A Communication Trick That Makes Customers More Likely to Buy

Every story is heading toward a happily ever after or sad ending. If we don’t know what those endings might be, the audience gets lost.

We have to know the guy can get the girl, or the hero might disarm the bomb, and the story lives in the suspense as to whether those things can happen.

Every person responds to story because they’re living in one.

They want things and have to work to get them, and they believe if they get them their life will be better. And if we sell good products, we can actually provide a happy ending to a story our customers are living.

We can provide a great meal if we own a restaurant, or a lawn mower that won’t break down or a night of entertainment or whatever.

A common mistake companies make in their advertising, though, is they describe the features and benefits of their products rather than the results (or happily ever after) their customers will experience.

But remember, people buy results, not features.

The car we are selling might have power windows, which is a feature. But customers don’t buy power windows, they buy the result, which is not having to reach across the seat to roll a window down.

They don’t care that the weed-eater has an auto-adjusting line, they only care that they don’t have to bang the head of their weed eater against the sidewalk all the time.

Some companies think their customers can connect the dots, and of course they can — except they don’t.

They don’t have time.

And they aren’t giving you the creative space necessary to do so.

In our marketing copy, then, we need to describe the results our customers will experience if they use our products. How will they feel?

What trouble will we be saving them from?