How To Tap Into The Emotional Needs Of People So You Sell More Products/Services

By Nick Bayley, CEO, MYeMetrics

In this article I’m going to explain how you can tap into the emotional needs of your visitors so you can sell more on your website.  First I need to give you the 7 main emotional reasons why people buy things.  They are:

1. Greed
2. Anger
3. Fear
4. Guilt
5. Exclusivity
6. Flattery
7. Redemption

Ok, let’s look at this starting with greed.

People always want more.  They always want bigger. They always want better.  So you need to find ways to tap into that with your product.  If your product/service is the run of the mill then you need to work hard and work creatively to make it appear to be better and more than all the other run of the mill products.

Next up we have anger.  If you haven’t noticed, many people are angry and frustrated.  So your product needs to be aligned so that it helps people to make their life easier to solve their anger and frustrations.

Fear is a big emotional reason why people buy things.  People are afraid. So you need to try to position your product/service to make people feel more certain.  Guarantees are a simple way to do this, but you need to think more creatively about how you can make people feel more certain about their life if they get your product/service.

Guilt is an interesting emotional driver.  People feel guilty for all sorts of reasons.  You often see companies use this for luxury types of items.  They’ll say something like…”go on…you deserve it.”

Now let’s look at exclusivity.  If you can make your offer exclusive then it will appeal to many people.  Because everyone wants something that is limited.  There’s something strange that happens when people can’t have something….they want it!  They also feel more special or 'better' than others if they have something 'exclusive'. To them it speaks volumes about their status.

Do you like compliments?  Most people do, and if your product or service lends itself to a person getting a compliment if they use it, then you need to play on that big time.  You do this by using “imagine how great that will be when” type of statements.

Redemption is the final emotional driver.  Look, if you boil marketing down it comes to giving people a solution to a problem.  People are constantly looking for a solution to a problem. If you can offer your product/service as the best solution then you’ll be home and hosed.  You're redeeming peole from their problem.

You need logic in your marketing to support the emotional elements because people buy on emotion and justify with logic.  How often have you purchased something for emotional reasons only to say, “it has a 12 month money back guarantee”.

But finally, no matter what emotional drivers you are trying to target you need to test and track everything.  I used to hate testing and tracking because I found it so tedious, boring and time-consuming.  But in 2010 I created a software solution that would do my testing and tracking for me. You can see a free video about that here:

http://bit.ly/mSjF0Y