This is the key to the kingdom; take time to understand what emotional triggers your product/service awakens in your prospect.   The Why Gets The Buy!

I cannot emphasise this enough. When you truly take time to understand why peopeit will change how you talk about it and write about it. You should always be listening to how your prospects react and feeding that back into your knowledge as you can easily miss something. What you read as a “safe” buy might actually be more frivolous and what is a treat for one market might be a necessity for another.

Is one emotional trigger more important than other?  What is important is the relevance to your product/service and you can identify it, understand it and communicate it! It is not necessarily an easier task to trigger a more “common” emotion it is about finding the emotions that your product/service triggers.

Once you have identified a trigger I would suggest you take the reason that you identify and then ask the question “why will XXX want to pay for my product and service” and then repeat that step and see how deep you get.  For instance if you have a weight loss product the immediate emotion is “to loose weight” but underneath this will be lots more drivers “to look better in jeans” “to wear a bikini” “to be able to train for a marathon”, “ to feel more attractive” “better about myself” etc.. which is much deeper than just loosing weight, which we can all say but we have to connect to a deeper trigger.

Equally don’t ignore an obvious emotional trigger go with what works for you and more importantly for your prospects. I thank Robert W Bly and his book The Copywriters Handbook and Persuasive Psychology for their list of human motivators that has kick started my conversation with this and I hope makes you curious to find what your motivators are for your products and services.

Fundamentally a purchase is doing one of 2 things, either it is going to decrease pain or increase joy and pleasure. It is a proven fact that we are more stimulated to move away from pain than we are to move towards pleasure (check the huge competitive space of the headache solution shelf in the chemist or supermarket).  There are many axis of extremes that you can plot out and gauge for yourself. Where you find a trigger think what the opposite is as homing in on the pain/fear and the cost of not having your something in their life might be very powerful for you.

To make money, To save money, To save time are probably the most common across life. Time is the one thing we all know we cannot buy so look at your own life and all the purchases that have some part of saving you time in their promise. Beware though often if they are popular reasons then it can be quite hard to generate the buyer trigger as we are all purchasers too and we are accustomed and almost immune to these claims now.  However whatever triggers you connect with, however obvious you think it is put it on the list and deal with it. Part of the job of marketing is to remove any doubt, we don’t leave anything to chance. 

I think the biggest issue here is if you are the cheapest. It is only ok if that is the position you want to be in, if it is not a position you want to be in then you need to look at adding value to bring in stronger and more profitable triggers. 

“To achieve greater cleanliness”, “To attain better health”, “To be sexually attractive” are all busy, popular triggers so go deep and find your uniqueness to these common and often over used claims – you want your trigger to stick and gain traction so put the work in and make it real and attractive to your target market.

Do you touch on “making them safe”, “conserve possessions”, “ protecting reputation”?? The need to protect ourselves and our loved ones and varying levels is primal, the brain is hard wired to do just that. Look at the hugely lucrative housing, insurance and financial markets. Our countries defence budget is one of our largest expenses so no surprise here on the strength of this trigger.  At the opposite end of the scale the need for” excitement and adventure “ is definitely a great and profitable angle and you might link with others for extra kerb appeal, I am thinking how can you bring in “forgetting our problems” and “increasing enjoyment”, the extremes you can go to will be dependent on what you are offering and to who. â€œAvoiding trouble” and “criticism” might also have look in here.

“To be popular, fit in and belong to the gang” is a real kicker in our social media orientated society with the almost craving desire and need for likes, recognition and popularity and even fame – there seems to be a bit of wannebe tv star that can be tapped in most of us so its well worth a look at all the triggers in this area alongside the need “to be in style” an “emulate others”.  We have “the search for approval”, “to gain praise/be appreciated” “To feel important, better about ourselves”. If procession of your product or use of your service can help people “gain admiration and be admired” you might just take things to another level. We are in a 1st world society so “rewarding ourselves” and leading on “you deserve it” are all well used and known to you and have pulling power, really know your market and be clear on what they see as a “reward” and “treat” – It is really important that you did this exercise from the point of you of the ideal target market you want to talk to.

You might be able to trigger the inner rebel and attract those who want to be “individual and defiant” and if its not quite out there on that extreme axis then take a look at those feelings around “satisfy an appetite for xxxx” or “feed a curiosity”.

To avoid effort, make work/life easier – both  can be tough so if what you offer make their working life easier, it might be an app, software or specialist services.

To prove we are right or perhaps “make amends” – do you have a controversial/marmite attraction? This could be a winning one to go deep as there is great opportunity to grow a following – which is so much more powerful than just getting a transaction. 

And one of my favourites as it’s a bit obvious and frivolous also, could it be as easy as “because its easy”, how difficult is it to buy your products/services. Do you have a strong call to action, one click card payment, when you are attracting ready to buy leads, are you ready for them to buy!

“To take advantage of opportunities~ is a great one as you can really work on the FOMO with this and perhaps take advantage of creating abit of scarcity using early bird offer cut off dates etc…

Have fun plotting and exploring your key emotional drivers to buy your product and keep curious, ask people why they bought – you might be missing a blinding flash of the bleeding obvious. Humans buy so be human, understand and create empathy and show them how and why they need you in their life, that is your job, the only job of your customer is to show up with a problem.

I am Laura Greenwood and offer “Done For You” “Done With You” and marketing mentoring too. Please do come and join my free Facebook group Laura Greenwood’s Marketing Group when you are next over there! Laura@yourleadgeneration.co.uk 07703 520490.