6 basic stages that they go through, which will affect how they behave:
- Unaware prospect
- Aware prospect
- Interested prospect
- Trial customer
- Repeat customer
- Loyal customer
Customer behavior and marketing strategy studies, concerning increasing profitability, consistently note that businesses must gain a better understanding of their customers to be successful. Therefore, in order to have the appropriate customer acquisition strategy in place, Real Estate professionals should take the following into consideration:
- The psychology of how customers think, feel, reason and select between different alternatives (e.g., brands and products) is important to know
- The psychology of how customers are influenced by their environment (e.g., culture, family, signs and media) is another important factor when attempting to acquire and retain a customer
- The behaviors customers make while shopping or other major life decisions
- Limitations in customer knowledge or information processing abilities, which influence decisions and marketing outcome
- How customer motivation and decision strategies will differ between products
- How Realtor's and Real Estate professionals can adapt and improve their marketing campaigns and strategies to more effectively reach the customer
- Understanding these issues can help you adapt strategies that earnestly take the customer into consideration. After all, customers are sometimes persuaded more by logical arguments than by emotional or symbolic appeals.