Your Marketing: Is it Tempting?

I love Business 2.0. It's one of the few magazines I read front-to-back. In the new May issue, Andy Raskin writes an interesting article entitled, "How to Lead Your Customer Into Temptation."

In the article, Mr. Raskin discusses research conducted by Baba Shiv, formerly of Univ. of Iowa and now at Stanford. Mr. Shiv's studies how consumers make decisions. Something important to all of us.

I always like to point out how the small things you do or don't do while marketing and selling your products or services, are key to your success. This study is another example.

In 1999, Professor Shiv conducted a study with two groups of subjects who thought they were participating in a memory study. The first group was asked to memorize a two-digit number and the other group, a seven-digit number. Then, just before each subject was asked to recall the number they were asked to memorize, they were offered a choice: a tasty piece of chocolate cake or more healthy, bowl of fruit salad.

The purpose of the study was to better understand how potential customers make decisions. As many salespeople know, customers often buy for emotional reasons, and then try to justify their purchase using logic. Consumers are constantly under the emotional vs. logical battle when making decisions.

For instance, in this study, the subjects are faced with the primitive emotions derived from pleasure and desire versus the more logical side that "cake is not healthy" or "cake is fattening for me." So Professor Shiv, in his 1999 study, was trying to find out if it is possible to influence which "side" wins in this internal battle. What do you think happened?

Interestingly, 63% of the subjects who were tasked with memorizing the longer number chose the cake, compared to 41% of those tasked with the shorter number.

When you think about it, this study makes sense. It takes energy and focus to think logically. It's much easier to give into our emotions - the old pleasure principle where we seek those things that bring pleasure and avoid those things that bring pain. The subjects who were more distracted, found it more difficult to fight their emotional impulses and caved in for the cake.

For me, there are five takeaways for the small business marketer:

1. It is the small things you do or don't do, during every interaction with a current or potential customer, that determines your level of success.
2. I think this "distraction affect" has more significance for low-risk decisions - like food. If you market in more complex environments with higher risk involved, emotional factors will have less of an impact.
3. If you market a more rational service, like accounting, create a purchase environment that is simple, straightforward and has few distractions.
4. If you sell a more emotional or impulsive product or service, like food, create a purchase environment that incorporates distractions.
5. If you can come up with an ethical way to appeal to customer's emotions in your sales and marketing efforts, do it. After they purchase your product or service, help them reinforce their purchase decision using logical messages.

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Rob Reed is president of Terrakon Marketing, an internet marketing and sales consulting firm based in St. Louis. Terrakon helps small businesses, service firms and professionals attract and win more customers. Learn more at www.Terrakon.com or Rob's blog at www.MarketingCentricity.com.