#15 The Psychology of Why People Buy: How to Sell the Feeling?
Beyond Features, Focus on Feelings: Practical Tips for Understanding Consumer Psychology
Everyone has feelings and what does it has to do with products?
There is a lot to do!
Because as a user if you don’t feel like it’s worth spending money on something, you will not be buying that product or spending money on that.
That’s where all businesses compete to get your attention and trying to win your attention.
Your Attention → Creates a Feeling → Could be Bad or Good
→ Good Feelings → Will make you spend money
→ Bad feelings → you just choose another product
→ No Feelings? → Worse than Bad feelings because your users are not able to build a concrete opinion about your product and that creates a lot of confusion and challenge to understand what your users actually care about.
Anyway, why are we talking about feelings today?
that’s what it makes the difference in your psychology to trigger you to do some action.
Features vs Benefits
When you went to buy a new mobile, a sales person, Harry starts sharing:
256GB memory
8GB RAM
Rear camera: 50MP + 12MP + 50MP
then there is another sales person, Robin explaining:
You could save 5000 of your photos and videos on this device
It never hangs and super fast almost like your Macbook
Clicks a picture of a long-shot object and shows back to you as it has highest quality camera
whose pitch you found like I want to buy this really?
Of course, I feel Robin’s explanation is more helpful to me because:
I CAN SEE THE BENEFITS
I CAN SEE THE VALUE for the money I’m willing to keep on my new mobile.
In reality, both shared same thing but Robin is able to evoke a feeling within you that made you realize the benefit of the product you hope to buy when you stepped inside the store.
Benefits always get sold over features, no matter who is your persona.
Let’s take some big case-studies in simple lines.
The 4 Cases: Benefits in Action
1️⃣ Apple's iPod: 1,000 Songs in Your Pocket
This is one of my most favorite iconic lines with simple and straight message to the buyers.
Apple never sold 3GB of songs in this device.
Apple reframed it to highlight the emotional benefit of carrying a vast music library by showing convenience and freedom.
It relentlessly focuses on what is the value my users get out of this iPod.
2️⃣ Airbnb: Live Like a Local
Airbnb is an online platform for booking accommodations when you travel to new places or for vacation.
Live Like a Local is a campaign launched in 2016 by Airbnb, aimed to provide travelers with a more authentic and personalized experience by offering features like Guidebooks within the app.
The platform is People-to-People marketplace to rent accommodations and stays for temporary and if you have a place, you can always add your property on the website.
This is a powerful campaign that I have ever seen that redefined the whole travel experience because it focused more on human connections and experiencing the travel destinations like never before by involving local neighborhoods.
3️⃣ Netflix: Binge-worthy Entertainment, Anytime, Anywhere
A large library of DVDs, movies or streaming platform?
Do you watch on this, if it’s a large library, what’s about it? As a user, I don’t care because it’s not adding any value to me.
73% of viewers reported positive feelings while binge-watching, contributes to the platform's popularity. (source)
Wait a sec, what the heck is binge-watching?
You might have already thinking about the shows you watched already or about to watch today on “Netflix”.
The term/word binge-watching evokes “Netflix” image in your brain because Netflix has the highest dopamine evoking content that creates pleasure and happiness.
coming back to the line “Bing-worthy entertainment, anytime, anywhere” — because they had a huge library of movies and shows and you can always eat, sleep, do anything by watching their content whole day.
4️⃣ Zoom: Connect Face-to-Face with Anyone, Anywhere
If there is any company or product who got a ton of benefit from COVID-19, that has to be Zoom.
Zoom is a video calling/meeting used in professional setting like workplaces and then later adopted in schools and education entities.
Even after Covid, things are not normal again (might not be ever as it’s been 5 years by 2024).
There are a few video calling apps by the time Zoom came but still why people found value in Zoom and went with it?
There can be n number of reasons but Connect with Face-to-Face is the highlight that they focused to make you realize that you can stay connected with your loved ones or colleagues despite the physical distance.
Conclusion
Always ask how can your product benefit your customers?
What is the “Feeling Factor” in your product that makes your users buy?
Benefits > Features
These 3 are the strongest elements influencing your customers’ decisions.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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What’s New With Me?
📄 This is how I read articles in 2024
This is my new way of reading articles in 2024 as I have been using Arc Browser, it enhanced normal search on page with AI that could quickly provide summary or answer any of my questions. (this is not an extension, it’s embedded in it’s browser itself)
If I found value in the summary, then I read full article (you can also try with my newsletter)
Here’s a link to download Arc, the browser I was telling you about!
🎧 The Hustle Chapters Latest Episode
My podcast’s latest episode has been out, I brought Khelan Modi, who is a PM at Microsoft, and originally wanted to become an architect and design buildings.
An advice from his sibling and one Computer Science class changed his career direction.
I met Khelan last month during Microsoft AI Tour in San Francisco.
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Hi Phani, reading your blogs are very informative and not boring.
What made you to start this blogging?
I want to write as well. But not sure where and how to start.
I want to write on how to implement and test before releasing a product. I know it's not a new topic for product managers, but I can think of it top of my head now.
You are very good inspiration for aspiring product bloggers.
I will run my article with you before i publish ,please.