As a business owner, no doubt much of your day is spent analyzing information for ideas on how to improve sales and profitability results and coming up with strategies to streamline and innovate functions like sales, marketing and product development. To get your business where you want it to be, you in particular have to have a focus on improving sales revenue. If you don’t have enough customers buying, after all, you won’t be able to keep the doors open for very long.
Sales is about finding ways to get more people to part with their cash more often. While there are myriad ways you can go about getting this to happen, you’ll help yourself out if you learn how and why people buy in the first place.
Consumer psychology is a niche area of psychology that deals with how consumers make their buying decisions. If you’re keen to grow your venture in 2019, read on for some tips for using ideas taken from the field of consumer psychology to help generate top results.
Focus on a Narrow Niche of Fans
When marketing to potential clients, most experts believe it’s better to focus on a narrow niche of people who can become raving fans of your market, rather than trying to generate interest from anyone and everyone. Derek Halpern, founder of blog Social Triggers, believes the most effective way to create a base of customers who are loyal, committed, passionate and most likely to buy again is to cultivate a specialized base of super fans.
Work to make a small group of people happy, so they will feel special and understood and become entrenched fans who rave about your business to their contacts. It’s easier, too, to dominate one specific niche rather than to try to be everything to everyone. It’s more cost effective as well as it means you can tailor your campaigns to suit a single group of people.
To find the customers you need to target, make use of the vast array of data available these days, especially intent data. What is intent data, you may wonder? This term refers to information you can discover about people who are believed to be looking to buy certain products or services soon, based on the searches they have been conducting online.
Think About Exclusivity
Another tip from consumer psychologists is to think about exclusivity. Since buyers make purchases more on an emotional basis than for logical reasons, they are often tempted by the chance to use or own something or have access to a service that not everyone has access to. They might think they’re spending their money because of practical reasons but often this is not really the case.
For instance, owners of Ferraris might talk about their car’s engine or suspension technology, or drivers of Mercedes may talk about safety, but really, they were likely tempted to buy because driving that brand of vehicle made them feel successful, young, rich, important, etc.
Most expensive luxury items sold around the world are known more for their exclusivity, in fact, than for their actual design. Think of brands like Hermes, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Tiffany & Co, Versace, Cadillac, Four Seasons and more. While these companies do offer products and services considered to be reliable, well-made, well-designed and functional, they tend to be mostly valued because of their exclusivity.
To grow your venture, then, consider ways you can go about developing a brand and creating offerings that are in some way unique, restrictive, preferential or limited. Then, of course, also make sure you advertise them appropriately!
Hone in on Product and Service Benefits, Not Just Features
Studies in consumer psychology have also made it known that it’s important to hone in on the benefits of products and services to users, not just the features each ware might have. This is because people usually purchase items because of how things make them feel more than because of the features they boast.
As an example, if you were trying to sell ovens, don’t just harp on about exactly how your particular products work and what great tech they have, but mention how an oven might be able to improve the customer’s life. For instance, a device could be programmable from afar via an app, which means shoppers could set it to heat up before they’ve left the office, saving time; alternatively, it could be big enough to cater to meals needed for regular large family gatherings.
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