And I care…why?

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, summer is finally, almost, maybe, probably here. While it’s wonderful to venture outside without winter garments, there’s a real danger that comes when entrepreneurs are faced with “those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.” That’s the danger of feeling entitled to kick back a bit, to relax, to not work so hard…in other words, to slack off business development.

If you’re one of those smart and successful entrepreneurs who sees summer as a time not to kick back on business development, but rather to kick it up a notch, these upcoming June blog posts are for you.

What is the emotional appeal of your marketing?

For me, summer is a great time to tackle any items on my marketing Master To Do list that haven’t already gotten my full attention. Such items typically fall under the category of Quadrant II items, which are important but don’t have a deadline associated with them.

One item that almost any service provider will benefit from addressing is the appropriate use of emotion-based marketing communications.

Far too often, an entrepreneur’s need to portray herself as professional and knowledgeable results in her marketing copy being what I call very “heady”; in other words, it’s full of very logical statements and arguments about why her service is valuable, and thus appeals to the prospect’s head, or intellect.

The problem is this: Appealing to your ideal prospect’s head is going to be a much slower route to a sale than appealing to her heart.  In other words, whether you’re selling to a woman or a man, you have to engage their emotions if you want to have a chance of demonstrating that you can solve their problems and relieve their emotional pain.

You’ve experienced this yourself, especially in the case of a substantial purchase: You’ve been willing to spend your money because the marketer convinced you that her product or service could make you feel the way you want to feel.

Just think what it would be worth to you if a service provider helped you feel:

• relieved
• confident
• empowered
• excited
• eager
• enthusiastic
• powerful
• peaceful

What other emotional pay-offs have you created for your clients? Do you even know this yourself? If not, that’s a great summer project for you. If so, how do you convey those pay-offs in your marketing communications?

The bottom line is this: When you clearly tell your ideal prospects how you make life better for them, you’re talking their language and making it easy for them to say “yes” to hiring you.

(BTW, thanks to dierk schaefer for the neon brain and Taki Steve for the heart.  I found both images in the Creative Commons section of Flickr.)

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