Everything we do involves an ‘underlying motivator’ that drives the motion or action taken. For example, you might run to lose weight, in which case, the ‘lose weight’ is the underlying motivator.
Similarly, underlying motivators play a role in getting people to do certain things—whether that be encouraging your bank manager to approve your overdraft account, persuading an event organisation to take you on as a guest speaker, or enticing a prospect into buying your products.
The better you understand your clients or customers’ motivating factors or ‘motivators’, the easier it will become to convince them to buy from you…
Understanding and addressing what motivates your customers will help create clearer and more effective communication and close more sales.
There are five major motivating factors:
1. Recognition
Those motivated by gaining ‘recognition’ are interested in gaining greater admiration, esteem, celebrity, notoriety, regard or respect.
For example, let’s say you are an image advisor. One of the main recognition motivators your target group shares is that they want to look and feel good. Some might go one step further and aspire to follow the style of, say, Miller.
Often, people who improve their physical appearance are more successful because of their confidence boost. If you can tap into this prime motivator and understand it well enough regarding how your product or service fits in, then you will be a lot closer to motivating your prospects to buy from you.
2. Profit
The ‘profit’ motivator might influence your prospective customers. This involves people striving for success or gaining more acquisitions, growth, income, money, possessions, or wealth. Does what you offer provide any of these?
3. Urgency
This is a good one, but it is often overlooked or underplayed. Just think what would have happened if there were only 10 copies of J K Rowling’s follow-up to the first Harry Potter release! People are more inclined to take immediate action and justify their purchase decision if there is a sense of urgency about whatever it is that they are buying.
4. Efficiency
This is an enormous motivating factor — and an important one to consider, especially with today’s frenetic-paced society. Perhaps you can demonstrate that your product or service will save your prospects time and effort…
5. Internal
Some people are motivated by ‘internal’ factors. So focus on things such as creativity, duty, intellect, honour, morals and philanthropy are important to this group.
Finding out what your visitors want is vital, but finding out WHY they want these things reveals their innermost motivations. Target these motivations with your marketing, advertising, PR and web content. When you write words that tie into the emotions of your readers, and about what really motivates, you will never lose their interest or attention.
In my years as a PR exec, journalist, editor, copywriter, and marketer, I’ve discovered that telling people the truth and giving a reason WHY you’re saying what you’re saying is one of the most powerful psychological motivators for getting people to take action. That might translate into your prospects picking up the phone to place an order, sending back a reply card for more information, or simply reading everything you have to say.
I’ve also discovered that pain is perhaps the biggest motivator of all.
All animal life revolves around two powerful psychological motivators: pain and pleasure. And every single minute of the day, we are trying to either seek pleasure (through dreaming, thinking or attaining our goals, aspirations and desires) and/or we are trying to avoid pain (steering clear of traffic jams, not getting frustrated by anything or one, and so on),
People will do pretty much anything to avoid or get out of pain.
So you tie this into the specific pain your target audience — your prospective customers — are concerned about and the pleasure they hope to achieve and whether your product or service can help them.
You could ask questions like, “What would this person lose if she fails to buy my product/service?” “What is the cost of failing to act or delaying to buy?” and “What if this product/service wasn’t available anywhere?”
Think of ways to slant your marketing messages to include motivational triggers to the emotions generated by carefully chosen and placed words. However, never be aggressive, arrogant or pushy in your presentation. That would only damage your motivational trigger . . . and your prospect will walk away.
And bear in mind that you are NOT creating pain for your prospects. You are simply helping them see the pain—that is already there—for what it really is and comparing it to what could happen if the pain was removed and ‘pleasure’ was put in its place.
Essentially, it all boils down to playing detective. Find out what motivates your current customers and what motivates them to do business with you in the first place, and use this knowledge to tap into your prospects’ hot buttons. That way, you’ll be much closer to closing the deal and ahead of your competitor, particularly if they fail to acknowledge the importance of motivators themselves.
