We all want to increase our customer base and sell more products, right?
Well here’s a valuable lesson I learnt from Jim Edwards in his fantastic book “Copywriting Secrets“.
“People don’t buy without a reason why”
If you can understand why people buy you can use those reasons to make your ad copy much more effective. When you can demonstrate a necessity for your product or service and tie it back to one of these reasons why people buy, you will inevitably sell more.
What are the reasons why people buy?
Jim Edwards identifies 10 reasons why people buy:
- Make money
- Save money
- Save time
- Escape pain – mental or physical
- Avoid or decrease effort
- To be more comfortable
- Attain better health
- Gain praise
- Feel more loved
- Increase their status
If you look at these reasons you will see they correspond very closely to the “Life-Force 8” identified by Drew Eric Whitman in his book Ca$hvertising.
The Life-Force 8 are 8 biologically programmed desires that every human has, which can be attributed to why people buy. You can read more about the Life-Force 8 by checking out my post which goes into more depth on the topic: Marketing and the Life-Force 8
Now you have a good idea of why people buy, you need to tie one, two, or even three of these reasons to your product. The more reasons you can tie to your product the better.
How to tie the reasons to your product or service?
In order to effectively tie these reasons to your product or service you need to determine how your product meets their reasons why by asking questions in relation to each reason.
Questions you need to ask about your product or service
1. What are 5 ways my product helps people make more money?
2. How can my product help people to save more money over the next week, month, or year?
3. How does my product save them time, and what else can they do with that time?
4. In what ways can my product help to reduce their physical or mental pain?
5. What is something they don’t have to do anymore once they have my product, thus reducing their effort?
6. What are 3 ways my product can make them feel more comfortable?
7. How does my product help to improve their health, feel more healthy, and become more active?
8. In what ways does using my product help them to gain more praise from their peers?
9. What are 3 ways my product or service will make them feel more loved by their friends and family?
10. How does buying and using my product increase its popularity and status?
You must know your target audience
In order to honestly answer those questions in relation to your product or service you need to have a good understanding of your target audience. It’s no good answering those questions from your perspective – you need to put yourself in the mind of your ideal customer in order to get answers that will resonate with them.
Think about who your target audience is.
Where are they at in their lives right now, and where do they want to be? What are their pain points? What are their goals or aspirations?
When you have a good understanding of exactly who your target audience is the answers to these questions will come more easily, and more importantly, they will be relevant to them.
Tying the reasons to your product or service – Example
In this example, we will use a business executive coaching program as our service, and tie the reasons why to it.
1. Make more money – The business executive coaching program will help you to perform better in your current role, help you get promoted, and get more job offers from other firms.
2. Save money – Instead of paying expensive consultants to do this sort of work, our coaching program teaches you how to do it yourself.
3. Avoid effort – You don’t need to stress or figure it all out by yourself. All you have to do is follow our proven blueprint and easy instructions.
4. Feel more loved – You’ll become a highly effective and efficient operator, meaning you’ll spend fewer evenings at the office and have more time with your family and kids, which they’ll love and appreciate you for.
5. Increase status – With the improved performance and better results you’ll be delivering for your employers, you’ll gain recognition from your peers and move up the career ladder faster, whilst your reputation as a problem solver and results person will continue to grow.
The more reasons you can tie to your product or service the more persuasive your copy and marketing campaigns will be. Why just give them one reason to buy if there are several they can benefit from?
Use reasons that relate to different areas of your prospect’s life – such as family, personal, career, etc. The more areas of their life you can touch on the more appeal your product or service will have.
Where can you use these reasons “why”?
You can use these reasons just about anywhere in your copy and marketing:
- Your offers
- Your headlines
- Email subject lines
- Calls-to-action
- Hook, story, offer framework
- In your stories
- In your bullet points
- In your content headings
Focusing on the reasons why someone should buy your product makes creating the copy, or coming up with an effective headline a less daunting process as it gives you a basis to center your copy around.
Constantly thinking about the reasons why someone should buy your product helps you to stay focused on your customer, rather than your product.
When your customer is the focus of your copy you will find that they become more receptive to it. After all, your customer is not interested in reading about your product unless they know what it can do for them and how they can benefit from it.
They are constantly thinking “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM), so having your copy focused on their reasons why will help you to create copy that is more compelling and effective at persuading them to buy or take action.
