Of all the emotions you can appeal to in your prospect when trying to make the sale, whether it’s a sales letter, email, blog post, article, phone conversation or even face-to-face selling; BELIEF is number one on the list. It’s the single most powerful emotion you can tap into when selling.
“Nobody buys without Belief!”
A very powerful emotion to sell to. And yet, hardly anyone does it! Mostly, people focus on all the other emotions like greed, fear, etc. I’m not saying that won’t work or not to do it but belief must be #1 if you want to control and dominate your market.
The good news is… it’s EASY to build Belief in what you sell.
You just have to know how to do it. And, once you do, you will become nearly unstoppable. You’ll roll right over all the fancy marketers you compete against.
Let’s begin…
The first way to build belief about your product in your advertising is to Tell Stories.
Okay… you’ve heard this before most likely. But did you know a story where you make a logical and competent case for what you’re selling can build belief almost better than anything else. It’s true, in fact many top marketers will structure their ads like this:
Story
Mechanism
Hard data
So, for example: you are selling a product on how to lose fat. You start off with a story about someone who’s overweight and frustrated, nothing works, etc (you’ve probably seen variations on this many times). Eventually they find a breakthrough solution and loses all their weight very quickly. Then, what you’d do is explain the mechanism – the thing that makes the solution work.
“How is this possible? Well, it all has to do with this unique herb which, when ingested, attacks the fat in your body like a guided missile…” And you’d go into that herb, its history, how it works, why it works, etc.
Now the hard data: “This has been proven by scientists in a lab… yada yada yada…” and you’d go over all that fun stuff.
See how that works?
It starts with a STORY then you lead them logically and naturally into the mechanism and hard data. But that story is key – it’s what connects with people emotionally.
The second way is Media Endorsements. This one is so simple almost nobody does it or thinks to use it.
“why would the media people and reporters want to waste their time with me?”
Unfortunately, almost everyone thinks this way. Nobody thinks THEY have anything worthy of the media’s attention. Big mistake. I don’t care who you are or what you sell, YOU can get in the media. And, when you do, you instantly and AUTOMATICALLY have huge amounts of “belief power” oozing all over you wherever you go.
When you’re in the newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, online… all that media’s credibility and celebrity-power is instantly transferred to you. You get to borrow their credibility. Remember, people are very partial to their particular media outlets. They are listening or watching or reading it because they trust and believe that particular media source.
So when you’re on there, they will very likely trust and believe YOU.
The key is to NOT do a sales pitch. Just give away useful, helpful information. You sell at the end when they ask where people can find out more about you. And even if nobody buys directly from your interview it doesn’t matter. Because you can put the recordings or copies of your interview on your website or send them to your prospects who are on the fence about buying –
“Look, maybe you’re not sure I can help you. That’s okay if you’re skeptical, so I’ve enclosed my recent appearance on XYZ show for you to see.” Again, instant credibility.
Belief secret #3
Have One Of Their Own Deliver Your Message
Basically you can ratchet up the believability of your advertising by having your pitchman or woman be the same sex, race, occupation, demographic, etc as your market.
For example: let’s say you’re in the weight loss market targeting women who want to lose weight… And if you tried to sell weight loss to females in the product guy’s personality, tone and voice, you’d be dead in the water. So instead you would have a female pen name. And SHE is the one doing the selling! She’s far more believable than if a guy was trying to sell to them.
And the same goes to any other market.
If you sell to senior citizens, don’t have some young snapper do the pitching, have one of their PEERS do it. If you sell to nurses, don’t have a marketer do the pitching but a fellow nurse or someone in that industry at least.
Bottom line?
If your market is heavily saturated with one kind of person specifically, have a member of that person’s occupation, gender, age, demographic, even race, etc deliver the message. It builds in automatic belief and can make you many more sales than you would make otherwise.
Belief secret #4
Specialize
Don’t let the simplicity of this one fool you! This one by itself can carry the sale if you do it correctly. More and more, I believe everyone who is serious about making long-term profits should specialize. For one thing, specialists can charge more money. If you were to go to a regular doctor or a dermatologist, guess which one would charge you more?
If you said the dermatologist – the SPECIALIST – you’re right!
And you can take that up as many notches as you want, too. The surgeon would charge more than both the regular doctor and dermatologist. And the Brain Surgeon will cost a lot more than the regular surgeon because he’s a specialist.
And as for belief, well, think of it this way. If you needed brain surgery, who would you pick: the regular surgeon or the brain surgeon? And would you care how much more the brain surgeon costed? I’m guessing not!
Now, there’s an inherent fear to doing this. And I know about this fear as well as anyone because I spent a couple years wrestling with it myself before just doing it. So go forward, put fear aside and SPECIALIZE! It’s the best way to create built-in belief in you, your products and your business.
Belief secret #5
Demonstrate
Here’s another powerful way to build near-instant believability in whatever you sell and that is to Demonstrate. Ever see those late night infomercials that play over and over and over again? In many cases they are based on nothing but demonstration.
The Miracle Blade knives (I own couple of sets) are a perfect example as they slice and dice through 20 inches of titanium (lol yes I exaggerate, but if you saw the commercial you would believe they could do such a thing…)
You can do in your marketing online, too. Just give away about 90% of the tip or secret, and leave the last 10% out so they have to buy your product to implement.
You demonstrate, in the ad, the concept in “action” but without giving all the details of HOW the concept works. Just tell them the “what” but not the “how”. It builds belief and demonstrates YOUR expertise at the same time. If you like this so far, stay tuned for part 2 next week where I reveal 5 more ways to build Belief in your marketing, chat soon.
Add comment