8 Ways to Become a Savvy Buyer

As mar­keters we are also buy­ers. There are tons of prod­ucts online to help you get more traf­fic, make money with affil­i­ate prod­ucts, or how to write com­pelling copy. The list goes on and on. It’s not hard to find the infor­ma­tion we need. The hard part is pick­ing out what is use­ful and is some­thing we can use to bet­ter our busi­ness and make us money.

Of course you want to pur­chase prod­ucts that are worth it and will help you with great infor­ma­tion. Even some­thing that has one bit of good infor­ma­tion that you didn’t know before, can be worth a pur­chase. But the great prod­ucts are ones that are full of use­ful infor­ma­tion and serve as a guide for the tasks you want to accomplish.

These are eight tips to help you become a savvy buyer. Not only should these help you buy the prod­ucts you want they may also give you an insight on what to put into your own copy for you own prod­uct. Keep in mind these are per­sonal tips of my own that I have learned from buy­ing infor­ma­tional prod­ucts over the years. Even with the best of inten­tions it’s pos­si­ble to still buy a dud. But in that case you should be able to fix the sit­u­a­tion with some of these tips as well.

With­out fur­ther ado, 8 ways to become a savvy buyer:

1. Who is Sell­ing the Prod­uct?
One of the first things I check out when I find some­thing I’m inter­ested in is to look at who is sell­ing the product.

What kind of his­tory do they have? How long have they been sell­ing prod­ucts and how did their other prod­ucts do?

How long have they been around? Usu­ally some­one that has been around for awhile has a lot of mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge under their belt. Which is passed through to their product.

What kind of rep­u­ta­tion do they have? What are oth­ers say­ing about them? A lit­tle research can show a lot about what peo­ple say about them. Beware though that there are going to be naysay­ers though. I’ve come across some peo­ple that are just down right bash­ing mar­keters that are actu­ally good.

How easy are they to con­tact? Some­times you can con­tact them or some­one on their team if you have ques­tions. That in itself makes a deci­sion eas­ier sometimes.

Now this doesn’t mean that some­one that is new doesn’t have a valu­able prod­uct on their hands. I have bought plenty of infor­ma­tional prod­ucts that were from peo­ple I have never heard of. Basi­cally use this research as a guide of sorts. If the seller has a good rep­u­ta­tion for pro­vid­ing great con­tent and prod­ucts, it makes the buy­ing deci­sion that much eas­ier. But let’s con­sider some other ele­ments too.

2. Take a Look at the Copy
The copy, or sales page, can and should tell a lot about what you are get­ting out of the prod­uct. Once you read through the copy you should have a good idea of the infor­ma­tion within the prod­uct and more impor­tantly how it will ben­e­fit you and your business.

What will you learn from get­ting this product?

Why should you buy this product?

How will it affect you and help you grow your busi­ness so that you can make money too?

The point is, you should basi­cally know what your get­ting, and you should know how it’s going to help you, the ben­e­fits of the product.

3. Con­sider The Value of the Prod­uct
This is more of a per­sonal thing, but it’s some­thing to take a look at. Obvi­ously your more likely to buy some­thing that you are inter­ested in. I’m more likely to buy a prod­uct on mak­ing money from blog­ging or writ­ing then some­thing that teaches me how to recruit more peo­ple into an MLM.

How is it going to help you? What is it going to teach you that you don’t already know?

What infor­ma­tion does it have that will help you or your business?

Also, is it clear what you are going to get out of it if you buy the product?

Does it pro­vide infor­ma­tion that you already know?

How much is it any­ways? The price is usu­ally towards the bot­tom of the sales page. But there are other vari­a­tions of sales pages nowa­days. It’s usu­ally in there somewhere.

As I men­tioned before, this comes down to your per­sonal ben­e­fits of the prod­uct and if it’s worth the money. Even some­thing that is expen­sive is worth the price if it shows how to do cer­tain things well that you are want to learn. So take a look at the price and con­sider what you will get out of it. Is it worth it to you? And will it be worth the pur­chase to you? A good prod­uct will usu­ally be more than worth the price they offer.

4. Check out the bonuses
I have touched on this aspect before in a pre­vi­ous post; Your Free Bonuses Are Too Much where I talked about how they had a great prod­uct but it was killed by the mass flood of free bonuses they had. It was overkill. So it helps to take a look at the bonuses.

No bonus with the prod­uct may not kill the sale but it’s almost expected these days. On the other hand, too many will devalue the prod­uct and scare you off from buy­ing the prod­uct. At least it did for me. I have enough prob­lems with infor­ma­tion overload.

There are a few other things to look at though besides the amount of bonuses that come with the purchase.

Are they related? A good bonus will be related to prod­uct one way or another. Some­thing com­pletely off the wall from the prod­uct will prob­a­bly never be used.

Do they sup­ple­ment the prod­uct? A good bonus should sup­ple­ment the prod­uct and allow you to take the infor­ma­tion you learned a lit­tle bit further.

Now, this doesn’t mean that hav­ing bonuses unre­lated to the prod­uct should stop you from buy­ing it. There have been sev­eral times when I’ve used the bonuses for some­thing else. So it was still of value, just not directly with the prod­uct I bought. I have even bought some­thing because of a bonus that was included with the pur­chase. So again, don’t judge just based on one of these tips.

5. Check out the guar­an­tee
The guar­an­tee should be sim­ple and effec­tive. The longer the guar­an­tee the bet­ter. This gives you more time to check out the prod­uct and decide if it was worth the purchase.

You’ll be hard pressed to find some­thing that doesn’t include a guar­an­tee, but I would think twice about buy­ing some­thing if it didn’t have one, unless they have a good rea­son for it.

For exam­ple, Angela Booth doesn’t have a money back guar­an­tee with her prod­ucts, but I still enjoy her prod­ucts. But I think if there was a prob­lem, she would fig­ure out how to make it right for you even though you won’t get your money back.

So whether it’s for your money back or what­ever, just give the guar­an­tee a quick look over. It’s not some­thing that should make your final deci­sion but it doesn’t hurt to check it out.

6. Check out the tes­ti­mo­ni­als
Peo­ple put tes­ti­mo­ni­als on their sales page for a rea­son. It’s gives the prod­uct cred­i­bil­ity and is sim­i­lar to word of mouth. You are more likely to take a rec­om­men­da­tion from some­one else then from the per­son sell­ing the prod­uct. If they say they have the best prod­uct ever, your likely scoff at them and walk away. Or at least I would.

But if my buddy down the street told me about how great this prod­uct was, I’d be more likely to check it out. When I go over the tes­ti­mo­ni­als, I look for famil­iar faces. If your net­work­ing in a cer­tain field, your likely to see some famil­iar names. Those are good.

Also look for links and pic­tures. This gives more cred­i­bil­ity to the tes­ti­mo­nial. Now, I’ve heard of peo­ple writ­ing a bunch of fake tes­ti­mo­ni­als, but like I said if you see a famil­iar face of some­one you have been fol­low­ing for awhile, you should notice if some­thing isn’t right.

The point is to see what peo­ple are say­ing about the prod­uct. What did it do for them? What ben­e­fit did they get out of pur­chas­ing the product?

7. Con­trol Your Emo­tions
A really good sales copy is designed to touch on your emo­tions. If you get all excited about the prod­uct half way through the copy or if you find your­self nod­ding in agree­ment, then they have an excel­lent copy that is full of ben­e­fits that touch you on an emo­tional level. You may just have your wal­let out before you have even get to the buy button.

I always try to take a step back from things before I pur­chase though. I’ll read through the copy and check out all the ele­ments and then book­mark it. Some­times I get all excited and I’m about ready to pur­chase it right then and there. But it helps to take a break from it and give it some time to think about it. Come back to it the next day.

Now, I know a lot of peo­ple that put some­thing off for the next day may never come back to it. If that’s the case, take a small break and soak it all in. Then make your pur­chase if you still feel it’s going to be of great ben­e­fit to you and/or your business.

With that said, the prod­ucts I get excited about I still come back to buy it any­ways. But it doesn’t hurt to think about things for a bit.

8. Do Your Own Research
Some­thing I do with every thing I look at is take a quick walk over to Google and search the prod­uct. Just like research­ing the per­son sell­ing the prod­uct, you can research the prod­uct itself and see what other peo­ple are say­ing about it.

Now keep in mind if you just search for reviews, you may come across a lot of paid or affil­i­ate reviews. These are obvi­ously still a lit­tle biased, but can still give out good infor­ma­tion. A good review will give you both, the good and the bad of the product.

Another place to look is forums. These can give some excel­lent feed­back as it’s more com­mu­nity dri­ven. Just keep in mind, some peo­ple can still be biased if they are an affil­i­ate. In other words do your research but take every­thing with a grain of salt.

Use Your Brain
When it comes down to it, mak­ing a pur­chase is a com­pletely per­sonal choice. There are tons of infor­ma­tional prod­ucts and books out there wait­ing to be bought. But if you use your log­i­cal, com­mon sense and con­sider what this prod­uct can do for you, you’ll be a savvy buyer in no time. Always trust your gut instinct and make pur­chases that will pro­pel you and your busi­ness fur­ther along.

~Chris

What other things do you look for when your look­ing at a prod­uct? How has your research effected your choice?

Sim­i­lar Posts:

• Mind­set of Pro­vid­ing Services
• My Friend Lost Her Home To a Fire — You Can Help
• The Dif­fer­ence Between a Men­tor and Being Self Taught

I’m glad to see you back at The OMV. I hope your enjoy­ing your time. Feel free to con­tact me for any­thing and if you haven’t already, don’t for­get to sub­scribe to The OMV Newslet­ter. Leave a com­ment too! I’d love to hear from you.