If you are a business owner and you are trying to attract new customers, there are typically three key areas that you have to address in order to gain the customers attention and convince them to consider your offering:
- Why should I change?
- Why with you?
- Why now? Why the urgency?
People don’t like change. Someone only acts if they see a need to act. If you want people to click on your email, engage with your content or stay off the phone or internet after you interact with them you have to instantly convince them to get out of their natural state of inertia. To convince your audience to act you typically have to connect with either their Fears or Dreams. What do they worry about and keeps them up at night? What would they like to be able to do and what stands in the way of achieving that? If people don’t notice your email or call to action, they will never click on it. Think about how you can WOW someone so they will actually notice. Be personal. Take a stand. Tell a Story.
Now that your audience has decided they want to do something about their PAIN, they are open to getting some help. Why should they pick you? What do you bring that nobody else does? The first step is to establish yourself as someone they want to engage with. You need to “meet them where they are”. Use their language. Use words that are used in their industry, or reflect how they would describe their needs. Be careful when you start talking about yourself that it’s still at the core of their needs. This is all about becoming a Trusted Guide. You need to “earn” the right to talk about yourself. Any testimonials from others will help. People like to follow others who’ve gone before them, or peers they can trust.
Finally, you can talk about you…of course, there is value in sharing your superpowers. These are the things that you are best at, everything you are better at than others, and ideally things only you can do. Make sure to talk about benefits and not features if you describe your product or service. You need to establish credibility through your Claims. You cannot just self-proclaim to be their best partner…your audience will make up their mind based on what you have to show for and often times what others are saying about you.
- Create FOMO (“Fear of Missing Out”) – This is a great way to drive urgency. Tell stories of others who’ve had success and are now moving forward.
- Show vs. Tell – Use images instead of words, and use video instead of images. This makes what you have to say very real and increases the “Fear” of not being a part of this.
- Numbers – Show impact in actual numbers. What have others who went before them been able to achieve? For example “Seven out of ten XYZ who have used ABC were able to grow 30% or more in the first year” and “83% of all ABC are now using XYZ, can you afford to fall behind?”
- Let others do the talking – Testimonials, Customer Quotes, Logos and other ways to show everyone who has gone before.
- Challenge them – Call them to Action. Make it easy to get started. Make it compelling to start. Lower the bar by helping them take small steps.
Finally, getting your audience to act NOW can also be helped by a time-based, unique opportunity. Can you create some kind of scarcity? A limited time offer?
More than ever, consumers are relying on their trusted contacts to offer their thoughts, opinions and advice on who to buy from and why in addition to the advertisements that they may encounter. The goal, if you are a business trying to sell to a target audience, is to provide a platform or tool for your customers to connect easily and efficiently with you and their family and friend referrals. Offering a referral reward for those trustd referrals is the cherry on top.
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