As much as people like to think that business decisions are based on solid financial and practical decisions, in my experience I have seen far too many subjective thought processes drive a final purchase decision.
Consumer brands (and some b2b brands) advertise and market themselves because brand recognition works.
How many times have you caught yourself signing the tune from an advert? Even if it is incredibly annoying like Go Compare? I even found myself remembering the words to a very old Kinder Egg advert from my childhood recently!
My Point
Consumer brand, marketing and sales tactics have a place in the business world.
If you are going to tap into the emotional responses of your clients, you need to engage them and make your brand memorable for all the right emotional reasons. A key part of this is to make sure your customer goes away feeling clever and justified with their purchase.
Reasoning
The emotional sale of a business purchase is usually justification for the person making the buying decision.
I still remember an old client of mine from a few years ago. It was quite clear during conversations that they weren’t really sure what they were doing when it came to marketing. Ultimately, we were there to make them look good internally. Take that justification a step further and it makes their boss know they made the right hiring decision.
What’s Do Your Clients Get From You?
If you can understand why a person within an organisation needs your B2B service or product and what it means to them and their role within the business, you can start to create multiple marketing messages that solve their problems. This is especially important now more than ever with increased pressure on people wanting to keep their jobs.
Really Craig, Emotional Decisions?
I have recently been reading a lot of books about the banking crisis from 2007/8. What struck me was that banking and financial experts branded any detractors of ongoing growth as deluded. The louder they shouted, the madder they were – even with any proof they had.
And look at the mess we ended up with! Some companies were still buying toxic products even as the truth was emerging. These are [so called] experts making rational decisions? I think not.
Everybody Has a Problem
Whether we would admit it or not, every business has a problem or two to contend with. And, even more importantly, the people working in the organisation each have their own problems within their company and pressures to face.
Tap into the emotional issues (however repressed they may seem) and you hit a rich vein of opportunity.
Great article Craig and an interesting point on the banking crisis as it also seems to be the same “system” used in other areas:
Iraq & WMDs
Anyone saying it was wrong was marked as deluded and a traitor…until the truth came out.
Global Warming
Anyone that goes against the “evidence” is derided and called a “flat earther”. We do need to be less wasteful but why not have open debate – or is there too much money involved?
And as for “Emotional Decisions”, if it were not true why is there a queue outside an Apple store whenever they release a new product?
Ultimately you have people making business decisions, and people get emotional over things. How many times have people bought emotionally and then used the facts to justify that purchase?