NOTE: This is part 2 of a two-part series. Please read part 1 before starting part 2.
In the first installment, we looked at the number one killer of sales — doubt. In this article, we’ll look at what you need to do to overcome doubt and encourage people to buy.
Desire
There’s only one reason why a person buys a product or service. They want it. This sounds simple enough, but there’s more to it than first meets they eye. The would-be buyer has to want the product more than the money it costs. It’s up to you to bring the prospective buyer around to that conclusion.
Most advertising generates some degree of desire, but not enough to overcome natural human inertia. This article looks at how to generate desire through your advertising, and use it to get people to take the risk involved in making a purchase.
Doubt
In part one, we looked at the way doubt kills sales. Doubt has the ability to overcome desire. It acts as a warning bell, leaving the potential buyer with the feeling that taking no action is less risky than buying your product.
If doubt kills desire, what kills doubt?
Paradoxically, you can counter doubt with desire. Let me explain…
Desire is an emotion, and human beings are emotional creatures. We are driven to act on emotional impulses. The emotions that spur us to act are…
Here are some examples of these three emotions to illustrate the point…
A man with a broken leg is in the path of a charging bull. His fear compels him to act in spite of his pain.
A woman with large debts is offered the chance to place her last $500 on a horse paying 100 to 1. She places the bet in the vein hope that a win might solve her financial problems.
A socially immature man joins a club he has little interest in because his need for approval overrides his desire to occupy his time with activities that interest him.
A woman with poor self esteem, and little money, spends $2,500 on a designer dress that she will wear only once. She believes the dress will compensate for her feelings of inadequacy.
A man borrows heavily to buy an expensive sports car. The car is impractical for his needs, but he believes his friends will admire the car, and that this admiration will extend to him.
In each case, a person was driven to act by an underlying emotion.
If you were to ask, these people wouldn’t consider their actions to be irrational. In fact, they’d give you seemingly rational reasons for acting the way they did. From their own point of view, they had a genuine need to take the action they did. In each case, the motivation to act was driven by desire, not need.
Fear of loss
Fear of loss is another powerful motivator. Some say the fear of loss is actually more powerful than the desire for gain.
You can combine desire with the fear of loss to create a powerful sales tool that inspires immediate action from potential clients. We’ll look at how to do that in an online ad later in this article.
When doubt is stopping someone from making that final commitment for something they desire, the fear of losing it is a useful countermeasure.
Greed
Greed is a powerful desire built into all of us. Greed is not so much a sin, as a powerful survival tool in a world where resources are scarce.
Our species has evolved in a world of scarce resources, and we’ve learned to horde things as a result. You can see this even in our body chemistry, which has us overeat when food is abundant so the excess can be stored as fat.
This natural greed extends to all areas of our lives, and can be used as a tool to sell products that promise to multiply any particular thing people might wish to horde.
A more “evolved” form of greed is exclusivity. Any product that generates an aura of exclusivity, instantly becomes more desirable. Modern art is an excellent example of this. Blotches of paint splashed on paper by a five year old, are worthless. Blotches of paint splashed on canvas by an Internationally recognized artist can command a small fortune.
Exclusivity is an extension of the principle of scarcity. As a general rule, an object is seen as more valuable if it’s desired by more than one person, it’s not easily duplicated, and there isn’t enough of them for everybody. How much would you pay for a glass of water right now? How much would you pay if you were lost in the desert, and hadn’t had a drink in 2 days? How much would you pay if two of you were lost in the desert, hadn’t had a drink in 2 days, and there was a single glass of water?
Guilt
Guilt is a by-product of our overdeveloped brains.
Certain types of product lend themselves to guilt, such as charity appeals. Guilt is paired with a need for approval, which is to say the need to feel good about ourselves. There is a certain satisfaction that comes with giving something away, and this may simply be the removal of guilt!
The need for approval runs through all of us, and is almost certainly related to our social evolution as a species. We developed abstract language as a tool to help us survive the predatory activities of creatures far more powerful and better equipped than we are. Our advantage requires that we cooperate, and it’s likely that our need for approval finds its source in this aspect of our species.
This need for approval can be used to generate desire for certain products. Overpriced automobiles, clothing, art, and jewelry spring to mind.
Buyer’s don’t believe they act on emotion
If you’re finding this article to be rather cynical about human beings, it may be due to this next point. People are generally not conscious of the emotions that underpin the actions they take. This applies as much to our buying decisions, as to any other area of human activity.
An excellent example of this can be seen in a colleague of mine, who once swore black and blue that every buying decision he made was based totally on logic, and was the result of painstaking research over several months. He believed that all his buying decisions were entirely rational.
My colleague failed to grasp two points…
- The way he went about purchasing is a separate step from taking the decision to purchase
- His desire to get the lowest price was still based on an emotional need
Yes, the person I have in mind does not strike you as one given to high emotion. Yet he buys things that he does not need to survive. Why does he do so?
For example, he already had a very expensive SLR camera. He didn’t need a digital camera. It will take around 10 years to recover the cost of not having to develop an entire film just to get the few photos he wants to keep. He’ll almost certainly have upgraded to another digital camera by then! More to the point, why does he want to take and keep photos anyway?
The plain fact is, despite his painstaking research to find the very best camera, and all the haggling to get the lowest possible price, his underlying motivation was emotional. Nobody needs a camera, but plenty of us desire the photos that result. They’re memories of good times, and rekindle the emotions that accompanied those events.
His desire to get the best price is not based on logic either. He enjoys the process of getting the lowest price on Earth for anything he buys. How do I know this? Because every time he buys something new, the first thing he tells me is how much he saved. The next thing he tells me is how he managed to save so much.
The point is, buying decisions are emotional acts. A person buys something to fulfill an emotional need. You will make more sales if you find a way to speak to that need.
Forcing the issue
Generating desire for a product or service isn’t difficult. Desire is easily aroused in people, simply by clearly communicating the manner in which a product or service meets one or more basic human needs.
Unfortunately for us, desire alone isn’t enough! People are reluctant to act. This tendency is seen during the sales process. A person may well make a decision to buy, yet doesn’t actually do so.
For whatever reason, he or she decides to delay the act of purchasing until some later date. All kinds of reasons may be given for the delay, and most will sound totally convincing. None of these reasons matter. The simple fact of the matter is, it’s usually safer to do nothing.
In a sense, your job as a writer of ads, is to make it safer to act now.
This is especially important on the Internet, because you’re relying on words and phrases to secure the sale. And you have little hope of ever seeing that person again if they don’t buy now.
You need to force the issue.
Use scarcity to force the issue
The way to force the issue is to use the law of scarcity. This law speaks to the fear of loss that resides in all of us, and has its basis in a fundamental understanding of economics that we all share.
Most of us know there is a limited amount of any given item, so it’s usually better to grab something while it’s available.
Capitalism has lessened the impact of this truth in all western nations. It’s very unusual for something to be scarce in a free market. Competing businesses will always outperform a monopoly. That’s especially true of a government-run monopoly.
The lack of scarcity that we all enjoy in the western world, has lessened the impact of scarcity as a selling tool. This is especially true for digital products, where the cost of manufacture is zero. Despite this, you can still use scarcity by imposing a time limit on a special offer.
The special offer
A special offer increases the desirability of any item that a person wants to buy. For example, if you’ve already been sold on a particular brand of car, the ability to get it with $3,000 worth of factory options at no extra cost increases the desirability of that particular car.
If you’re interested in several different models, the special offer is likely to affect your buying decision in favor of the car that includes the extras.
Of course, a special offer won’t get a person to act in and of itself. Why should someone act today, when they can still get the special offer tomorrow? Or next week? Or next month?
For a special offer to invoke action, it needs a time a limit.
The time limit
Consider the above special offer. You get your car at the agreed price, and then the dealer includes $3,000 worth of factory options.
This would certainly cause you to think about this model of car. But in an of itself, that’s all it does.
What if the dealer then told you that the special offer expired tomorrow?
This forces you to think a lot more seriously about the car. If you’re going to buy that model…if you’re really serious about it, you’re going to be better off if you act immediately.
If the special offer is desirable, and the time-limit reasonably strict, it’s safer to act now. It’s more risky to delay. The advertiser has successfully reversed the normal circumstances in which a buyer finds him or herself!
The time limit forces a person to make a real decision, rather than a theoretical one. And it helps get the buyer over the hurdle of risk, by rewarding him/her for taking the next step.
When to disclose the special offer
Time limited special offers are an excellent way to get people to act. But they only work if a person has already decided to buy.
You must first sell the person on buying your product or service. A person must first make a theoretical decision to buy. Once a person has decided to buy, in principle, you can then clinch the deal buy making it safer to act immediately.
Recap
Why does a person buy your product? Because they want the benefits that come with owning and using it.
What are the benefits of owning and using your product? If you don’t know, you’d better find out, because you can’t write a powerful sales ad until you know.
By clearly explaining the benefits of that come with using your product, you build desire for it. But desire usually isn’t enough to secure the sale. You’ll get more sales if you use a time-limited special offer, and make it more beneficial to act now.
