Your customers are social, plugged-in, and savvy. Selling to them is not an easy task. Usually, you would hear: focus on features and benefits, but you have to stop that! Stop hyping up your copy. Instead, sell your product on a subconscious level, and you’ll have customers drooling with desire before they know what hit them.
Here are some essential elements you should include in your marketing to drive customer sales naturally and easily.
Social Proof
To sell your product, you need to build trust. Trust means the prospect believes not only that the product being sold will actually solve his problems, but that if for some reason it doesn’t, the company will make good on its reputation of performance.
Today’s consumers assume marketers are trying to take advantage of them, so it’s important to establish credibility in all your marketing. But you don’t have to prove you’re trustworthy if you can show that other people already trust you.
This concept, called social proof, was made popular by Robert Cialdini that defines the concept as people’s tendency to view a behavior as more correct if we see others performing it.
What can marketers do
Social proof isn’t just smart marketing, it’s a mandate if you want more sales. And it’s as easy as showing other people enjoying or benefiting from your products.
Case studies
Share stories of real people using and enjoying your product. How you tell the story doesn’t matter: use written case studies, videos, and interviews. What’s important is that you show how your product or services are helping people reach their goals.
Testimonials
Regularly ask customers for a testimonial. Then use them liberally to sell your product. Ideally, you’ll collect enough to create a “Reviews” page.
When other people show confidence in you, especially if it’s someone well-respected by your community, it’s easier for others to trust you too.
Customer logos
Another way to communicate trust is to let prospects see who else uses your product. When they see brands they respect on the list, you gain instant credibility.
Scarcity
The idea of potential loss plays a large role in human decision making. In fact, people seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value.
As soon as you hear something is off limits, you want it. If a product is only available until midnight tonight, even if you don’t need it right away, you’re inclined to buy it… just in case.
That’s how scarcity drives customer sales. It makes you aware that you might miss out if you don’t take action.
What can marketers do
Scarcity can be achieved through limited inventory, a deadline, or making something only available on certain dates or times. You can use it in emails to make people click through, in your sales pages to make people take action, and as a value-add offer before or after purchase.
Sensory Language
Deep in your brain’s temporal lobe is the amygdala, this primitive part of your brain that is both pre-verbal and pre-logical. So it can trigger action before you have time to think about it.
Neuromarketers also call it a “buying brain,” because pushing its buttons leads to a Buy Now response that’s almost instinctive.
The subconscious level of the brain is where elements that are essential to marketing success such as initial product interest, purchase, intent, and brand loyalty are formed, and where they reside. Spark desire by connecting with people’s primitive brain, and you can generate a buying response without manipulating anyone. People want to buy without knowing why. The result? More customer sales.
What can marketers do
Research shows that mirror neurons can be stimulated by reading as well as observing.
Engaging the buying brain is as simple as tickling the five senses in your writing. Sensory writing is nothing more than good writing. It reads naturally and isn’t likely to be perceived as hype or manipulation. But it excites people’s primitive brain and makes them more likely to respond.
Your customers may love to buy, but they don’t want to be sold. Your job, then, is to sell your product to the subconscious brain, so you trigger desire before they know what hit them. Sprinkle your sales copy with social proof and sensory language, then mix in an element of scarcity. Before you know it, you’ll have people drooling over your products without ever knowing why.