Buyer Psychology of Purchase Decisions

I've sold financial products and software to every type of Canadian consumer.

I'm talking every income bracket, life stage, preference, emotion.

In my early years I was hyper-focused on the granular next-click data we marketers obsess over - and I missed things. It took me a beat to step back and appreciate the bigger picture about how we Canadians buy complex things.

Consumers buy things first through emotion - either through a sense of relief by avoiding an uncomfortable emotion, or through expectation with aspirations of feeling a better emotion.

Even tax software moves through this gate.

Most marketing funnels are set up to follow customers through a sequence and it's measured by clicks - and that's because we can track them. Clicks are countable.

What's way, way harder to track are those feelings and the journey a buyer observes as they manage the tension between the problem they suffer and the release we promise in our marketing.

I'm willing to bet good money that your website is 98% feature-based copy, especially if you're in finance, and 2% emotional copy. At best your brand might make claims about feeling "confident about money"... like everyone else does.

Like I did, you're missing a step.

Today let's visit what brands can do to begin a more nuanced approach to connecting with their customers on a level that doesn't have percentage signs, dollar signs, clickthroughs or discounts. Let's ask how our customers are feeling.

Stay in the problem

Most marketing jumps to the solution way too quickly.

When a new visitor lands on your page, they answer three questions in about 5 seconds:

• Is this my problem?

• Is this for me?

• Does this offer better value than what I already have?

All the features, promises, visuals of people laughing in a world without X or Y... that content has a role, but its role comes later. 'Solution-fit' content helps a mid-funnel buyer appreciate whether the service or product they want maps to their problem.

The first two jobs of a homepage are asking about the problem. Not the product.

Buyers trust us when they sense we understand their pain better than they do.

Buyers don't start their decision when you think they do

One of the more expensive assumptions in growth marketing is that the purchase decision begins when someone lands on your site.

It started earlier.

The jobs-to-be-done model tells us that by the time a buyer reaches our product page, they have already moved through a series of framing steps and emotional triggers that help them structure the problem in their minds. It's only after this framing that they begin discovery of solutions.

Why do brands skip this critical opportunity to assist customers with that problem-framing? As experts on the topic, our brands have reams of content, support, ideas and IP that can help a buyer arrive at their search for a product with structure and confidence.

Most brands just skip right past.

A website without problem-focused content is meeting a buyer already in motion.

That's why a lot of conversion problems are really expectation problems.

Traffic arrives expecting to be seen, and our website tries to sell.

Brands lose a lot of those sales. Not because the buyer is irrational, but because the experience created a mismatch.

When I design experiments to move visitors from browse into decision-mode, I have my clients ask "with what belief did this person arrive?" Many can't even attempt an answer.

The five drivers of a purchase decision

I teach a model that organizes buyer psychology into five behaviour drivers. Every friction point and every conversion lift I've encountered traces back to one of these and it's been a breakthrough for my career and my success.

Trust is the hardest to build and the easiest to lose. Buyers use legitimacy signals — consistent design, clear language, real contact information, recognizable social proof — to assess whether you're a credible option before they engage with your actual offer. Trust can be borrowed from third parties and endorsements. Much of it comes down to reciprocity: guarantees, assurances, access to support.

Suitability is whether the buyer can connect their specific problem to your solution. They're asking: "does this solution fit my problem?" but most websites are saying "we serve everyone!" A buyer doesn't picture themselves with your product, they picture themselves without their problem.

Usability is the visible interactive friction layer. Two-thirds of purchases worldwide are now made through a screen. How easy is it to evaluate, navigate, and act on the next purchase step? Confusing labels, unexpected steps, forms that ask for too much before enough trust exists — each one creates room for abandonment. We don't make them think.

Costs are perceived more than actual. A buyer isn't only calculating price. They're calculating time, effort, commitment period, and the cost of switching from whatever they're doing now. Even emotional burden. Fintechs - do you think a borrower wants to feel the feelings that come with opening up their broken books? That's a cost. Reducing perceived cost is always a stronger premise than reducing an actual numbered price.

Fulfillment is the upside — everything the buyer imagines attaining. Free trials, social belonging, the "ideal state" visualized. The gap between where they are and where they want to be. When a buyer can genuinely picture themselves on the other side of the purchase without their problem, and with all the benefits.

Any website conversion problem - stalled actions between visit and purchase - lives inside one of these five drivers. The work is figuring out which one motivates your buyer the most. (That work uses science and empathy - practical skills I can teach your team inside Formentor Labs growth workshops!)

Emotion gets there first

Even in highly rational buying categories, emotion will prevail before the rational case does.

I spent years working in tax software. Yes. Exactly. That niche can be as boring as you think it can. We turned the dial, though.

It's 2023 - COVID has locked us all inside. Taxes are due though (even with the 2023 CRA filing forgiveness) and those hundreds-of-thousands of Canadian tax filers accustomed to handing over a shoebox worth of paper receipts - suddenly can't.

Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. Will they be penalized? Will they get the tax return they deserve? Could they do this another way?

What this segment of customers needed to hear wasn't the gamut of features tax software loves to sing about - easy-fill forms, PDF files, etc.

This segment needed reassurance and support.

We tested more emotional content than any other category: confidence-boosting copy, fear-acknowledging messaging, uncertainty-resolving language at every step of the funnel. Young filers wanted to become independent but were nervous. Older filers close to retirement wanted assurance they weren't going to ruin their hard-earned financial setup.

If you can move people emotionally to a product as low-glamour as tax filing software, you can do it anywhere. I mean, I look good selling T4 auto-filled forms but not everyone has my ageless beauty.

This isn't a soft argument. It's how human decision-making actually works. People buy through emotion first and rationalize after. They either want to feel a specific way, or they want to stop feeling the way they currently feel. The rational case usually arrives as justification for a decision the gut already made.

A few places to apply this directly:

• When describing the problem you solve, name the feelings, conversations, or situations your customer is trying to avoid

• Use your customer's actual language when describing the pain, not a cleaned-up version of it

• Describe the consequences of inaction, not only the benefits of action ("problem agitation" isn't pressure if done with empathy, we should genuinely warn our customers what happens when they refuse to solve their issue)

• Listen for emotional signals in your ad copy and keyword data, and use them to guide how you segment and message

What this means for our growth marketing experiments

I start with naming the tension.

When conversions are down, I want to know where the buyer enters journey. Which questions are going unanswered? Which fears are untouched? Which driver — trust, suitability, usability, cost, or fulfillment — is creating the stall? From there I build hypotheses.

For a fintech product with strong traffic but weak completion rates, the issue usually isn't motivation. It's trust and perceived risk. The experiment isn't "try a different headline." It's "does earlier reassurance around security reduce abandonment at activation?"

For a SaaS brand with a demo and poor close rates, the issue often isn't volume. It's that marketing nabs visitors with a clear pain, but a demo -- well is a demo. Zero tension relief. I often suggest SaaS brands add a step between visit and demo (I know, sacrilege) that qualifies the prospect into the right segment of "pain felt" first. Address it with a tiny win - be it content, a call, even an acknowledgement that their pain is real does more for the buyer journey than a scheduled demo ever will.

What's next for our buyers

Let's stop skipping steps.

Let's start asking what makes our buyer wants to feel, and giving them something worth clicking.

The buyer psychology of purchase decisions is a testable premise.

Staying in the problem gives you the right starting point for almost every growth conversation.

The five drivers give you a map.

If you want to keep building on these ideas, Room to Think is where I publish them in more depth, with more specificity and the occasional experiment result attached.

If you're working through a conversion or growth problem with your team right now, start here - formentor.ca .

Thanks for reading.