Bootstrappers have a unique opportunity. We’ve got the opportunity to turn the lack of funding for our business into a creative black hole where everything gets sucked in. Not sucked in and lost, but sucked in and pieced together. A solid piece of that puzzle we like to call ‘selling’ is learning how to play off peoples emotions. I was reading Marketing in troubled times: Selling Freedom by Naomi from Itty Biz and immediately started thinking. I actually just got finished reading that article and writing Naomi about it 20 or so minutes ago. It was a powerful article and has my mind running a million miles a minute. In this article here I want to run down what emotional selling is, why we need to sell through peoples emotions and how we can actually do it.
What is emotional selling?
Can you remember playing in the snow with a snow suit that was too big with a group of your best friends, eating the white snow, avoiding the yellow snow at all costs and making snow men and forts? I can and I bet anyone reading this can also close your eyes and go back to a time when this was your daily routine. Now imagine if someone trying to sell you financial freedom was targeting this emotion with two kids standing side by side next to a snowman they built, or a group of kids playing in the snow with snow balls flying in the air with the tag line “Let us help you get back to a simpler time”. I bet you could relate to it right? Yeah, I thought so. THAT is emotional selling.
Why should you sell off peoples emotions?
In the paragraph above I painted a picture. Not the picture of people standing next to $200,000 cars or sitting on a boat or a guy standing with bikini models on each arm, but a simple picture of a time when you were playing in the snow. What of these two scenarios do you think would draw peoples emotions more? So many people want to show you the same thing, piles of money, big boats, fast cars and close-to-naked women. Don’t you think people are tired of this same type of targeting? Wouldn’t it not only strike their emotions and make them think about their past, but also catch them a bit off guard and be a pleasant surprise to their daily routine? I think so and so does Naomi from Itty Biz.
How can you sell off peoples emotions?
Well, if you’ve read the entire article above, you’ve got one idea down. If you go over to Naomi’s article you can read a couple more. If you keep reading, I’ll give you a few more ideas.
If you’re selling website designs or blog designs, how about targeting the emotions of the potential customer by painting a picture of them when they were in grade school drawing and writing fictional stories about monsters and other fairy tale creatures with pictures they drew by hand. After you get that in their mind, show them how they can turn those same things into a very marketable daily/weekly/monthly comic strip and blog.
What about if you’re selling womans clothing? Why would you show the same super model walking down the runway when you could play into a time when your target customer was six years old, getting into her mothers jewelry, standing in the hall way wearing a dress 100 times too big and high heel shoes that could fit 10 of her feet in them?
How about you?
Do you have an idea of a time in your own life that could relate to your business at all? How many other of your potential customers probably have that same memory? I bet you there are millions. After all, as bootstrappers and self-employed business owners, we are more than likely doing something right now that we somehow loved as a kid right?
I know I am. I run a Tennessee Web Design company and I can remember sitting in my room for hours drawing comics and cartoon characters. I’ve had that in my blood all my life and can relate 100 or more memories to it so I bet you and your customers can do the same. So get out there and sell those emotions!
[...] Emotional Selling: What, why and how This article will show you how to pull at your target markets emotions and really win them over instead of giving them the feeling that they’re being forced to purchase from you [...]