By Jeffrey Hedquist
Reason has power. I don’t mean to say that reaching your audience with logic is better than touching their emotions. No, you have to do that, but making an unsubstantiated claim won’t be as effective as telling the story behind the claim.
When you make a claim and describe the benefit, explain why you can do it. If something’s on sale, tell the audience why. Did you buy a large volume and are passing on the discount? Did you make a mistake, overbuy and are stuck with left over merchandise? Are you just willing to earn less in profit to move the merchandise and give customers a good deal?
If your computer store offers free help before and after the sale from a software consultant, tell those skeptics out there why. You know they can go anywhere to get a good price, but you want to build a relationship so they’ll come to you as their computer needs grow, so you’ve decided to invest in each customer. Sure, it’s costing you money, but you remember how it was when you bought something and needed help, and it wasn’t available or it was too expensive.
Whatever your position, offer, claim, benefit, give ‘em the true reasons for what you’re doing. By doing that, your commercial will sound less like advertising and more like a story, a friend explaining why they can help.
Reason is the servant of emotion.
You know that you’ll win the hearts of your listeners by touching their emotions. A reasonable explanation will give their mind ammunition to justify their decision to buy from you.
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© 2002 Hedquist Productions, Inc.