ABCIncome.com - Don't Fall Victim To Emotional Marketing

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Don't Fall Victim
To Emotional Marketing

If you’re in either ABCIncome.com’s Earn Without Risk! or We Guarantee To Build Your Business! program then how much you choose to get personally involved in building your business is entirely optional.

However, either before or since, you’ll no doubt be tempted to succumb to, “emotional marketing.” It’s easy to do, because it’s both a part of human nature as well as the way that the vast majority of all products and services are sold.

There’s nothing wrong with emotion, the joy of family or friends, a special moment, and the like, but it’s a great way to get into trouble when it comes to making business and financial decisions.

In the weeks prior to this article one of the, “hottest,” and fastest rising topics and drivers of traffic on the Internet was Paris Hilton’s Spicy BBQ Burger commercial. It features a scantily clad Paris Hilton cavorting around the screen making an intentional effort at being so sexy that I’m surprised they can show it on TV. Amidst all of the steam from the screen heating up, she does manage to take a bite or two out of the hamburger.

A few years back when the previously unchallenged Palm Pilot computer encountered stiff competition from the rapidly rising contender, the Microsoft Windows based Pocket PC, Palm resorted to a whole new, and controversial, advertising campaign using nude women wearing nothing but a strategically arranged pose, and a Palm Pilot computer.

And while some car commercials focus on concrete things such as safety, reliability, gas mileage, etc., have you ever noticed how most car commercials instead focus on things that have nothing at all to do with how well that car will actually work for you? They might show a driver barreling down a country road at 100 MPH plus, with mist whooshing behind, into the sunset, for instance. Or a car leaping up and over mountains with a single bound (almost like Superman), maybe dodging in and out of the clouds, or perhaps nimbly dodging a wayward mountain goat along the way :) I’ve owned both sports cars as well as SUVs, but I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t recall doing much driving like that. How about you?

All of the above are examples of emotional marketing. It’s designed to tug at your emotions, trigger a response, and get you to buy something, hopefully and probably on an impulse, as opposed to a more well rounded and thought out decision based upon the facts, and maybe some sound research.

Most buying decisions, whether at your favorite shopping mall, or when getting involved in a home business opportunity, are made on emotion and/or impulse.

What’s especially fascinating is that emotional marketing is just as alive and well in the home business and MLM industries, even though the average individual marketer doesn’t have the benefit of big budgets or sexy stars or models to get their point across.

That’s one reason why so many in the industry are “serial” opportunity seekers. They sign up for something, only to find that because they didn’t do their homework it just doesn’t work out for them. Amazingly, even when people sign up for the right opportunity, the power of emotional marketing can often still get them to sign up for something else that is not anywhere near as good.

I get emails and calls like that all the time. Among the calls that I received this week was one from a gentlemen who was already involved in an excellent opportunity. However, he had something, “new,” that he wanted to tell me about. He said that since he’s found it he is so excited that he can hardly stand it. He had, “just signed up.”

Well, when he told me which company it was I hated to burst his bubble, but, as is the case with many such calls, having had exposure to this industry for decades, I happened to know a thing or two about that particular opportunity. In fact, I’d personally met the owners of the company about the time that it first started, almost 20 years ago. I also happen to know that the top money earner in that company has been working hard for maybe 10 or more years, and earns maybe $200,000 a year or so.

Especially if you’ve never made $200,000, that may seem impressive (though many of the readers and clientele of ABCIncome.com have, including the man in this example). However, I shared with the caller that, in contrast, a representative who has been with the opportunity that ABCIncome.com has chosen based upon a set of rigid criteria developed over decades, made $100,000 last MONTH (that’s $1.2 million a year) with that particular opportunity, and he’s been with that company for less than one year. Which opportunity would you rather be with?

The, “new,” opportunity that this caller was so excited about, was something that I’d been aware of for almost 20 years, and had evaluated quite differently based not upon emotion and excitement, but good research and factual data.

I remember another such call, dating all the way back to the 1980s. A woman called me from Texas to try to recruit me into her new company that she was excited about and had, “just signed up,” with. It just so happened that the company was based in Michigan, and not too far away from my home of Grand Rapids, where I lived at the time. It also happened that I’d had the opportunity to personally have met the owners of that company too. I’d even been invited to their homes.

Further, I knew some of the company’s top earners, I’m talking about people earning millions. I also knew some of the people from the company’s executive offices. It also so happened that, as an avid bicyclist, my morning exercise route took me literally right up to the doorstep of the company’s headquarters almost everyday. That’s where I would turn around and head back home to get breakfast before starting my workday.

Two other very critical things I happened to know: 1) That company’s position in the market had weakened so significantly that, at that time, they weren’t even focusing on their domestic representatives. That’s because most of their revenue was coming from new representatives being recruited in other countries, where the opportunity was new, exciting, and had not lost its freshness or suffered from damage to its reputation. 2) I also knew that a significant percentage of the company’s revenues at that time weren’t coming from American representatives either, but from highly successful investments the company was making.

In other words, that particular company was probably not the best opportunity at all for US based representatives at that time.

So here we had a woman from Texas who had never set foot in the company’s offices or met its owners, talking to someone who had, etc., etc., etc. And despite all of the above, nothing that I could say to the woman seemed to register. And there was no opportunity that I was trying to recruit her into in return. I was simply trying to help her, and to save her some money and heartache. I was operating on factual knowledge. She was operating on pure emotion.

More germane to today’s Internet environment, as also mentioned in other articles that you’ll find on ABCIncome.com, the vast majority of marketers use every trick of the trade that they can find to tug at your emotional heartstrings. Just one of those techniques is the one-page capture page.

They use one page and one page only because they want to get you to make a decision right then and there, without the benefit of any other information. There are two problems with one-page capture pages: 1) Most tell you nothing about the company or give you any way to find out more, and, often, there is little or no contact information. In other words, you really don’t know who you are dealing with. 2) They are often set up so that you have only one of two options: either make a purchase, or not.

What if you want to find out more about the company? What if you want to find out more about the products? What if you just want to send off an email or pick up the phone and call someone? With over 50 percent of the capture pages of the above type, and that’s typically what you’ll find on the Internet, about all that you can do if you want to find out more is to buy whatever it is that’s being offered.

Companies that have nothing to hide seldom if ever use the one-page format. You won’t see Sears, Best Buy, Amazon.com, or eBay, using that approach. And it’s no coincidence that ABCIncome.com doesn’t either.

In general you will find that the basic success plan or formula for Internet marketing looks something like this:

1. Give away a free gift or report to get the prospect’s interest.

2. Eventually the prospect buys something that is being offered.

3. Keep sending the prospect more free gifts and/or reports.

4. Always find something to sell to the prospect again. In other words, that marketer will likely keep coming back to you over and over again to get you to buy again and again.

In many cases there is nothing wrong with this last approach at all. Even your local grocery or department store probably sends you special offers and/or coupons to try to get you to buy again. But the difference with Internet marketing is that the repeat sale offer is usually to try to get you to buy something that promises to show you how to be more successful and do better than you did the last time. Here also, there’s nothing wrong with that either, as long as the things that you are buying into are actually helping you achieve your goals. However, if each time you buy new books, tapes, CDs, DVDs, or whatever, it’s getting you no closer to your financial and lifestyle goals, then all that you are doing is making someone else richer, while you aren’t getting any richer yourself.

Lastly, always ask yourself the question: What is the realistic possibility that this opportunity will let you accomplish anywhere near the same level of success using similar or even exactly the same techniques?

If the opportunity that a marketer is offering you extends to you a realistic possibility of substantial earnings or profit, awesome, that is exactly the kind of opportunity that you should be looking for. On the other hand, if the opportunity really only involves the marketer getting richer by selling you materials telling you about how rich he or she is getting, and you have little chance of creating any kind of realistic earnings for yourself, you might want to stop and think twice.

It is often said that you should try to pick a job, or a business, that you can be happy with, that you enjoy, or maybe even that you are passionate about. And that’s true. But just try to make sure along the way that the passion, excitement, and emotion, don’t cloud good judgment in regard to the business decisions that you make.

Your wallet, your bank account, your family, and your future, will all thank you!

I hope that you enjoyed this article... Also, if you have not already done so, please read the information that you'll find at the link below:

To Your Success!

Phil Covington
Founder of ABCIncome.com