David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

People buy things to satisfy at least one of two things: wants and needs. It is important to understand this to develop your affiliate websites and to help understand your market.
 
Needs

These are basic human needs and a purchase will be made if the product in question is a staple, or a necessity. For example, when the car child seat rule came into force, it meant an awful lot of people were legally required to have child car seats. Purchases of car seats then became a need, rather than a want for many.

Wants

These are luxuries that we desire. We don't necessarily need them but we want them. We have an urge to have them.

Examples

The obvious difference is that a need is something that is required in order to live or to remain legal. During the Summer floods, sandbags became a need. Prior to these, they would have been a want (and probably not as great a want as something like a new gadget, mobile phone, etc.)

Within each product segment there are needs and wants.

When you buy baked bean for example, you could have the 'value' brand or the 'premium' brand. A need would be satisfied by the budget range whereas a want would be satisfied by a premium brand.

On a grander scale, a car is a need for many, especially in rural areas. A small or micro car may be a need - the buyer may only be able to afford a small, cheap car - or it may be a want - buying a saloon car for example.

Why Is This Important To Your Affiliate Marketing Efforts?

You need to be aware of this in order to target your market. By understanding the psychology of your visitors, you can serve more targeted content and creative to them.

I love examples so let's choose a website about cars. Let's assume you have a product feed based website advertising brand new cars. Take a look through your logs at what search terms are popular for people finding your website. We'll assume "smart car" is the most popular. This suggests people are looking for a small, cheap economical car. This also suggests that they are frugal or have a small budget. So what do you do with this kind of information?

Add reviews of budget cars. Dedicate an entire section to small cars. Sell the economical benefits of the cars, together with the price. Remember that these people are price concious and that could well be the main thing people are looking at.

The second most popular term is "lexus ls600h". This is an expensive, prestige car and so you would need to have a large budget for this. People searching for the car are probably also open to influential advice. These people are probably more interested in the performance and gadgets within the car than the price. Price will always be a factor but here it's less important. What do you do knowing this?

Set up a section with reviews about the posh cars. Highlight the performance statistics as well as the gadgets within the car. This car is a want rather than a need so it's important to over-sell the benefits of having such a car. Don't focus on price. In fact, make it blend in with the rest of your text rather than making it stand out.

How about a feature comparison between the prestige cars?

Remember it is easier to influence a 'want' purchase than a 'need' purchase. If your website is receiving visitors looking to make a 'need' purchase, they are unlikely to be easily persuaded to buy the next model up. On the contrary, the 'want' buyer is looking for features, performance or the pride of owning a particular product. It is easier to upsell to this type of visitor.