Power Marketing Tip #55: Buying is an Emotional Experience

Buying is an Emotional Experience

Your customer is an emotional being. You need to be aware of the emotional states that affect the decision to buy from you.
Your marketing must address the emotional needs of your customers.
There are three types of emotions and you need to address each differently.
 
Relationship
 
The emotions that the customer might need to feel are: confidence, trust, inclusion, feeling special, comfort and safety.

You can address these emotional needs by building stronger relationships. A significant contributor to the relationship building is the customer service experience.
 
The key principle to building relationships is to make others feel good about themselves.
 
Retreat
 
The emotions that might cause your customer to retreat from you include fear, confusion, suspicion, frustration, and anger.
 
Your marketing must mitigate these emotions because these can lead to lost sales and worse - bad publicity. The bad publicity is even more prevalent with the online review sites like TripAdvisor.com and the social media sites like FaceBook and Twitter. Bad news travels faster and gets remembered longer than good news.
 
You can minimize most of these retreat emotions with the use of clear communication, consistent performance and demonstrating a keen interest in your customer's satisfaction.
Building stronger relationships will also mitigate these emotions and the consequences.
 
Advance
 
The most common emotions that might move your customer to buy from you include: pride, greed, love, guilt, and especially, hope.
 
Your marketing needs to trigger or leverage the relevant emotions of your prospects. Depending on the market the appeal to these emotions might or might not need to be subtle.
 
For example, while signing the contract for my new car the sales person offered me a few extras which I quickly turned down. Then she offered tinted windows. I quickly refused but when she added that "it would make me look cool" I swiftly agreed to tinted windows.
 
This third type is the most important set of emotions to making the sale. Even if you build good relationships and mitigate the Retreat emotions you need to influence the emotions of Advance. These are the most important to persuading your prospect to buy from you.
 
Review the three types of emotions that can affect your prospects and identify the most likely emotions that relate to your best customers. Don't worry about the emotions of your bad customers.
Now examine how your marketing addresses those emotional needs.
 

George Torok

How have you noticed your emotions triggered by marketing, selling and customer service experiences?

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George Torok Keynote Marketing Speaker Co-author of Secrets of Power Marketing Get your free copy of "50 Power Marketing Ideas" Power Marketing on FaceBook Marketing Zoo on Twitter