People buy with emotion and justify with logic. In fact, neuroscience suggests that most buying decisions are made subconsciously – actually outside of the buyer’s rational control. Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman says that 95 percent of our purchase decisions take place unconsciously and our conscious mind actually makes up reasons to justify them.
Big brands like McDonalds, Burger King, and Pizza Hut have tapped into these bizarre brain biases by, for example, by choosing a color combination known to stimulate hunger. It’s not something customers consciously think about, yet it has a subtle influence on them.
What does all of this mean for you? Using certain phrases in your marketing can help you stand out and convert customers in a way that doesn’t compromise integrity but also doesn’t leave money on the table.
Here’s how you can save.
Do you want to know how to repel people? Use the word “deal” in a sentence. Decades of sleazy sales tactics have forever ruined this word. You might say, “I have a great deal for you.” People hear, “Do you want to make a deal with the devil?”
Okay, it’s not all bad. It’s not like you have to ban the word from your vocabulary. It has certainly found its way in popular game shows like Deal or No Deal. But there are better ways to phrase it.
Instead, use words like save or savings. Why? People want a great deal. They just don’t want to call it that. There’s nothing like a sale to attract customers. If they feel they have saved money and time, then they’re more willing to spend.
Pro tip: You don’t need to slash your prices. If you are offering more value than they’re spending, that already counts as savings.
Imagine yourself…
Have you ever been to a furniture showroom? They don’t just show you sofas, chairs, and tables. They take the time to set a background, throw some pillows and add decors. Nobody is going to spend thousands on a new couch if they can’t picture it inside their homes.
The same is true for travel industries. Airlines would go broke if they advertised cramped seats, long flights and expensive tickets. What they’re really selling are the destinations and the experiences.
Words like imagine, picture, or envision have a powerful impact on people. People aren’t just looking to spend money on products. What they really want is transformation.
Pro Tip: Subtly guide your prospect’s imagination by using “pre-suasive” tactics. In his fantastic book Pre-suasion, Robert Cialdini, an authority on persuasion and influence, takes this one step further: pay attention to everything that happens to your customer before they make their buying decision.
A furniture site ran tests and noticed that those who were shown sofas on a site with fluffy clouds as a background image were more likely to use comfort as a filter for their search and buying decisions. Those who were shown a background of floating pennies used price as their primary metric both for searching and buying. Turns out the devil really is in the details.
Don’t buy. Invest.
Where do you draw the line between investments and liabilities? Arguably a car is both – it starts losing value the second you drive it off the lot. But it can also be a vital tool in someone’s livelihood (driving them to and from work) and in the making of cherished memories, creating access, etc.
That sleek new phone isn’t going to stay shiny forever and people have a sense that with planned obsolescence they’ll be slapping down their credit card in the next 2-3 years if not sooner. But they’ll justify this because the phone is so much more than a small shiny computer. It’s a tool of connection, self promotion, productivity, personal and business optimization, and more. So that becomes what you ask them to invest in.