This blog post focuses on an aspect of marketing that few businesses consider; the client’s relationship with money. It directly impacts your marketing language, client demographics, and bottom line.
What Is A Money Type?
How you think about money and relate to it becomes your money type. It is similar to a personality type.
Understanding money types as a business owner helps you recognize your customers’ money tendencies and how to tailor your marketing message to attract the right people.
Money Blueprint
Your relationship with money started with your parent/s or primary caregivers. How each person handled and spoke about money taught you how to treat it. This became your money blueprint. In some circles, it is also known as your money origin story.
Your blueprint was formed in the first seven years of your life when you absorbed all that took place around you and formed opinions around them.
Your internal rules for how you will live your life were created in childhood and enforced through experiences that supported your beliefs.
Remember that although your childhood greatly influences your money type, many adults can still change and make their own money choices. In this sense, money types are not good or bad; they just are.
Like all personality classification systems, use the information to understand who or where you are and what you want. These systems are not to be used as a judgment or performance metric on your character, past or future.
The same goes for your clients – how they think about and spend money reflects who and where they are. Judgment is unnecessary; however, understanding this information helps you decide who you want to work with and what marketing language attracts them.
The Four Major Money Types
In Psychology, there are four general groups of money types with variances between each. The commonly grouped money types are savers, spenders, hoarders, and martyrs.
Savers
As the name suggests, savers keep money by default. They generally save more than they spend.
Historically, savers grew up in households whereby money was hard to come by or limited. Typical examples include parents who often worked with a fixed budget for all family and general living expenses or parents with fixed incomes such as disability or pension payments.
Their shopping habits include frugality, sales, consignments, early bird savings, discounts, bonuses, and freebies. The marketing language used to attract them utilize these words. What drives the purchase is the price and savings.
Savers will spend if they perceive that they are saving money. For example, a saver might pay for bookkeeping and accounting services because the person understands that doing it alone or through cheaper means will cost in the long run.
Your blog and social media posts, including your newsletters and webinars, can be freebies for your marketing efforts. A discount for fast-action takers or a percentage off longer-term commitments works for savers.
Focus your marketing on what the saver will save by buying your products/services. When the savings are evident, a saver will spend.
Spenders
Spenders are driven by the perceived value of what they’re buying. They tend to look at what they’re getting for their spending rather than what they’re giving up (money). In a healthy environment, spenders are not afraid to invest their money in what is equal or greater in value.
Their shopping habits include quick purchase decisions (straight to the buy now button). Marketing language that attracts spenders focuses on the result, the feeling they will get, and what will be transformed and changed.
For example, a spender will pay for bookkeeping services because they understand that peace of mind knowing their books are in order is far more valuable than what they pay for the service. Knowing they don’t have to spend time doing what is not in their wheelhouse is priceless because it frees up that time to focus on business building blocks.
In your marketing, focus on vivid end-result imagery. This is achieved through images, videos, case studies, testimonials, and stories. When spenders see what they’re getting for their money, they will spend.
Hoarders
As the name suggests, hoarders don’t waste money but will spend on what they feel attached to. Their shopping habits are much like savers and thrifters; sales, consignments, discounts, bonuses, freebies, sidewalk donations, deals, and auctions. They are often loyal to brands and stay up to date with new offerings.
Hoarders are loyal to what they buy because they are generally change-resistant. Marketing efforts that work include newsletters, social media posts and advertisements with clear calls to action. Hoarders will spend if they feel they need the product or service.
For example, a hoarder will pay for subscriptions that give them access to what they need when they want it. This includes bookkeeping services, software, and physical deliveries (in the case of dropbox subscriptions).
Martyrs
Martyrs generally use their money to improve others’ lives. This has often been seen in parents, grandparents and older siblings.
Marketing language for this money type should focus on the greater good or result. Usually, martyrs respond to calls to add a percentage to their purchase for a cause. For example, telling your customer that 1% of their payment goes to climate change measures at the bottom of their receipt will appeal to a martyr.
In your marketing, showing that you are involved in the community, charity work, or something more significant than your revenue-generating business will attract martyrs who spend.
Also, letting your customers know your personal or business values increases the likelihood of attracting martyrs who are, by nature, value-driven. This often applies to local, home-based or family-friendly business environments. A martyr will spend if they perceive that the monetary exchange results in something bigger than what they’ve paid.
Marketing Language Audit
Time to do a marketing language audit. Based on your reading, what have you learned about yourself and the customers you attract? Also, what about your marketing can you tweak, expand or change to align with your ideal clients?
Like all things business, marketing language changes as your business grows. Doing a marketing language audit once in a while is advisable to streamline your processes. Understanding your client’s psychological makeup regarding money and spending helps.
One way to accomplish your audit is to look at your current marketing channels. Who are they directed to, and what do they say? Pay close attention to the words used and remember that certain words trigger psychological buying cues.
In summary, spenders will buy if the value is equal to or greater than the spend. Savers will spend if they are also saving money. Hoarders will spend on loyalty and attachment, and martyrs will pay if the purchase is tied to a bigger goal or good.
Julia Katsivo Carter is the Founder of Successful & Smart Business Coaching. She has studied money types since 2015. www.successfulandsmart.com