Pain or Pleasure What works best in Marketing?

Pain or Pleasure. What works best in Marketing?

It is becoming a well known and accepted fact that people buy based on their emotional response to something and then look for logic to justify their choices. This much we can be sure of even if we ourselves try to make out the we don't do that.

Having established this, if we want to control the prospect more closely we need to understand how to trigger this emotional response and what specific areas produce the best results. So what does work best?

Pain or Pleasure?

So, digging a little deeper we find that the two most powerful emotions at work when buyers are concidering your offer are pain and pleasure. Does your product take away their pain or does it deliver to them the pleassure they want? Clearly there are different aspects at play for different products but many times the same product can be presented on both sides of the same coin.

Take a car for instance. Perhaps a low cost city car that takes away the nightmare of using public transport. That's removing pain. Alternatively it can bring freedom and independence to do what you want and go where you want. That's delivering pleasure.

Know your market

To know which of these approaches might be more successful you must know your market. You see, in our society most people have more experience of pain than they do of pleasure. Take finances. Most people know what its like to be short of money, have a big bill to pay, not being able to afford a house, etc.

Now to these people the biggest emotional trigger will be associated with taking away those pains as they have experienced the pain first hand and can feel it as your marketing talks them through how bad it can be.

head ache prevention tablets

There is a reason why there are no head ache prevention tablets. No one would buy them. In theory it would be great to never have a head ache but in reality people are only driven to buy a product when they have the pain.

Take a holiday advert. They could start off with a person bored at work looking out of the window at the rain and then battling home through the rush hour to a plate of egg and chips and the kids squabbling because they are bored. This establishes the pain. They then cut to the alternate scene where you are sitting sipping a cocktail on a sun drenched balcony while the kids play in the pool and a waiter brings a huge freshly cooked lobster to your table.

Now this is the nirvana of marketing. Establish the pain, make it real, maek them feel it. Then take that away by delivering the pleasure. Where do I sign?.

At The Business Builder Club we teach many marketing strategies but our over all message must be about taking away the pain or delivering the pleasure. We then teach you how to lay a trail of logic so the buyer can easily justify their actions.


Author:
Steve Wardle - CEO, The Business Builder Club
2011

By Steve Wardle - Founder of TheBusinessBuilderClub.com
http://www.TheBusinessBuilderClub.com