Why People Buy
The psychology of selling
Marketers are working round the clock to ensure our wallets are empty. They spent millions in advertising campaigns to market & sell their products and services. People are daily bombarded with marketing emails, brochures, & commercials.
But ads are not created to entertain you. Neither the marketers are hungry for any recognition. The ads are well-researched and planned campaigns. Designed to capture your attention and create a desire in you. And then converting that desire into action.
Read that once again. Advertisers don’t want your reaction. They want you to take action. So your wallets are empty and their bank accounts are full.
Advertisers use proven and tested psychological techniques to persuade and influence buyers. They don’t want you to read the ad and move to the next one. They don’t want you to enjoy those commercials and change the channel. They also don’t want you to ignore all those emails that arrive in your inbox. Their goal is to turn you from a looker into a buyer.
They want to create a desire in your mind. They want you to enjoy their products in your mind.
According to Drew Eric Whitman, Author of Cashvertising, “The first use of any product is inside the consumer’s mind”
They want you to think and desire and act.
They create a desire by tapping into people’s innermost desires.
Drew further says “Human beings are biologically programmed with the following eight desires”
1 Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension
2 Enjoyment of food and beverages
3 Freedom from fear, pain & danger
4 Sexual companionship
5 Comfortable living conditions
6 To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses
7 Care & protection of loved ones
8 Social approval
Every human is born with the above desires. We want to enjoy life. Live longer. We want to survive at any cost. Want the comfort of the highest level. Want to sip our favorite coffee. We want to have the food of our choice.
We want to stay away from any kind of fear, pain, and danger. That’s why we rush to the other end when crossing the road. And seek a doctor when we aren’t feeling well. We love to celebrate & party.
We want to be superior to our neighbors. We want to look good and want to date the prettiest girl or boy in the town.
As much as we love our loved ones. We also like to protect them from any danger. We want our kids to excel in academics. We want them to be confident. And not get bullied in school. We don’t want our kids to stutter while speaking. We want our loved ones free from any kind of fear and danger.
If we desire all the pleasure and comfort, we also like to seek social approval. We want to feel good and we’d like everyone around us to make us feel good. We want to flaunt our lifestyle on social media and crave all the likes and comments. We want everybody to get hooked to our new dress the moment we enter the party. We want all the praise, compliments, and claps that make us feel good.
These desires motivate us to buy things all our life. These are natural and stay with us till our death.
To sell we need to understand people first. We need to understand why people buy what they buy and why they buy.
In 1935, H.E Warren wrote an article entitled “How to Understand Why People Buy.”
Every business owner, marketer, copywriter, and salesperson should read this twice.
He said “To understand why people buy, we… should know people and have a keen sense of human nature. We should know how people think…how people live, and be acquainted with the standards and customs affecting their everyday lives…
We should know their needs and their wants and be able to distinguish between the two. And understanding of why people buy is gained by a willingness to acquire proved and tested principles of commercial psychology of selling.”
We’re marketing to humans, not robots. We’ve to study humans and their psychology if we want to sell them our products and services.
