PEOPLE BUY products and services to satisfy their needs. In economics, they say that every action that you or I take is because of what is called a “felt dissatisfaction.” We feel dissatisfied in our current condition for some reason. Because of this dissatisfaction, we are internally motivated or driven to take an action of some kind to relieve this dissatisfaction. Think of the example of sitting on a pin. The discomfort triggers immediate action to relieve the pain and to achieve a state of greater satisfaction, which does not involve the pin.
The ABC Model
There is an ABC principle of human motivation. In this case, the letters stand for Antecedents, Behaviors, and Consequences.
The antecedents represent about 15 percent of the motivation to buy a product, or to act in anyway. The antecedents are composed of previous experiences, thoughts, feelings, and other factors.
The consequences represent 85 percent of the motivation to make an act or to buy a product or service.
The middle letter B refers to the behaviors that are necessary to move from antecedents to consequences.
In this simple model, the antecedents are the felt dissatisfaction, either real or triggered by advertising and promotion. The consequences are the state of greater satisfaction or pleasure that the customer anticipates enjoying by buying and using your product or service. The behavior is the action that the customer must take to move from A to C.
CLARITY IS ESSENTIAL
One of the reasons for passivity, paralysis, or the failure to take action to buy your product, regardless of your advertising or promotional activities, is that your potential customers do not see or understand how they will be better off by buying your product or service. Even more, your prospect does not see how he will be so much better off that he can justify the cost, expense, and trouble of moving from his current state to the supposedly better state that your product or service offers.
People always buy products and services to improve their conditions in some way—to achieve a state of greater satisfaction. People won’t buy a product or service unless they feel that they will get an improvement that more than justifies the cost and trouble of making the purchase in the first place. Focusing your marketing efforts on how your prospective customer is going to be better off is the key to success in advertising and promotion.
The Problem to Be Solved
People buy solutions to their problems. Always think in terms of the “problem to be solved.” What is the problem that your product or service will solve for your prospective customer?
People buy the satisfaction of their needs. What is the “need to be satisfied” that your product or service can offer your prospective customer?
People buy to achieve their goals. What is the goal that your product or service will help your customer to achieve, and which is important enough to the customer that she will pay money, time, and trouble to acquire it?
People buy because they have a pain that your product or service will take away. What is the pain that your product or service resolves for your customer?
How Will They Feel?
One of the most important discoveries to come out of the Harvard research by Theodore Levitt is that people buy the feeling that they anticipate enjoying as a result of purchasing and using your product or service. What is the exact feeling that your customers will enjoy when they buy what you sell? It is not the product or service itself; it is always the emotion that your product or service triggers or stimulates.
People buy for psychic satisfaction—that is, emotional reasons—far more than they buy for any other reason. What is the most important emotion that people will enjoy as a result of buying and using your product or service?
This is why quality, service, and especially relationships are so important. They generate the emotional component of any product or service in the mind of the customer. They generate the feelings of security, comfort, status, prestige, warmth, and personal connection. What exactly does your customer anticipate feeling when thinking of purchasing your product or service? How could you tailor your marketing efforts to trigger this emotion in your ideal customers?
Save or Gain Time or Money
People in business buy products and services to save or gain time or money. Time and money are almost interchangeable in terms of business results. Every appeal aimed at saving time or money, or gaining time or money, is a strong emotional motivator to people in business who are dependent for their success and security on personal and financial results.
Desire for Gain, Fear of Loss
There are two basic motivations that underlie all action: the desire for gain and the fear of loss. How does your product or service appeal to these needs? How does your product or service help customers to gain something that they want, or to avoid losing something that they value?
The more basic the need that the customer has, the more simple and direct will be the appeal that gets results. Survival and security needs are the most powerful motivators. People want to survive and be secure and are strongly motivated to take whatever steps necessary to avoid losing safety and security. If you are appealing to a security need, such as a home security system with a smoke alarm, then your appeal can be quite basic, something like, “Don’t let your family die in the night. Provide the necessary security.” This message strikes straight to the heart of the matter and triggers the desire on the part of the prospect to take a buying action of some kind.
If what you are selling is a complex or indirect need, like perfume or jewelry, then your market approach has to be much more subtle. Perhaps the most famous advertisement for perfume was the billboard and full-page magazine ads starring Catherine Deneuve, where she appears next to a bottle of Chanel No. 5, saying, “You’re worth it.”
Think Out of the Box
When Steve Jobs came back in to Apple in 1996, the company was almost broke. He recognized that they could not grow the company selling the same products they had been marketing for more than twenty years. They needed a breakthrough product that would open up an entirely new market for them. Steve Jobs eventually settled on what became known as the iPod.
Producing the iPod required completely new technology, and advances on old technology, but it also required completely reshaping the entire market of selling and delivering songs to play on a pocket device.
After developing the product, negotiating single-song purchase contracts with most of the big record companies, setting up the iTunes online store, and preparing to go to market, Apple was still struggling for a simple advertising slogan that would summarize the iPod’s benefits for people who had never seen or used such a product before. It finally came up with the breakthrough slogan, “1,000 songs in your pocket.” The rest is history. Apple sold 50 million iPods at 50 percent profit. This product started Apple on its rise to becoming the most valuable company in the world.
What is the “1,000 songs in your pocket” slogan that you could develop for your most important product or service? One change in the way that you appeal to your customers can transform your marketing and sales results overnight.
Shared from Brian Tracy’s Book: Marketing.
—————————————————————————————————————–
We Answer Your Calls, Take Your Messages & More. Cititel’s Live Telephone Answering Service and Virtual Receptionist Service for Small Businesses. Call today for more information: 1.888.923.2533 send us an email to info@cititel.com or visit our website at www.cititel.com
