The speeches by the Democratic presidential candidates after the recent Iowa caucuses were a great case study in the power of selling by emotion.
Political Hope
Barack Obama’s speech was by far the most energetic and inspiring delivery of the evening because he appealed to the emotions of the voters. Obama was selling hope. Not a political platform or a stand on issues, but an energetic promise of something better than we have now.
Selling the End Result
When we’re promoting a product, we should be selling the end result. We’re selling whatever it is our prospect is hoping the product will accomplish. The best way to sell hope is to appeal to their emotions. Understand the pain they’re feeling that caused them to search out a solution. They have a problem they’re trying to solve, we have to understand those problems and convince them that our product is the answer. We offer them hope for a better situation than they have now.
Examples of Selling Hope
How to Make Money eBook – The prospect’s goal isn’t to spend all their time selling on eBay, building affiliate sites, or running pay per click campaigns. Their goal is to have enough money to pay the bills, be able to quit their job, or get loaded so they can take big vacations and buy expensive cars. Their hope is freedom, sell them that.
Weight Loss Products – People buy Fat Loss for Idiots or Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle not because they want to diet and exercise but because they want to lose weight. Their hope is to be skinny again, sell them that.
How to Sell Hope
The famous saying tells us that people aren’t buying a drill, they’re buying a hole. They want their problem solved, they’re not particularly interested in how it’s accomplished, they just want to know it’s all going to work out and that their “pain” is going to go away. So how do we convey this message of hope, how do we appeal to their emotions? I think the answer is simple yet elusive. Write good copy. Easier said than done right?
Good Copywriting
Sales pages are vital to the success of an affiliate campaign. This is why great copy writers get paid the big bucks. If we can write copy that addresses the prospect’s “pain” and how much better things will be once our product solves the problem then we can appeal to their emotions and should get better conversions as a result.
How do we get quality copy? We can learn from case studies by the experts or hire a copywriter on eLance. If we can improve our copy to appeal to our prospects emotion and offer them hope we’ll have achieved a quality pre-sell and will likely experience higher conversions.