Too often however, niche online sellers offer pages and pages of products that are devoid of emotion and personality.
lisa suttora
If you think shopping is a perfunctory, logical process for us human beings…think again! The decision to make a purchase is largely based upon emotion (often subconscious emotions) that is then justified by logic.
Inanimate objects sitting on a page, the sales copy brings no life, no emotion, no meaning to what they sell. And because of that they don’t sell.
How then do you reach your customers and inspire them to click the “Buy” button?
- Is it simply through “matter of fact” product descriptions?
- A stock manufacturer’s photo?
- Always offering the lowest price?
No!
It’s by creating the right emotional connection with your buyer. One that speaks the language of a conversation that is already happening in their heads.
For example, my friend Marina loves to buy shoes. She has more shoes than any human could possibly wear out in a lifetime. Laid end-to-end, her array of boldly colored leather shoes could easily rival the spectrum of colors found in a box of 64 Crayola Crayons.
Did she need all those shoes? Of course not! But each pair, each purchase, has a story.
Like the lime green pair of strappy sandals she bought last spring—the shoes that helped reframe her mindset after a long, cold, hard winter as a real estate agent.
Those shoes were not ‘just’ a pair of shoes. They represented a fresh start, a new mindset, an investment in herself. She received an offer on the first house she showed that weekend.
Lest you think that Marina is simply a female footwear fashionista, consider this…
A recent article in the New York Times explains footwear sales in October 2009 were reached $1.5 Billion dollars in October 2009. The highest sales figure in an October since 2006.
Did shoes across the nation suddenly wear out? Hardly. But people are suffering from “frugal fatigue” and find it easy to spend money on a new pair of shoes that they want (meeting their emotional want) and then justifying it with the “logical” need.
And for you guys out there reading this, don’t think that creating an emotional connection with your buyer is just for women!
Make an emotional connection with your male customers and they are likely to spend even more than their female counterparts.
Consider my friend Eric who has a garage full of tools, many of which he’s only used once for highly specialized projects. Eric says he bought all of these tools “because they all do something different”.
But inquire a bit deeper and you will find that they line the shelves of his garage because each has a story or was part of a life event.
They represent project dreams, a way to save money by “doing it himself,” a cool whiz-bang gadget that was the envy of his friends, or something that just looked fun to buy…
People Buy on Emotion & Justify It With Logic
The sooner you accept the fact that customers buy on emotion and not just lowest price or a basic product the more successful your business will be.
It’s then that you will start thinking about how you can make a connection with your customer.
Does product value count? Sure. Is product functionality important? Yes. Does price matter? Sometimes.
Does it matter how your product or the buying experience makes your customer feel? feel? You betcha!
Seven Questions to Help You Make an Emotional Connection When Marketing Your Products
If your product sales have been devoid of emotion so far, the prospect of creating an emotional connection when marketing your products may not come intuitively to you. Below are 7 questions that will help get you started connecting with your customers.
- What do your customers want?
- What do they care about?
- How can your product contribute to their life? Their day? Their well-being?
- What will inspire them? Perk them up? Make them feel some enthusiasm for what they are about to buy?
- What are their worries? Their cares?
- How can your product make their life easier, less stressful, more productive, calmer?
- How will your product make your customers feel?
No matter what you sell or where you sell it, you have to make an emotional connection with your potential customer. Go right now to your website, your eBay listings, your Etsy store and look at your product offerings through a new pair of eyes. Are you making the connection?
