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Winning Secrets To Successfully Advertising Your Business The How and Why of Pushing Their Emotional Hot Buttons

Guest post by: Teresa Bohannon

Article Overview: Advertising your business is the one expense you cannot avoid; even online...but if you are smart about it you can cut down on your expenses while still successfully helping the world beat a path to your virtual doorstep. First you get their attention and then you creat a burning desire to hear more...and believe.

Winning Secrets To Successfully Advertising Your Business The How and Why of Pushing Their Emotional Hot Buttons

In my article Winning Secrets To Successfully Advertising Your Business, I talked about the importance of quickly getting your prospective customer's attention, and how to hold it. But where do you go from there? Yu push their Emotional Hot Buttons and create the curiosity they need to make them want to hang around to see what you have to say next. And then you offer credibility and proof!

How do you do that? Read on!

Successfully Advertising Your Business Means Learning To Push Their Emotional Hot Buttons

This is where research really pays off. Because in order to push those buttons, you need to first know what they are.

Listen to this story first, and I’ll tell you what I mean: Once upon a time a young man walked into a Chevrolet dealer’s showroom to check out a Chevy Camaro. He had the money, and he was ready to make a buying decision. But he couldn’t decide if he wanted to buy the Camaro or the Ford Mustang up the road at the Ford dealer.

A salesman approached him and soon discovered the man’s dilemma.

“Tell me what you like best about the Camaro,” said the salesman.

“It’s a fast car. I like it for its speed.”

After some more discussion, the salesman learned the man had just started dating a cute college cheerleader. So what did the salesman do?

Simple. He changed his pitch accordingly, to push the hot buttons he knew would help advance the sale. He told the man about how impressed his new girlfriend would be when he came home with this car! He placed the mental image in the man’s mind of he and his girlfriend cruising to the beach in the Camaro. How all of his friends will be envious when they see him riding around with a beautiful girl in a beautiful car.

And suddenly the man saw it. He got it. And the salesman recognized this and piled it on even more. Before you know it, the man wrote a nice fat check to the Chevy dealership, because he was sold!

The salesman found those hot buttons and pushed them like never before until the man realized he wanted the Camaro more than he wanted his money.

I know what you’re thinking…the man said he liked the car because it was fast, didn’t he?

Yes, he did. But subconsciously, what he really desired was a car that would impress his girlfriend, his friends, and in his mind make them love him more! In his mind he equated speed with thrill. Not because he wanted an endless supply of speeding tickets, but because he thought that thrill would make him more attractive, more likeable.

Perhaps the man didn’t even realize this fact himself. But the salesman sure did. And he knew which emotional hot buttons to press to get the sale.

Basically the young man just wanted the same thing we all want at a primal level. When someone asked my son, the martial arts instructor, the meaning of life he humorously quoted the immortal words of Conan the Barbarian who stated it thusly...

"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

Which summed up basically means "To Win." Whether you want to get the guy, have the job, grow the finest roses, drive the car, have your husband think you're the hottest babe around, or your kids believe that nothing in the world beats mom's home cooking...we all just want to win. It's a primal urge. And figuring out how your product will help your target audience be a winner is the Number 1 key to successful selling.

And that's why you do research.

Well, a good salesman knows how to ask the kinds of questions that will tell him which buttons to press on the fly. Unfortunately, when you are writing copy, you don’t have that luxury. It’s therefore very important to know upfront the wants, needs, and desires of your prospective customers. If you haven’t done your homework, your prospect is going to decide that he’d rather keep his money than buy your product. Remember, copywriting is just salesmanship in print!

It’s been said many times: People don’t like to be sold.

But they do like to buy and everyone wants to win.

And they buy based on emotion first and foremost. Then they justify their decision with logic, even after they are already sold emotionally. So be sure to back up your emotional pitch with the necessary logic to nurture that justification to the end of the sale and long after.

And while we’re on the subject, let’s talk a moment about perceived “hype.” A lot of more “conservative” advertisers have decided that they don’t like hype, because they consider hype to be old news, been-there-and-done-that, my customers won’t fall for hype, it’s not believable anymore.

What they should actually realize is that hype itself does not sell well. Some less experienced copywriters often try to compensate for their lack of research or not fully understanding their target market or the product itself by adding tons of adjectives and adverbs and exclamation points and big bold type.

Whew! If you do your job right, it’s just not needed.

That’s not to say some adverbs or adjectives don’t have their place…only if they’re used sparingly, and only if they advance the sale.

But I think you’d agree that backing up your copy with proof and believability will go a lot farther in convincing your prospects than “power words” alone. I say power words, because there are certain adverbs and adjectives that have been proven to make a difference when they’re included. This by itself is not hype. But repeated too often, they become less effective, and they take away (at least in your prospect’s mind) from the proof.

Which brings us into our next tip…


Incorporating Proof and Believability

When your prospect reads your ad, you want to make sure he believes any claims you make about your product or service. Because if there’s any doubt in his mind, he won’t buy, no matter how sweet the deal. In fact, the “too good to be true” mentality will virtually guarantee a lost sale…even if it is all true.

So what can you do to increase the perception of believability? Because after all, it’s the perception you need to address up front. But of course you also must make darned sure your copy is accurate and truthful, and stand behind it, because there is no faster way to turn someone's perception of themselves as a winner into that of a loser than to have them end up feeling like they have been coerced into making a foolish purchase. And once you have made them feel like a loser they will never forgive you.

Here are some tried and tested methods that will help:

If you’re dealing with existing customers who already know you deliver as promised, emphasize that trust. Don’t leave it up to them to figure it out. Make them stop, cock their heads, and say, “Oh, yeah. The ABC Company has never done me wrong before. I can trust them.”

Include testimonials of satisfied customers. Be sure to put full names and locations, where possible. Remember, “A.S.” is a lot less believable than “Andy Sherman,

Voorhees, NJ.” If you can also include a picture of the customer and/or a professional title, that’s even better. It doesn’t matter that your testimonials aren’t from somebody famous or that your prospect does not know these people personally. If you have enough compelling testimonials, and they’re believable, you’re much better off than not including them at all.

Pepper your copy with facts and research findings to support your claims. Be sure to credit all sources, even if the fact is common knowledge, because a neutral source goes a long way towards credibility.

If applicable, cite any awards or third-party reviews the product or service has received.

If you’ve sold a lot of widgets, tell them. It’s the old “10 million people can’t be wrong” adage (they can be, but your prospect will likely take your side on the matter).

Include a GREAT GUARANTEED or RETURN POLICY and absolutely stand by it! This is just good business policy. Making sure they can buy with confidence is especially vital online. Make them think...“Gee, they wouldn’t be so generous with returns if they didn’t stand behind their product!” And again, I cannot make this point more strenuously, make darn sure they walk away from the sale feeling like a winner...and do everything possible to make sure that feeling lasts.

When it makes sense, use 3rd party testimonials. What are 3rd party testimonials? Here are a few examples, for a website selling an online security product.

“Spyware, is definity on the rise over the last six months.”
Linda Conner, Senior Director of Engineering, Thunderblast Online Security Systems

“Just clicking on a banner ad can install spyware.”
Angela Waynes, Chief Technology Officer, Drive By Software

Do you see what I did?

I took published quotes from experts in their respective fields and used them to make my case. But…be sure to get their consent or permission from the copyright holder if there’s any question about copyrighted materials as your source.

Note that I also pushed an emotional hot button: fear.

It’s been proven that people will generally do more to avoid pain than to obtain pleasure. So why not use that tidbit of info to your advantage?

Reveal a flaw about your product. This helps alleviate the “too good to be true” syndrome. You reveal a flaw that isn’t really a flaw. Or reveal a flaw that is minor, just to show that you’re being “up front” about your product’s shortcomings.

Example:

“You’re probably thinking right now that this tennis racket is a miracle worker—and it is. But I must tell you that it has one little…shortcoming.

This racket takes about 2 weeks to get used to. In fact, when you first start using it, your game will actually get worse. But if you can just ride it out, you’ll see a tremendous improvement in your volleys, net play, serves, …” And so on. There’s a tendency to think, with all of the ads that we are bombarded with today that every advertiser is always putting his best foot forward, so to speak. And I think that line of reasoning is accurate, to a point.

But isn’t it refreshing when someone stands out from the crowd and is honest? In other words, your reader will start to subconsciously believe that you are revealing all of the flaws, even though your best foot still stands forward.

One Final Point About Credibility

If you are limiting the offer with a deadline “order by” date, be sure the deadline is real and does not change. Deadline dates that change every day are sure to reduce credibility. The prospect will suspect, “if his deadline date keeps changing, he’s not telling the truth about it…I wonder what else he’s not telling the truth about.”

****
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to
be generous, frank and independent.
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915

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  Boomer Entrepreneurs: 4 Secret Motivators That Drive Your Customers To The "Buy Now" Button
  AIDAS The Simple Step By Step To Great Sales Copy Online
  How To Write Winning Copy The More You Tell The More You Sell

Article Tags: beautiful car, beautiful girl, camaro, chevrolet, chevrolet dealer, chevy camaro, chevy dealership, college cheerleader, credibility, curiosity, cute college, dilemma, ford dealer, ford mustang, hot buttons, mental image, new girlfriend, prospective customer, winning secrets, young man



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