No matter what your business model is online, you will be trying to sell something to your readers. You might think that this isn’t the case if you make money from AdSense and just need your readers to stick around but even here you will be trying to sell the content of your articles and get people to buy into what you’re saying. If you can do that, then you will be able to get them to come back to your site more in future, to spread the word and to follow any advice you might impart.
This is if you make money from AdSense. If you make money from actually selling a product as an affiliate or by creating your own eBook or app, then of course you will be selling in a much more direct way and trying to use far more obvious sales and persuasion techniques in order to make your money.
Either way, you will have a single, powerful secret weapon – and that is your ‘emotional hook’.
Understanding the Emotional Hook
Essentially, when you sell anything, you aren’t really selling an object or a service on face value. At least that’s not what the customer is really interested in buying. Rather you are selling a result. A lifestyle, a set of circumstances or a sequence of event. For instance when you sell dumbbells you are trying to sell a scenario where the buyer is stronger and probably more confident/successful as a result. Likewise, when you write a blog about making money online, you are trying to sell a wealthy lifestyle. Here it’s the result you need to focus on at all times and that will get your customers to part with their money and to really get excited by what you are saying.
That’s the first thing you need to understand. The next thing you need to understand is that people are egocentric. In other words, we think primarily about ourselves and are fascinated with our personalities, our lives and our success. This is why Facebook is so successful – it allows us to build little tributes to our own narcissism.
Using the Emotional Hook
So how do you then use the emotional hook? Simply, you focus on talking directly to your visitors and customers and telling them precisely how you can make their lives better and easier. You focus on benefits rather than features.
- For instance then, when writing an article about getting into shape you would first try to focus on the result that you were trying to sell and get some emotional resonance from this. That might mean stating that they can ‘Get the body they have dreamed of and impress that special lady’.This also works from an egocentric point of view, because it focuses on the article they’re reading. It’s relatable and it talks about them.
- An article about blogging could use the title ‘Why You Need to Be Cooler to Be a Better Blogger’. It challenges the self-esteem and it offers two results that work on an emotional level – ‘being cooler’ and ‘being a better blogger’. That’s a thousand times better than ‘Blogging Tips for Beginners’.
- If you are using an internet marketing firm to promote your website, you should tell the company what it is you’re trying to offer your reader and how important that emotional hook is to your strategy. There are many different approaches to any problem and you need to communicate what you need, or you won’t get it.
- If you are using your site to sell products to other businesses then bear in using emotional hooks in your B2B marketing can give you enormous advantages over other suppliers
Emotional hooks are the difference between mediocrity and success. Just by focusing on how your users will benefit by using your services or products will make a massive difference to your bottom line. Stroke your readers into buying rather than bullying them.
