Principle: People buy with emotion, then use logic to rationalize the purchase afterward
Before May 2006, not even many Patagonia-wearing SF-ians cared about trendy, sustainable shoes.
But they did care about children in poverty. Or at least they cared that other people saw them as someone who cares about children in poverty.
TOMS shoes knew that. And they used the following technique quite flawlessly for years:
“The most basic way to make people care is to form an association between something they don’t yet care about, and something they do care about.” (Ch. 5, Made to Stick)
If it seems the cause you want people to latch onto does’t pack the emotional punch necessary for real action and change, it’s time to appeal to a nobler motive.
It’s time to attach your sub-emotional charge to one with a bit more gravity.
Tactics
You’ve heard this one a thousand times: don’t sell the drill bit, sell the hole. Sell the image of their children’s pictures hanging from the holes - that’s where the emotion lives.
You’ve got to invoke self interest into every bit of marketing you have. What is in it for me?
Nobody truly cares you have the cleanest ingredients or the fastest delivery.
They care to have “top-notch energy now that won’t destroy your guts later.” Emotion played to: fear they’re giving themselves cancer.
They care that their office could be fully furnished, workable and earning them money by Tuesday. Emotion played to: desire for control and certainty.
Habits/Experiments
Just go look at your packaging or sales page.
Identify the “drill bits” you’re trying to sell. Look for adjectives like faster, sustainable, durable, lower, higher, etc.
Now go identify what emotion you’re trying to appeal to by using those words. Is it fear? Anxiety? Status, identity, protection?
Once you know that, you can better speak to the customer in the way they really want to be spoken to: emotionally.
Mike
Today’s inspiration: Make to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath