In attraction marketing we are looking for ways of attracting people to our product or our network marketing opportunity. When you realize how much buying is motivated by emotions, you will want to learn how to tap into emotions in marketing your products.
Think of the last time you bought a car. What was it about the car that sold you on it? Was it the prestige that it gave you? Or maybe it was a sports car that just made you feel alive. Or it was a great buy, and getting such a bargain made you feel good.
In this article, I want you to understand the power of emotion for effective marketing. Is it legitimate to appeal to people’s feelings to get them to buy? Or is this manipulative and ethically wrong? If it is legitimate, how can we tap into this powerful force to market our products or to market our business opportunity?
Attraction Marketing Understands that People Buy with Their Emotions
You’ve probably heard it said, “People buy with their emotions and justify with their logic”. One pioneer in attraction marketing as it applies to network marketing goes on to say in her discussion of marketing principles, “Once you’ve hit on a person’s deep seated feelings about something, you’ve tapped into one of the most powerful forces on earth.”
We all know of the power of emotion to move people to action in a way that logic never could. My daughter just went to Thailand to study tropical agriculture for two years in the Chiang Mai University. Someone drew our attention to the fact that the “red shirts” were storming the capital. Thousands of rural farmers who are angry with the current government have descended on the capital of Bangkok to make their protests.
When I studied French in Albertville, France, we were told by the teachers of the language school I was in, that there are two subjects you want to keep away from when talking to the French, politics and religion! All you have to do is read French history to know the truth of that statement.
Sometimes, it seems like our decisions are primarily based on logic, but look again. A person may buy a Volvo, for example, because they are known for their safety record in accidents. That sounds like a rather rational reason for buying a Volvo. But when you realize that it is to keep their family safe from harm and accident, we realize how much emotions influenced their decision.
We need to first understand people and their emotional reasons for buying, and then we need to give them logical reasons to justify their emotional decisions.
Attraction Marketing Taps into Emotions to Promote Sales
Some people question the ethics of appealing to emotions for selling products. Is this not a form of manipulation? On the surface it looks like it could be. If it is used to convince people against their will, perhaps we would conclude that it is unethical. However, when what we are offering is quality and good for them, I believe it is different.
We have to face the fact that this is the way we are as people. We are creatures of emotion. Everything we do has an emotional component. If in pursuing a girl to be your wife you refused to be romantic towards her because it is an appeal to emotions, would you ever succeed in wooing her?
When you are aware of the emotional component of marketing, you can see how it is being used to convince you to buy all the time. I saw a dentists advertisement on a sign recently. He did not appeal to people’s need to fill their cavities. He appealed to people’s desire to have a nicer smile!
If we are marketing weight reduction products, do we appeal to people’s desire to “lose weight” or to their desire to look better on the beach? When we sell vitamins and supplements do we appeal to the need for a balanced intake of vitamins or to the increased energy it will give them? When we try to interest a person in our network marketing opportunity, do we appeal to their need to have a second job or to their long standing dream of buying a bigger and nicer home in a location of their choice?
This is not to say that there is not a place for logic and reasons for buying, but these come second. In “attraction marketing” we are aiming at getting people to come to us to get a certain product rather than we chasing after them.