Ten Reasons Why People Buy Things Part 3

In the thirteenth of our series of informative articles on the honest way to earn an income online, we look at the third of of ten reasons why people buy things.

We're now into the third instalment of this ten part mini-series which is looking at 10 reasons why people buy things. So far we've looked at the fact that people buy things to relieve stress and to replace an existing item. Now, in Part 3, we look at the 8th reason why people buy things…

Reason 8: Emotional Satisfaction.

It's a commonly held belief that people buy things because they need them and while that's true for a good proportion of buyers, it is also true that people will buy something if they think it will improve their life in some way.

Naturally, we must have food to survive, but people don't just buy food for nourishment, they buy certain foods because they like them. That has the unfortunate side effect of people eating a load of foods that have no nutritional value, but are loaded with salt, sugar and a whole host of artificial flavours, preservatives, sweeteners (in addition to all the sugar!) colours and who knows what else besides! But that could be the subject for a whole different article.

The main point to all that is that despite the fact that we need food to survive, we'll still buy food that we enjoy. Or to put it another way, to buy food that gives us emotional satisfaction.

So with that in mind, you might want to take another look at the product or service that you promote. Think of it in terms of how it can make someone's life better, or that someone should buy your product or service because it will make them happy and emotionally satisfied. Ok, with some services like web hosting, that might be stretching your creativity to the limits! Let's face it, web hosting is just somewhere you put your site and store some files. It's not something you can see or touch, it's just there and you use it.

To go that extra mile you'll need to incorporate something in your web hosting that makes it more of a service for people. Perhaps you could provide a small database of templates that customers could use to help them design their web sites. Have a small demonstration on how to use the templates or alter them to make them unique and individual to each customer. Show them how a really professional looking template that comes along with their hosting will increase their potential visitors because it looks so inviting. That is one way to appeal to the emotional nature of your customer.

So how does this translate to selling an ebook?

One of the top things people like about ebooks are those that have sales pages showing a fancy cover and how the ebook would look if it were a real hardback book. It doesn't matter that they know they will be downloading a pdf file to their computer that they won't be able to physically hold in their hand. The illusion of having a nice cover and seeing a picture of a book whether it's real or not will give them an emotional attachment. That pdf file becomes more of a tangible item.

Ok, it's a psychological ploy but as people buy things for emotional satisfaction, it is very satisfying to see a nice, well designed cover for an ebook. Take a look at the cover of Mike Filsaime's The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript as an example of how to make an ebook more saleable.

In our online business, there are many and varied tools available to us to enable us to appeal to a potential customer's emotional needs. We have visuals in the form of artwork, flash movies or good solid graphics. We have audio in the form of voiceovers or music to enhance our sales pages. It's so true that glitz sells.

In advertising, as the saying goes: "You don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle!"

How true.



NEXT ARTICLE #14 >> Ten Reasons Why People Buy Things Part 4

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