5.04 – Fact: “Humans Don’t Like Being Sold To”. This Is How You Get Them To Buy From You.
Most businesses don’t understand human behaviour. Most businesses think advertising is transactional.
We have an orthodontist in town who dominates the entire marketplace and draws people from different cities. He lives in the same town just 1.5 miles from his office.
He coaches local sports teams. His kids go to the local school.
His office is built like a home.
His social media isn’t full of boring orthodontist articles. He fills it with pictures
like “removals of the month” with pictures of teenagers smiling brightly now that have
their braces off.
There’s a kids-only waiting room with video games and TVs for the kids and comfy
chairs, workstations, wifi, and coffee for the adults.
The staff wears themed T-shirts each month and posts pictures of themselves so
people get to know them, too.
People enjoy going there and spending thousands of dollars with him!
He has an outstanding practice and uses Facebook to amplify that. Facebook is a great way to force multiply and leverage your business. People stop and look at things that are fun and interesting and like, comment, and share those ads.
Smart business owners will take charge of the conversation and be the one people want to do business with. Everyone else will be complaining about the lack of business and never realise the true reason why they fail.
“I’M NOT A STORYTELLER!”
This is an objection we hear all the time. Business owners use this excuse to cop out of doing the harder work of digging deep into finding their own story.
Don’t fall for this trap!
Listen, if you feel you’re too boring, find excited customers who will talk about your product. Allow them to tell their story about how your product changed their life and you’ll begin to see common threads. The experience they have with your company will spur your inner storyteller.
You don’t have to be great at holding an audience like Jimmy Fallon. You just have to be you. Get the help of someone like Feedstories to help you find your story, but don’t go out without having a story to tell.
Here are a few more of our clients from diverse businesses that at first glance you might find it difficult to find a story to tell. Perhaps they can get your creativity flowing.
How Do You Fill a Yoga School with Future Yoga Teachers?
Another client has a mission to make yoga therapy a part of the United States healthcare system. He also wants to train up passionate yoga teachers to step up from part-time gigs to a full-time career.
How does he connect with medical administrators, insurance execs, and part-time
yoga teachers at the same time?
We asked him once on camera, “Why did you get into yoga?” He told us about his mom who suffered a back injury and they quickly determined surgery was the only option. Unfortunately, the doctor botched the surgery. She couldn’t walk for 10 years and her quality of life was diminished for the rest of her life.
Our client had been into yoga for years, but that event got him to go deep into yoga and yoga therapy, and he soon realised: Had he known then what he knows now, he could have saved his mom from surgery and she might have had a better life. If you would tell that story to a part-time yoga teacher, I bet they too have a story about someone they love who benefited (or could have benefited) from yoga. That story inspires new people to take up yoga. Using this story in our Facebook Ads that targeted yoga teachers is far more powerful than running an ad that had just a simple money benefit like, “Get 200 Hours of Yoga Training and Work Full-Time.” Also, outside of Facebook, this same story was used to gain inroads with hospitals and insurance execs who are afraid of malpractice and are beginning to embrace other therapies that cost less money and offer less risk.
How Do You Sell Artisan Jewellery at Premium Prices?
One of my favourite clients is Sander, who owns a business called Dharmashop.com. They sell ethically sourced, artisan, hand-crafted jewellery and prayer items from Nepal. Dharmashop buys these items from these artisans at a fair price (not from sweat shops or factories) and imports them to the U.S. Then, they donate a portion of the profits back to orphanages and missions for refugees.
The products are beautiful, and we used stunning product imagery of their bestselling pieces to capture the attention of customers with Facebook Prospecting Ads. Then, we retargeted them with videos that tell the story of the company. Since Sander travels back to Nepal one or two times per year to visit the artisans, he took along a camera crew and filmed the artisans and the products being made. This compelling story connects to people who value ethically sourced items, those who love the style and function of the products, and those that do business with socially conscious companies that share profits with charities and good causes. This allows Dharmashop to avoid heavy discounting and sell their items for a higher price. People understand the quality of the items. They understand they are hand-crafted. People love that portions of the profits go to support the artisans and charity. Are any of these aspects applicable to your company?
How Do You Sell Commoditized Items in a Shrinking Market with Many Competitors?
Another client of ours sells checks.
Checks are pieces of paper your parents and grandparents used to buy groceries and
pay the gas bill.
Check use is shrinking and margins are tight. Competitors sell using deep discounts.
Only a few select markets still use checks as their primary means of paying vendors.
So, how do you survive in a market like that?
We chose to put the owner on camera to tell his story. We added personal connection to his business. No other check company was doing that. He was able to talk about the “elephant in the room” where the same checks you buy from your bank are ten times the price he sells them for. “Banks are ripping you off; there’s a better way”.
We started running his video ad on Facebook four years ago, and the same ad is still running today.
We not only target potential customers; we have an extensive Retargeting strategy to tell this story to folks who Google his business and come in via organic and paid campaigns.
This client is thriving on Facebook, getting between 4:1 and 10:1 return on his ad spend in any given month, and it’s been that way for years.
It works because he is selling differently from other check companies, and 80 percent of his revenue is from small businesses. These business owners buy from him because they want to back a fellow small-business owner. They don’t buy it because he’s the cheapest. They buy because he’s the most personable.
