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Emotional Marketing, Part One

Written by: Keith Thirgood

Article Overview: Emotional Marketing is the most powerful approach to marketing you can imagine. It's about connecting with your prospects where they hurt. They're annoyed; they're anxious or close to rage about something that you can do something about. Emotional marketing, done well, sends a message that validates their feelings. He/she who validates the feelings of another is that person's hero.

Emotional Marketing, Part One

Emotional Marketing is the most powerful approach to marketing you can imagine. It's about connecting with your prospects where they hurt. They're annoyed; they're anxious or close to rage about something that you can do something about. Emotional marketing, done well, sends a message that validates their feelings. He/she who validates the feelings of another is that person's hero. The emotional marketing message you create should be apparent in everything you do as a businessperson. One good place to express your emotional marketing is in your "elevator speech". What's been working for me is, "I help businesses get more of the kind of business they want." The phrase, "Get more" attracts my target market. (I'm not really interested in working with people who are satisfied with the business they're getting.)

Canada's Sales Coach, Tom Stoyan, teaches that pain and passion are the real motivators behind all purchasing decisions. I take this one step further. I say, even when you think you're selling your product or service to help someone achieve their passion, you really are still working to alleviate their pain.

For instance, a luxury car company may say they're helping buyers achieve their dreams of owning a luxury car. (passion) However, you can also see that they're helping them avoid the sorrow of never owning the car of their dreams. (pain)

So, your first task is to determine the pain. Touch that pain, and you'll get an emotional response.

As an example, let's look at what a computer repair technician might dig up about his prospect's pain. (TIP: Although he might find many pains, he should concentrate on the worst or most prevalent.) If he's selling to end users, he'll have to discover what really bugs computer users. If he's selling to IT departments, then what's their biggest issue? Where are their lives out of control?

He should talk to his clients. His prospects. And to colleagues at networking events. He'll have to persist, dig down and identify the real issues--not just the ones he imagines, from his perspective, are important. A prospect might tell him, "The worst part about computers is waiting on the help line for ages, only to speak to some guy who hasn't a clue. Then I get passed from person to person in a never-ending round of frustration."

There's a real nerve being touched. Interestingly enough, most business owners/marketers, when they hear a complaint like the one above--about something in their line of work--somehow don't hear it as an answer to their marketing prayers. But that's exactly what it is. It identifies the pain you can relieve and you have insight into the emotional core to your marketing message.

Our technician has learned that his prospects hate getting the run-around. And because he has a solution, he can use it to create a message that demonstrates he understands where they're coming from and shows they won't have that problem with him. So, his marketing message might go:

"I specialize in helping computer users who can't afford to wait around for technical support." or "I specialize in helping computer users who hate to wait for technical support." or "I help computer users get back up and functioning fast, no matter what."

Messages like these clearly tell prospects what you do, but more importantly, they validates their feelings because it also says, "You're not alone, you're right to feel the way you do".

Test out the variations of the message you create with a few people you trust. Wait for the reaction--you'll see it before you hear it. When evaluating marketing, reactions are more important than opinions. Identify the one that gets the best response, then test your new emotional message wherever you normally network.

If you've got it right, and you're speaking to real prospects, the response you get will be more than polite interest. A prospect will actively want to know how you do it. They give you permission to talk about yourself. However, I suggest you resist talking about yourself just yet. I tell you what I recommend you do as a next step in another article titled Emotional Marketing Part Two.

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Article Tags: connecting, emotional response, marketing, message, prospect, prospects



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