If you were trained in the mindset that the best way to inspire action in your audience is to instill fear, we’d say you’ve learned an effective marketing strategy. Fear captures attention and spurs people into action.
Used too often, however, it can have the opposite effect.
Crazy Egg, an analytics platform that tracks and optimizes website visitor behavior, explains that fear-based marketing, particularly overuse of fear-based marketing, can make consumers skeptical and distrustful and lead them to think that your “solutions” are a waste of time.
“No one wants to read something that makes them increasingly sad, upset, or fearful. And, if they get the ‘why bother’ mindset, there’s very little you can say to save the sale,” Crazy Egg’s experts warn.
When you take the opposite approach, however, when you put a more positive spin on your message and market in the name of love, not fear, prospects grow to trust you, learn to rely on you, and start to build long-term relationships with you.
“A marketing strategy focused on appealing to consumers' raw and most personal emotions can change a nameless, faceless, perhaps seemingly soulless business into a brand that audiences can relate to and care about,” says Ivy Cohen, President and CEO of Ivy Cohen Corporate Communications.
The best way to do that? Demonstrate how your company makes someone’s life “better, easier, or brings them joy.”
Write to your audience as if they were your family and friends. Assure them that you have their best interest at heart. Take an attitude of concern and caring over shock and fear. Give them hope and inspiration.
Taking a more positive approach—at least some of the time—will benefit your prospects, and you, more in the long run.
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