How to Build a 'Before You Buy' Guide for a Considered Purchase
For anything people research before buying — a considered purchase, not an impulse one — there's a real gap between "I'm interested" and "I'm ready to enquire," and most businesses have almost nothing written for that gap. 💖 A before-you-buy guide fills it: it's not a sales page, and it's not a generic blog post either. It's the honest version of what a good salesperson would tell a friend, written down so it can work while you're not in the room.
What most businesses get wrong
The most common mistake is writing a guide that's secretly just a sales pitch in disguise — readers can tell within a paragraph, and it undermines the trust the format is supposed to build. The second mistake is making it too generic to be useful, covering only what's true of every provider in the category instead of the specific things that actually separate a good decision from a bad one.
- What most people get wrong when buying this (one or two genuine, common mistakes)
- The 3-5 questions worth asking any provider (including some your own business might not score perfectly on)
- What actually drives the price (an honest breakdown, so cost stops feeling arbitrary)
- A simple "you're probably ready if…" checklist (helps the reader self-qualify without pressure)
Keep it to one page. The goal is usefulness on its own, not a lead-up to a hard pitch at the end.
How to actually write one
Start by writing down the three questions you get asked most before someone books or buys — that's your table of contents. Answer each one as honestly as you would a friend, including the caveats. Publish it as a standalone page or downloadable guide (a PDF works well as a lead magnet), and link to it from wherever people are early in their research — a service page, an ad landing page, or a Google Business Profile post.
Mistakes to avoid
- Disguising a sales pitch as an objective guide — readers notice, and it damages trust rather than building it.
- Making it so generic it could apply to any provider in the category, with nothing specific or genuinely useful.
- Leaving out anything that doesn't flatter your own offer, which is exactly the content that builds the most credibility.
- Gating it behind a form so early that nobody who's just browsing will ever read it.
- Writing it once and never updating it as your pricing or process changes.
Frequently asked questions
Should we gate this behind an email opt-in?
It depends on how considered the purchase is — for genuinely big decisions, a short form in exchange for a downloadable guide is reasonable and expected. For lower-stakes purchases, gating it too early can just stop people reading it at all — publish it openly instead.
Won't this help people buy from a competitor just as easily?
It's a fair worry, but in practice, a genuinely honest guide tends to favour whoever wrote it, because most competitors won't have written anything this useful. The businesses that skip this out of fear are usually the ones losing the comparison anyway.
How long should it be?
Long enough to be genuinely useful, short enough to actually get read — most work well between 600 and 1,000 words, or as a simple checklist-style PDF. If it starts feeling like a chore to read, it's too long.
Does this work for lower-cost, impulse-type purchases too?
Not really — the format is built for purchases people research before committing to. For anything genuinely impulse-driven, the content investment is better spent elsewhere, like strong product pages or social proof.
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