Sign up for our email updates. About twenty-five years ago, when I began writing professionally, no one in business knew much about how people make buying decisions. A few years later, when I began studying advertising at the University of Texas, we learned how to be creative, but we did not learn how people buy.
Creativity is ludicrous without knowing who is going to read and what they want.
Ten years ago, when I was an advertising writer for JCPenney, I was taught to use demographics. Again, they have no bearing on how people buy. The income range within a certain zip code tells you nothing about the mental process those use to make buying decisions. Focus groups - an expensive disaster. More recently, as I've written projects for major financial firms, they would sometimes give me a copy of their sales procedure.