Selling to the ego, playing the odds and more.
Market Curve Episode XXXVI
Hey friends,
Welcome to Episode XXXVI of Market Curve - a bi-weekly newsletter exploring the intersection of marketing, writing, and persuasion.
Play the odds. Not the man.
When we judge behavior, we overestimate the influence of a person’s personality on the concerning behavior. What we lack, and what we should focus on to a higher degree is the influence of context when judging behavior.
This is known as fundamental attribution error.
What does this mean for your SaaS business?
When running a business or selling a product of any kind, you need to look at the buying environment your customers find themselves in.
For B2B SaaS businesses, your target audience is CXOs and managers, depending on the target persona you want to reach. What you can do is put yourself in their shoes.
For example, let’s say you are a B2B legal-tech SaaS company. And your solution makes the job of in-house legal teams easier. Now if you decode that info and break it down into its first principles, you will find a lot of sub-layers of information.
For instance, you could make the assumption that companies who are actively hiring legal professionals are already looking to optimize their legal teams, making your solution far more appealing in their eyes.
If the company is funded, then you know they are looking to scale and grow their revenue in the most efficient way possible.
If you can then position your product as an “efficient way for legal teams to scale” on your landing pages, emails etc, you’re in business.
Because you’re hitting them at just the right time. You are targeting the context rather than the persona.
So what you need to do is understand trends, contexts, and circumstances surrounding your target persona.
Once you understand that, you can then position your product in a way that makes your offering a no-brainer for the context your persona finds itself in.
Fear is a friend who’s misunderstood.
Fear is one of the primary drivers of human desire. Every choice we make has some component of fear built into it. And buying choices are no different.
It’s no wonder that businesses often leverage FOMO or fear of missing out in their sales and marketing strategies. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle.
So how do you sell the fear? You can sell fear in 4 steps:
Step 1: Make sure the thing to fear is scary and makes sense to the prospect. What is scary for one might not be for another.
Step 2: Offer a specific recommendation for overcoming the fear-aroused threat.
Step 3: Persuade your prospect that the recommended action is effective for reducing the threat.
Step 4: Convince your prospect that he or she can perform the recommended action.
Your goal is not to create new fears, but to tap into existing ones. These can be apparent fears - fears that are at the front of your prospects’ minds, or ancillary fears - those that require a little digging to uncover.
At MarketCurve, we follow a 7-step process to write landing page copy that converts. One of the steps there is to write down the fears of the prospect and how the product helps prospects assuage those fears.
If that’s an exercise you want to indulge in, drop me a line.
That’s 50 dollars to boost your ego ma’am.
As consumers, we like to stay in the driving seat. We like taking actions that make us feel good about ourselves.
We tell ourselves all kinds of stories using webs of logic and reason that we are making the right choice buying a product. But deep down we know that we buy things to inflate our ego.
In this context, ego can mean different things. A business owner buys a Lamborghini to show off his social status and boost his ego. A college kid buys a Mac because he thinks he will be able to get more done and boost his or her productivity. You get the idea.
Anything we buy is a product of our conditioning as we seek to fill our daily existence with things that we think will make us whole. Went a little philosophical there but you get the gist.
One way to tap into that is to look at the first and second-order consequences of using your product.
Find out the immediate benefit the recipient is receiving and what second-order benefit leads from that. Put that into your copy and you’re golden.
Help your prospects visualize their ego getting inflated and how good your product will make them feel once they get their hands on it.
By Shounak
Want me to use weird brain stuff that speaks directly to your customers?
If that’s the case, you’re in good company. Consumer psychology is something I’m a real nerd about.
And I use my powers for good - I promise.
Now, if you want me to use my superpowers to help you, then book a free call with me and we can see how we can work together.
It will be a fun ride I guarantee you that ;)
P.S. If this newsletter made your month, your week, your day or even your hour, then do me a favor and share it with the world by selecting this big black button hovering below: