What Is a Buying Guide?

What Is a Buying Guide?

Consumers have a lot of options when it comes to purchasing products - almost too many options. Analysis paralysis can occur when a consumer has too many options to choose from without being well-informed about what direction they should go. Brands have the opportunity to win over consumers and increase brand loyalty by creating content that directs customers to the right purchase decision that fits their needs.

Enter a buyer’s guide. 

A buying guide, often referred to as a product guide or product catalog, is defined as a document containing a list of products and relevant product information. 

A buyer’s guide may include the following information for customers: 

• Price - How much should shoppers expect to spend on a product like this? Is it a one-off cost, or is there a kind of recurring cost?
• Dimensions -  What are the specifications for the product?
• Materials -  What are they made from? Is there an advantage to choosing one material over another?
• Features -  What functionality do products in this category possess?

Let’s take a look at some buying guide examples. Wayfair created a guide to buying the best pizza oven. Another engaging buyer’s guide brands can use as an example is Dyson. Dyson designed a buyer’s guide for its full range of vacuums. 

What Is the Purpose of the Buyer’s Guide?

The purpose of a buyer's guide is to provide customers with a comprehensive list of products the brand offers. Buyer’s guides provide relevant product information to customers, so they can choose which products are going to be the best for their needs. For example, a skincare brand should include information such as the skin type its products are best suited for. They wouldn't want their customers to buy products for oily skin if the customer has dry skin because this can lead to distrust and churn for the brand. 

A buyer’s guide is a piece of content that educates your buyer, answers their questions, and overcomes some or all of their objections. A good buyer's guide will be balanced and impartial. The aim is not to sell but to help your customers feel well-equipped with information in order to make a decision.

Keep your customer in mind when you begin to create your buyer’s guide. Product information and other related assets are there to educate your buyer and help them feel well-equipped to move forward with their buying decision. 

What Should a Buyer’s Guide Include?

A buyer’s guide must include a structure that is easy to navigate and product information that is helpful to the customer. Think about what information your customers will be looking for in your buyer's guide when you begin to create your buyer’s guide.  

To make the creating process easier, gather all of the relevant product information and assets and add them to a tool called a product information management (PIM) solution. This will help you store, edit, and update your product information in a place where you can easily find the information you are looking for.

When creating a buyer's guide, you can create it as a digital experience and tie it to the PIM solution that holds your product information. Digital experiences that are tied to your PIM solutions provide up-to-date product information when the buyer's guide is accessed.

You can deliver your product guide to your customers in multiple ways. The most common ways buyer’s guides can be formatted are printed, PDF, or online. Printed and PDF buyer's guides can quickly become outdated before they even reach the customer, which is why we recommend that brands create a digital buyer’s guide.

How Do I Create a Buyer’s Guide?

A buyer’s guide that is accessible online is also referred to as an interactive buyers guide or a buying guide website. The information within the best buying guide will be accessible, accurate, and engaging. Brands can create a buyer’s guide using a no-code tool called a digital experience platform (DXP). 

Lumavate allows users to create digital experiences for a wide variety of use cases, including so buyer’s guides. Digital experiences that are built using Lumavate can also be tied to our PIM solution which enables organizations to have a centralized place to store their product data and assets. You can even customize the setup of the PIM to meet the needs of your business. Plus, all of this information can be dynamically pulled into an unlimited amount of digital experiences.

Lumavate’s PIM solution includes functionality like:

• Multiple Product Types 
• Unlimited Products 
• Unlimited Custom Attributes
• Product Relationships
• Change Log 
• Integrate to Existing Systems
• Unlimited Users
• Drive Dynamic Digital Experiences

Schedule a demo to see how we can help transition your brand’s product data into our PIM solution and help create digital experiences for your products to enhance the customer experience, drive revenue, and decrease costs for your brand.