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Title: Motivating Your Prospects
Author:
Unknown
Article
Appreciate one
solitary straightforward fact: prospects and clients buy for their
personal reasons and not your reasons. They really don’t care about your
firm, your mission statement or the elongated catalogue of product
features you have so adeptly articulated to them. They really only concern
themselves with what benefits your proposal will bring. They crave that
benefit, the impact, the enhancement, the reassurance and the protection
it will bring. A good number of small business marketing efforts fails to
deal with these essential client requirements straightforwardly. Instead,
they centre on the importance of their product or service and neglect what
is really important!
Small business marketers are regularly their own nastiest enemies! They
are repeatedly not communicating at the buyer's level. They are too busy
devising ways of how to "sell", rather than discovering the reasons
why the client "buys".
Direct Mail Marketing
Whilst trying to generate
customers, Marketers frequently endeavour to reach the populace via Direct
Mail. But how do they demonstrate their differences from their
competition? How does their message stand out? Seldom do they ever adopt
the professional approach.
Regrettably, we are ever likely to see
this sort of approach…
- "Time Sensitive Material Inside!"
- "CONFIDENTIAL!"
- "Savings inside!"
- "Important Notification!"
Marketers must find a way to make a clear-cut characteristic difference
between their products and their firm. But with advertising - even on
television, there needs to be a convincing communication - that compelling
message which will place the company and its products in the forefront.
But what can they say to be that compelling? How do they get this message
across especially using the Internet?
The problem is the type of marketing strategy which is utilised. Are
you pushing your product or are you pulling the client? There is an
essential difference here. Why should buyers pay attention to why you
think your product is so great?… Buyers only care about their needs and
take action for their own personal reasons. True… very true indeed!
The 7%-38%-55% Rule of Communication.
Plentiful
studies have been completed over the years on how people respond, become
motivated, take action and buy. There are certain ways of persuading
people to make their purchase… but moving them to feel like buying is
quite an additional thing.
The rule quite simply states that…
- 55% of communication is attributable to non-verbal behaviours like
body language and facial expressions
- 38% of communication is attributable to voice intonations including
volume, tone, pitch, tempo, and quality
- 7% of communication is attributable to the words which are used.
Notwithstanding this credible substantiation, companies seem to stay
with piling on profuse amounts of text, in a futile expectation that
search engines will index it and that someone might actually read it, even
though… around 70% of website visitors simply scan for headlines, bulleted
points and captions!
The Push – Pull effect
When you push your products,
you are, fundamentally, telling the client that they should buy from you
because of your reasons. With this self-centred approach you repeatedly
run into a wall of objections and delays. Pushing the product forces them
out of their comfort zone and places pointless demands on their decision
making process. An inexorable battering of closing techniques pushes them
away from a purchasing decision on their terms.
Conversely, pulling a buyer through the purchasing procedure is much
more efficient. When you pull you are leading them to their acquisition
rather like leading a horse to water. You smoothly guide them through your
features and benefits and they come to a decision on their terms. If they
resist, you have obviously not educated them enough with information to
motivate them, or you haven't addressed their objections satisfactorily.
How to put customers off completely
I’m not
suggesting that we even attempt to try the cliché method of web sales page
layout, which quite often includes…
- Overly large bold headlines
- Massive amounts of text
- Yellow highlighted words
- Photos of smiling ugly “customers”
- Photos of smiling nonexistent staff (models)
- Lots of useless free rubbish
- Bulleted points with large red ticks
- Too many “testimonials” and quotations with more dreadful
photographs
- Bold, underlined, bright red text
- The phrase 'But Wait, There's More' offering a collection of useless
free e-books you'll never read and special bonus gifts you don't want
- A plethora of 'Click Here To Order" buttons at every turn
These sorts of presentations could be made in a matter of minutes using
a professional copywriter / advertising firm, who would place everything
on one short page… which says it all… quickly.
Web Marketing Formulae
On the Web, there are a
large number of disheartening direct marketing formulae that you see in
such things as sales pitches for magazine subscriptions. Can you really
expect people to take you seriously when you adopt this ridiculous
approach to marketing? It is a formula that mocks all the careful research
and every other usability study that has been carried out, warning against
overloading website visitors with excessive quantities of text. People may
think it's ideal for driving traffic to your site, but if you check your
reports, 50% of that traffic disappears in a few seconds, because people
don’t want to see this approach anymore!
This format is an outdated sales technique that doesn't work in a Web
environment where people find it difficult to read (and really don’t want
to read) large amounts of text. It is also an approach that insults the
intelligence of your potential customers!
Meet the requirements of the Customer… not you
The
buyer will only make a decision when they are comfortably contented that
your offer has met all of their purchasing criteria. As a seller, you must
pull them through the process and always let them stay within the limits
of their comfort zone. It's by staying within these boundaries that trust
is established and a long-term rapport is built with the client.
The purchasing process is entirely rooted in the perceptions of the
buyer. They have ultimate control over the process, you don’t. Your
ultimate job as a marketer is to properly develop all your communications
to make the client feel at ease and lead them to the best outcome...that
is… ultimately purchasing your product or service.
No Motivation… No Customer
Two things motivate all
potential customers: 1) a feeling of dissatisfaction and 2) a desire
for change. All first-rate advertising creates a focused storyline with an
outstanding message that stirs the emotional discontent in the audience
and offers a way out that will initiate change.
"Motivation" is a very misunderstood word in sales and marketing,
despite its multiple synonyms: induce - activate - propel - stir - move -
instigate - stimulate - arouse - impel - provoke - hearten -influence -
persuade – goad.
For the Marketer, motivating a Buyer is getting that Buyer to take "The
Next Steps." That means that they must know what drives today's Buyers to
take action.
Thank goodness people have an insatiable desire for what's new and
improved! We are a species motivated to constantly strive for more: more
money, more control, more achievement, more success; and when we have more
things, we want better things. We are in a continuous condition of desire.
The advertiser’s work is to access that craving and push that
motivational button so that the visitor takes action. Motivation is the
“silver bullet” that will eliminate the “Information Overload Werewolf”.
Create Dissatisfaction
The work of advertisers is
to create a degree of dissatisfaction in its target market. If people are
contented with how they look or come across, they are not going to buy
that special skin cream or those diet books. If people are contented with
their old Television they are not going to buy that huge LCD flat screen
TV with surround sound and built in gaming machine. If people are
contented with who they are, where they are in life, and what they have,
they are just not customer-potential, that is, unless you create that
dissatisfaction within them.
Most cosmetic advertisements feature a stunning looking girl promising
that you too can look like them, if only you use their product. This
approach is based on showing a principle that the audience will
indisputably be unable to argue with. After seeing what they could look
like, they are no longer content with what they do look like at the
moment, and are now motivated to buy into that promise of being changed
for the better.
Creating Successful Dissatisfaction
You must first
decide to whom the campaign is aimed. We each have a self-image; in fact
we each have four self-images. In order to employ a marketing campaign
that motivates action, you must access the emotional and psychological
realms of desire.
We must also work out which “self” our product or service serves.
1. The Outer-Self
This is the one we present to the
rest of the world. If we sell high priced luxury goods or services that
appeal to status, we are probably aiming our presentation at the
outer-self, the one we display to other people.
2. The Private Self
This is the self we hide from
the rest of the world. If we sell a hidden pleasure product or service we
should probably direct our presentation to the private-self, the one we
keep locked away and hidden.
3. The Ideal Self
This defines who we wish we
could be. If we sell a self-improvement or motivational product or
service, we want to access the ideal-self, the self we urgently wish to
become.
4. The Actual Self
This defines who we really are.
If we sell a product or service that justifies our real behaviour, then
it's the actual-self we want to target.
Accessing the right sort of dissatisfaction
- The dissatisfaction we are accessing may be active or inactive.
Active dissatisfaction like having acne or being overweight is a concern
that the audience is aware of. Inactive dissatisfaction like halitosis
or body odour, is a problem that the audience is unaware of.
- To what degrees is our audience able to recognise that a problem
exists even after we make it active? Does our audience concede they are
overweight, have halitosis, or need a new promotional strategy or do
they deny or fail to recognise the existence of any problem
- Next we need to decide whether the real meaning of dissatisfaction
is general or specific. Will our audience be happy with any solution
that comes along or does satisfaction depend on fulfilling a specific
requirement?
- Lastly we must determine if the dissatisfaction is based on a desire
for something or on the avoidance of something. We may desire an
glamorous sports car to show-off our wealth and status to friends and
colleagues, or we may avoid driving a flashy car, no matter how rich we
are, to avoid showing-up our friends and colleagues.
- Once we have analysed the nature of our audience's dissatisfaction
and the ability of our product or service to achieve change, we can
create an effective marketing campaign. If your website content doesn't
connect with your audience's desire for change, if you're website
traffic is not motivated by dissatisfaction, then that traffic is just
plain old congestion, with no intrinsic value whatsoever.
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