To market your products/services successfully, you must understand who wants them, why they want them and how you can convince people to buy them. Now that you've created a profile (or profiles) of your clients, it's important to understand what will affect their buying decisions.

The following sections describe some of the behaviours of consumers and how you can use them to your advantage.

Customers want to feel comfortable

Nobody wants to be uncomfortable, but as a marketer, it is important that you establish a strong sense of comfort for your clients. This is especially true on the internet as users typically have a stronger resistance to being "sold" due to the anonymous nature of this medium.

Making your customers feel comfortable in person is vitally important to your business, but it's also important that the visitors to your web site feel comfortable with you. It is often the first contact they'll have with you and if they don't feel a sense of comfort and trust from your web pages, they're not likely to contact you to meet in person.

You can make your web site a comfortable place for your visitors by writing the messages on your pages in a similar fashion to how your visitors would talk and write. Avoid the use of technical jargon (except where you visitors may be looking for it) and write in a conversational manner -- address each visitor as an individual rather than a large group of people.

You can also increase the comfort and trust level that your visitors feel for you by showing many examples of your past work (for example, describe how your satisfied the needs of previous customers) and including testimonials from several of your past clients (if you did a good job for them, your visitors will believe you can also satisfy their own needs).

Use emotions to sell

People tend to act faster and more often on emotions than on rational thinking. They prefer to receive benefits from products rather than features. Therefore, you should stress what your products/services can do for them rather than just listing what your products/services can do.

Make your marketing message stir up feelings in your customers so that they will want to enhance or reduce those feelings by purchasing your products/services. Four great motivators of consumers are:

• Guilt
• Greed
• Fear
• Exclusivity

Determine which of these will work best with your services and then use it to your advantage.

For example, a photographer's wedding clients may have a fear that their photographer will get in the way of the ceremony and the guests at the wedding and that in the end, the photographs they receive will not be want they wanted. To reduce this fear, you should explain the planning steps you take before you photograph a wedding, describe how you operate at the ceremony and give examples, including testimonials, of how smoothly your past weddings have gone and how happy your clients have been.

Customers purchase based on image

Your product/service is what it is plus what the consumer thinks it is. You may have the best service on the market but a client won't buy from you if he/she feels that someone else's is better.

It is important to determine what the customer is looking for in terms of your products/services and then to associate an image with them which matches what the consumer wants. You should also determine how your customers view your competitors' products/services in relations to yours by conducting interviews. By knowing where your products/services stand in the market in the customers's eyes, you can better determine how to capitalize on your image or alter it to increase demand.

Examples of the value of an image is prevalent in the clothing industry. Two similar dresses may have the same material and quality of construction, yet one sells more often at a price $100 higher simply because the designer's name has a stronger image associated with it.

How badly do your customers need your product?

People have both needs and wants. Food, shelter, clothing and security are very basic necessities of every individual. However, for some people, automobiles, microwaves, televisions and dishwashers are also considered vital to their existence.

As a marketer, you must understand where customers place your products on their list of priorities. This is very important because consumers usually tend to satisfy all of their needs first (both real and perceived needs) and then they begin to satisfy their wants with what is often termed luxury items. If you understand the need customers have for your products, you can determine when, where and how to market them more effectively.

You may also alter the consumer's priorities by creating a stronger need or desire for your services. You may associate your services with some of their basic needs such as security, food, shelter and clothing. Examples of this include a teenager's "need" for jeans rather than just any pair of pants and a home owner's "need" for a security system.

If you cannot make your products a necessity for consumers, try to place it at the top of their "wants" list by showing them how you can make their life more enjoyable. The greater the desire for your product, the more the consumer will work to satisfy their "need" for it.

Return to Listing of Articles