Click the image for details Many businesses have this problem: my product is good, many consumers have used it and given positive feedback, but I just can't attract new consumers to buy my product. What should I do? At this point, it's worth thinking from the consumer's perspective. When a consumer places an order, what is the entire purchasing process and what are they thinking about? Only by understanding this can you truly touch the consumer's heart and make them happily pay. Recall your own purchasing behavior. In real life, when you buy a product, what do you think about?
First, can the product solve my needs? Second, is the product worth the price? Third, will this transaction be a loss? It's clear that to prompt consumers to place an order, we need to highlight the product's value, sell the price through value, and reduce the consumer's perceived risk of the product. So, how do we do it? Here are five tips, based on principles proposed by famous social psychologists in the book Influence, which are well-received and respected by business people. These five principles are: Reciprocity, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof, Authority, and Scarcity.
- Reciprocity As the old saying goes, "A drop of water received should be repaid with a spring." The same applies to communication and interaction with consumers. Reciprocity means that when we communicate with others, if we first give them a benefit, they will be willing to spend time communicating with us because of our kindness, and even buy our products. For example, many shopping malls and stores offer free trial experiences, aiming to create a positive impression of their products. Of course, from a business perspective, using the principle of reciprocity is an easy way to attract target consumers. Give a small benefit to gain a larger one.
Take many health product conference marketing campaigns as an example. Their usual approach is: on the first day, they use laundry detergent to lure elderly people to attend the meeting, and tell everyone that there will be better gifts the next day.
After the second day's meeting, they give the elderly more laundry detergent. This continues for several days, gradually gaining people's trust. During this process, they show care and concern for the elderly, chatting with them.
They continuously build trust, and finally successfully introduce their products to them. This tactic of tricking elderly people out of their money is despicable, but there's no doubt it's very effective. Any transaction must first gain the consumer's trust, and the best way to build trust is to do something for the consumer first, making them perceive your goodwill. The practical trick is: to attract consumers to order, you must first think about what you can offer them—whether it's price benefits or value enhancement. Think about it: does your copywriting and your sales staff, when meeting consumers, make them perceive what they can gain from buying your product, creating a sense of obligation? If so, the entire transaction process has a good start.
- Commitment and Consistency Commitment and consistency means that when people make a behavior, they will continuously affirm that behavior. How can this be applied to real business activities? First, publicly commit to your goals. Second, get target customers to say yes. I think many people have this feeling: when buying a product, they are picky, but after actually buying it, your mind continuously reinforces that your choice was right and the product is good. So many businesses offer such risk commitments, such as "7-day no-reason return," "If fake, compensate three times," or "If not genuine, no charge." When people see these commitments, they feel secure, and these commitments can subtly influence people's purchases. In fact, after the transaction ends, people's perception of the product increases. How to get target customers to say yes? This requires combining the principle of commitment and consistency with the principle of contrast. The contrast principle is easy to understand: when offering two or more options, people tend to make the better choice. Two specific methods:
- Low start, high end
- High start, low end Low start, high end is closely related to reciprocity: first provide a benefit, then gain a larger one. High start, low end is also easy to understand: for example, compare the original high price with the current low price. When buying suits or cars, salespeople first show you expensive items, then show you more cost-effective ones. In the end, it all comes down to one sentence: let consumers perceive cost-effectiveness. A single price and product cannot highlight comparison. Through comparison, establish the main product and auxiliary products. This is the cunning of merchants, making it hard for target customers to refuse.
- Social Proof When people find it hard to make a choice, when they are in a state of uncertainty, what choice do they make? In most cases, people like to follow the crowd. Conformity gives people a sense of security. In the early days of Taobao, there was a lot of fake order brushing, and when shopping offline, I believe your purchasing path is to look at which products have the best sales. Because in our cognition, if many people buy there, it means the product can't be too bad.
Businesses use this psychological phenomenon to manipulate people's purchasing behavior.
They tell you how great their sales are and claim to be leaders in the industry. They create fake bestseller scenes. Many real estate and restaurant openings hire their own people to act as customers.
- Authority If the same sentence is said by Jack Ma versus an ordinary person, who would you believe? As the saying goes, "Even the fart of an expert smells good." Celebrities and experts can quickly bridge the distance with consumers. That's why many products choose celebrity endorsements and expert endorsements in advertising. They serve as trust endorsements for the product, and most people have immense trust in experts and celebrities. Of course, you might say: I'm a small or medium-sized enterprise, I don't have enough resources to invite celebrities or experts to endorse me. What should I do? To create authority, besides experts and celebrities, another way is to build product professionalism. Your product's professionalism is not determined by you, but by consumers and third-party testing institutions. So as a business, you can use methods like publishing positive consumer reviews and showing high praise from third-party professional institutions and the industry to prove that your product is indeed professional.
- Scarcity What you can't get is always in your mind; what is too easily obtained, people don't cherish. Is your product valuable? Does the consumer think it's worth it? Sometimes it's not reflected in the product's true value, but in the consumer's perceived value. Scarcity can increase your product's value.
Scarcity is mainly reflected in time scarcity, quantity scarcity, and space scarcity. Limited time, limited quantity, limited space—these tactics have been overused by merchants, but consumers still fall for them. If you give enough time, enough production, and it's available everywhere, the value doesn't increase in the consumer's eyes, and they don't feel they must buy this product right now. Scarcity makes everyone perceive that now, at this moment, I need to buy this product. In real business activities, getting target customers to place an order is very difficult, but from the perspective of consumer psychology, consumer psychology is easy to induce, even though most of the time we don't know how we were fooled. These five simple and practical tips are not the only factors influencing consumer purchases. To have greater power in promoting consumer purchases, you need to combine these five tips and use them with a purpose. Try them out and see the results for yourself. -END-