With ever shorter attention spans and today’s dizzying pace of change, it’s hard to imagine consumers stopping long enough to make a considered decision to buy. In that frantic selling environment, however, it’s still possible to capture attention and sell. The key is knowing which techniques cut through the clutter, obtain people’s interest and guide that interest to a purchase.

One unintuitive way to heighten people’s interest in becoming your client is the literary agent strategy – telling them you won’t do business with just anyone. For instance, dentists and carpet cleaners may create a “referral only” business where new clients are accepted only with a referral from an existing one. This increases your perceived panache and gets potential clients hankering to be among the chosen ones, even if you sell something quite different from country club memberships.

Psychological research also tells us that people are more likely to buy when you narrow their choices, instead of offering a cornucopia of options. Many marketers have found that the ideal number of options is three. The top option should have a price and value that’s quite a reach for your typical customer. Even if few people buy it, its existence greatly increases the sales of the next most expensive option.

Other powerful ways to lead the right audience for a product or service to a buying decision, using established principles of marketing psychology, include:

* Paint a vivid, truthful picture of the consequences the customer may experience from not buying.

* Make a surprising claim, which arouses curiosity (Just be sure readers won’t feel tricked when you make clear why it’s true).

* Confess a weakness in the seller or the product, which increases credibility as long as the rest of the presentation inspires trust.

* Reduce buyer’s remorse by pointing specific types of customers toward their best option.

* Promote reader involvement through a quiz, a set of questions to answer, a puzzle or checklist you invite them to complete.

* Cut excess verbiage, delete self-indulgent rambles and get quickly to the point.

* Quicken desire by creating timely, relevant, ultra-specific offers with an expiration date.

* Use the power of authenticity by selecting qualities admired by your target market and dramatizing them in your marketing.

* Identify and appeal to emotions such as anger, greed, hope or compassion that resonate with the situations in which potential customers now find themselves.

* Mobilize as many reasons to buy as you can discover or concoct. When Coca-Cola ran an ad campaign around a list of 35 reasons people might want a Coke, sales jumped 50 percent in the next five years.

* Update the buying rationale you appeal to in line with current trends, such as ecological consciousness, the movement for buying local, fear about government changes, rampant unemployment or investment losses.

* Concentrate on selling to those who already understand the kind of value you offer, rather than those who need to be educated on the importance of the needs your wares fulfill.

Author Bio: Marcia Yudkin is the author of more than a dozen books, including 6 Steps to Free Publicity and Persuading People to Buy, from which this article is adapted. Learn about her Marketing Insight Guides series on turning strangers into long-time customers: http://www.yudkin.com/guides/index.htm .

Category: Marketing
Keywords: marketing psychology,persuasion,principles,value,perceived,attention,sales,increase,customer