Selling can be challenging because it involves s a complex process of human behavior and cognition.
More than likely, marketers who struggle to win customers either havenโt been prospecting the right way or arenโt putting in enough effort.
In this in-depth article, youโll learn how to leverage the power of the human brain with neuroscience sales tips.
Whether youโre selling a digital product online or you run a brick-and-mortar business, these behavioral neuroscience principles will work for you. Theyโll help you drive more visitors into your marketing funnel and convert casual visits into sales.
1. Influence Drives the Value of Your Product
Influence marketing is here to stay, so you should embrace it.
Influence is your ability to persuade others to adopt your own perspective. You believe in your product (e.g., online course, ebook, software), so you naturally want others to believe in it, too.
Your ability to persuade others in this way by appealing to their emotions will increase your sales. Influence increases the perceived value of your products.
You see, influential people tend to sell more product. Itโs not because theyโve created the best product โ sometimes, thatโs just not true โ but because over the years, theyโve built credibility. People trust their opinions.
For example, in the digital marketing world, people trust Seth Godin. Thatโs because Seth Godin has written over 20 bestselling books. Heโs a sought-after public speaker and social media influencer.
Seth doesnโt waste words. Most of his posts have fewer than 200 words, like the one below, but the social sharing and engagement for these posts is amazing.
Remember that influence isnโt the same as popularity. Theyโre not interchangeable, though a lot of people regard them as such.
Brian Solis reports that one person responding to a survey he conducted with Vocus put it like this:
Popularity is just that people like you, influence is when they listen to you.
When youโre selling online, becoming popular shouldnโt be your ultimate focus. Spend time building your influence. It takes time, but itโs worth the effort.
In the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, author Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D., identifies the 6 factors that get peopleโs brain function to do something that they wouldnโt have ordinarily done.
In my experience as a content marketer whoโs built a loyal audience, influence can be achieved through consistently creating useful content for your target audience and forming relationships with influencers and readers.
If youโre a blogger, youโve already cleared the first hurdle of building authority and influencing people. Macallan persuaded 32 people to do marketing for the company. This resulted in a huge increase in exposure and influence over an audience of 150,000 people.
Next, give adequate time to content creation and building friendships. Reply to comments, answer questions, and, every so often, visit a readerโs blog and give them some free feedback or tips on how to improve their site.
Public speaking is another way to establish your personal brand and build a loyal following.
2. You Have to Sell Yourself Before You Can Sell Your Product
Make no mistake: Youโre a product; and like any product, you have to successfully communicate the value of that product. Until that happens, youโll find it difficult to sell your actual products or services.
Geoffrey James put it best:
Before anybody is going to buy from you or your company, theyโve got to โbuyโ the idea that youโre somebody worth working with. In other words, just like a job candidate, your first task is always selling yourself.
Email marketing is the most effective lead generation tactic, followed by websites/landing pages and then content marketing. But guess what? Each of these tactics will work better when you first sell yourself, then the product.
Selling yourself isnโt an insurmountable challenge. There are lots of opportunities in todayโs world of marketing to appeal to the human brain. However, with many opportunities come an increase in competition.
In a sea of writers, bloggers, freelancers, consultants, public speakers, etc., how do you stand out from the crowd?
Itโs simple: Become passionate about your product.
When youโre selling yourself, youโre not concerned about the money. Your responsibility is to educate othersโ human minds as you convey your brandโs core message.
HelpScout doesnโt just try to sell help-desk software. Instead, it also sells itself as a brand.
Learning how to sell yourself first is critical to your success. No matter what product youโre offering for sale, do your best to connect with and communicate your core brand values to your prospects.
3. Build Interest with Features; Build Desire with Benefits
Sell the benefits, not the features.
Most people and companies think products and services sell because of their great features. Thatโs not the case.
Harvard Business School conducted a research study and found that products of all kinds sell because of their benefits. The benefits that drive sales arenโt always obvious from the customerโs perspective though.
Whether youโre selling via email, direct mail, or social selling, highlight the benefits as well as the features of your product.
Starting with the strongest benefits of your product will reassure customers that you care about them, not (just) their hard-earned money, providing social security.
Selling with benefits means that youโre transparent with your customers. Thatโs exactly what their cognitive function wants.
Copywriters know how to sell benefits.
For example, Dan Kennedy wrote sales copy that generated over $10 million in sales over the years. Itโs the same with Eben Pagan, Frank Kern and several top digital entrepreneurs.
These people were successful because they focused on benefits, not features. Successful selling boils down to one thing: showing your customers how your offer/product meets their needs.
Kat Night agrees that quantifying the benefits of a product is more likely to result in a sale than describing its features.
However, in order to avoid misleading prospects and customers, you have to start by building interest with features. Then, you increase their desire for your product with benefits.
When people are searching for a solution to meet their needs, what their brain function is actually looking for is a future that appeals to them. According to BufferApp, โpeople donโt buy products, they buy better versions of themselves.โ
Consumers are happy to spend money on products thatโll make their lives better. Before the iPod was invented, there were MP3 players on the market. So iPod sold the benefit: โ1,000 songs in your pocket.โ
Whatโs the difference between a benefit and a feature?
This is how the folks at User Onboard explain:
In a nutshell, benefits are what you (or your prospects) can do with a product. Features are what the product can do. They sound similar, right? Yet, theyโre totally different things.
โYou can get fit without straining your joints with an elliptical trainerโ targets the benefit. โEasy-glide motion, timer, and adjustable intensity settingsโ are all features.
See the difference?
Customersโ cognitive functions are different depending on where they are in the buying journey. Their human brains all must first recognize a need, then seek potential solutions, evaluate the solutions, decide to take action, and finally make the purchase.
Use features at stages 1 and 2; benefits will work better on their brain activity when theyโre actually making purchase decisions (stages 4 and 5).
Professor Albert Wenben from the University of Wisconsin-Madison conducted a study on the topic of โConsumer Values, Product Benefits and Customer Value: A Consumption Behavior Approach.โ
He found that โfrom the customersโ perspectives, products are viewed as a bundle of benefits, not attributesโ (features).
MBA Skool suggests that a product benefit is usually the answer to customerโs questions. You probably already know that questions are driven by the psychological phenomenon of an emotional desire to know more.
The level of satisfaction derived from a product will differ depending on human behavior and cognitive neuroscience. After all, two people may both need a product, but one can need it desperately, while the other could get along without it.
To get the best results, highlight 70% of your productโs benefits, and 30% of the features.
Letโs look at an example in the world of marketing consulting services and products.
For most retailers with optimized and high-functioning websites, SEO and email marketing are more beneficial than a Facebook page. Thatโs not always true for other retailers.
If you help businesses set up a Facebook marketing campaign (including a fan page), you need to sell with benefits while targeting your ideal customers (e.g., those without a functional website or with low-performing sites).
People buy products emotionally, and justify the purchases logically. When you use brain science to build interest with features and create strong desire with benefits, youโre meeting your prospects where they are and giving them the social security and social proof they need to feel confident in the purchase.
When you evoke the appropriate emotions, customers may not even know why theyโre responding to your product. But theyโll buy it.
Remember that benefits are the things that you can do with a product, while features are what the product can do. Letโs look at a few real-world examples:
Twitter is a unique micro-blogging platform. It helps you update your timeline in real-time. It all began from their value proposition, based on the platformโs benefits: โstart a conversation, explore your interests and be in the know.โ
Volusion.com has a unique value proposition that simply and strongly projects the core benefit of its software.
Itโs your responsibility to study your product and know its features, benefits and advantage over your competitorโs product.
4. Sell the Results by Painting a Clear Picture
Are you selling your productโs results?
If you donโt do that consistently, youโll likely struggle to acquire qualified leads and increase conversion and revenue.
These days, most of us are selling to a new generation of customers: the millennials.
Millennials are a unique set of people born between 1982 and 2000 and making up 26% of the worldโs population. Over 23% of millennials hold a bachelorโs degree or higher, making them the most educated generation in history.
Even if todayโs consumers havenโt graduated college, they do know what theyโre after in a product. They want results and they wonโt let their human brain function be swayed by fancy copy that doesnโt give at least a sneak peek of the results that they can expect.
To market successfully to this group of consumers, you need solid research and data.
A study conducted by Harvey Research on โHow to Sell with Ad Readership Studiesโ found that โone of the primary reasons for conducting an ad readership study is to obtain research which will help your organization sell advertising.โ
When this research is documented and the data shared with advertisers, it becomes a marketing partner.
In advertising, the result is the data โ that is, the actionable metrics. If your product helped a customer increase lead generation by 27%, thatโs a metric that you can use to win more clients.
Have you ever wondered how introverts successfully sell products? An introvert is a person whose motives, actions, social preferences and human brain functions are directed inwards. Introverts generally donโt enjoy the human behavior associated with convincing or negotiating.
Theyโre reserved. Selling is not their preferred task, yet many of them end up becoming top salespeople and industry power players.
Brian Tracy was an introvert, but by studying consumer psychology and cognitive science and learning what social signals prompt people to buy, heโs become exceptionally successful through neuroscience principles of sales.
One of the sales secrets that the introvert masters know is that itโs much better to sell the results of a product, instead of the product itself.
Selling the result can be likened to painting a clear picture of your target in an ideal future setting โ a point in time where theyโve conquered their challenge or solved their problem successfully โ and displaying it on a shelf.
People who know that person will be captivated by the promise of the painting.
In the same vein, when you paint the picture of your productโs results and show people how easily they can use it, youโll build interest and inspire action in them.
According to Tara Gentle,
People arenโt looking for your service (or your product, or your program). Theyโre looking for results.
In other words, your product isnโt the selling point, so why make it the focus? For example, instead of writing your copy headlines using your product name, focus on the productโs results.
A few ways to sell results instead of products are:
Lead with the value of the product, not the title: If your product helps people cut 5 hours off their workweek, lead with that. Itโs your competitive advantage.
If your offer (e.g., service, program, online course, etc.) helps people lose 10 pounds in 60 days, let your copy focus on that core benefit.
Derek Halpern sells the result of his online course, โYes Engines.โ See the captivating title?:
Showcase before and after results: Fitness trainers know how to use โbeforeโ and โafterโ pictures and videos to improve self-esteem, inspire action, and improve positive cognitive function.
If youโre looking to lose weight, would you be excited when you see amazing case study results from people like you and then find out you can do the same?
The same thing applies to makeup products or tutorials. If youโve been searching for a makeup training program and you came across the before & after pictures below, would you want to know more?
In selling the results of a product, rather than the product itself, youโve got to use visuals that allow your customers to see themselves getting the results they want. Donโt just describe what the end result will look like; represent it with visuals.
Even scientists are in sales. How do scientists sell brain science, cellular neuroscience or experimental psychology to the public? The public isnโt naturally interested in subjects such as developmental neurobiology, computational neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging, or neural systems.
Also, difficult and upsetting subjects such as Alzheimerโs disease, brain damage, post-traumatic stress disorder, or other mental health issues can be difficult to sell to a reader.
Are there any typical results they have to show, the way a blogger who created an online course on how to โget 1000 email subscribersโ would?
More than likely, the scientists donโt have visual results to show. Instead, they sell the validity of a case study and its importance to appeal to the readerโs cognitive psychology.
A study by Vanderbilt University concluded that scientists sell scientific data and ideas by convincing their peers and colleagues of the studyโs validity and importance.
Since the population usually canโt fully understand all of the wide range of implications of scientific data, a scientistโs โpitchโ is often translated by the news media into something that a lay audience can understand.
In many niches, before you can sell a product you need to first acquire leads, nurture them, and convince them to buy.
Selling isnโt a one-way street. Several factors play a vital role. The platforms where you generate your leads matter. Most people have generated more leads through Facebook ads than Google Ads.
On the other hand, the quality of leads of Google Ads tends to be higher.
When it comes to giving people value for their time and money, Google leads the pack. Google sells advertising, not search results.
That is why paid ads in Google are clearly marked and set apart from the actual search results. When it comes to displaying the right results, hereโs what Google says:
Google search results take into account who links to a web page as well as how relevant the content on that page is to your search. Our results reflect what the online community believes is important, not what we or our partners think you ought to see.
As you can see, Google sells advertising on its search engine, but it delivers the most relevant, valuable, and helpful search results in its organic listings. Site owners can neither pay to stay at the top of the search results pages, nor manipulate their rankings (at least, not for long).
Google is the leading digital advertising company because first, it understands what people want, and second, itโs committed to providing the best search results.
5. Credibility Depends on Trust and Expertise
You are more likely to make sales when you have built credibility.
You can build credibility in a number of ways, including by providing top-notch customer service.
Customers want to reach an agent who can help them resolve problems quickly. They also want to interact with real people and gain access to information to resolve issue themselves.
Trust + expertise = credibility.
You canโt succeed in business if you lack credibility. Top brands can boast about their products, because over the years theyโve become known and are credible, offering social security.
Thatโs why itโs difficult for a new marketer, organization, or company to dominate the marketplace.
Customersโ cognitive functions are scared to trust you or your product. After all, you might take their money and vanish. Customer service is the hallmark of credibility. It builds credibility from the ground up.
The viral effect of bad customer service is alarming. More people share negative experiences than they share good ones. 66% of customers who experienced negative (bad) customer experience want to discourage others from buying from that company.
86% of people completely stopped doing business with companies over bad customer experiences. It negatively affects their human brain functions.
Every day, I wake up and ask myself a question: โWhatโs the best thing I can do for my customers today?โ
Itโs a simple, slightly dramatic exercise that reinforces for me the importance of building trust in prospectโs minds. People wonโt trust you unless youโve proven yourself and delivered immense value over a period of time.
How do you establish credibility when youโre an online business owner?
Stanford Web Credibility Research compiled 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a website. This can be applied to your product, personality, and brand.
Most local businesses know how to build credibility. They use sentiment to affect human behavior. While others are struggling to earn a customerโs trust, local businesses donate to schools, sponsor childrenโs sports teams and participate in community events bulletin boards.
Be willing to work hard. People respect people who work hard. But, donโt make it all about yourself. Credibility is best earned by looking out for the interests of other people.
Here are a few simple ways to improve your credibility:
Answer questions correctly: Trust and transparency are just as important to corporate reputation as the quality of products and services. If you give incorrect answers it will damage your reputation.
When people ask you questions, if you donโt know the right answer, then say so. Offer to do some research and get back to them.
Whatever you do, donโt spout off with something youโre not sure of just to sound intelligent. The more you answer questions correctly, the more people will trust you.
Produce valuable content regularly: There is no shortcut to content creation. You either do it yourself or outsource it to a knowledgeable freelance writer.
Always publish new content that helps people achieve their goals more easily. Your credibility level will increase.
Donโt just create generic content. Instead, focus on creating custom content that will be relevant to your audience and in sync with your goal.
Offer to solve relevant problems: If you have unique skills, you can offer to solve relevant problems for your target audience.
For example, if youโre a website developer, you could offer to help readers tweak their WordPress themes, or show them how to do it easily themselves.
Build relationships: We all need to treat others fairly, recognize their inherent worth, and respect them.
Donโt let your human behavior be solely consumed by the amount of money you can make. Instead, now and again, help people for free. Brenton Hayden recommends that you follow a few specific strategies if you want to up your credibility:
In todayโs marketplace, brands and products disappear as quickly as they appear. Most of them wonโt stand the test of time.
Itโs obvious that the way to improve your credibility is to build relationships with prospects and customers and earn their trust.
You can also build credibility by showcasing customer success stories. If you donโt have any authority at all, it may be hard for people to trust you. The best approach to appeal to their cognitive functions is to show that your product really works.
Drew Manning, founder of Fit2Fat2Fit, knows how to showcase real-life results. He discovered that most people who sell fitness programs and products are athletic, fit people who have never been overweight.
How can they possibly understand the human brain functions behind the struggles that overweight people endure and what that feels like?
Drew Manning did things differently. He spent 6 months gaining over 70 lbs. He then spent another 6 months taking the weight off.
This transformation was a source of confidence to potential customers. They thought, โIf it worked for him, itโll work for me, too.โ
6. Sales Is a โGive and Giveโ Relationship
Giving usually comes into focus during the holiday season.
In The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches To The Study of Charity, author Daniel M. Oppenheimer estimated that Americans donate over $300 billion each year to charity.
When youโre selling a product online or offline, giving should be in the form of value.
For example, you could give 1 โ 10 GB free to customers who register your cloud storage solution, as pCloud does.
If youโre an author, you could give away the first two chapters of your book for free.
Giving is what I do on a daily basis because itโs the only way to build a sales relationship with potential customers.
I spent $30,000 on content creation; and instead of selling it, I gave the content away for free.
Your customers are your best salespeople. Before they can recommend your product to other prospects, you need to make up your mind to give and give. Thatโs the relationship between you and customers.
According to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, there is a way to sell that is rewarding, positive, and even enjoyable. Itโs called relationship marketing and itโs a message Dale Carnegie started delivering over 80 years ago.
When you first establish a relationship with prospects, it affect their neural development and becomes easier to sell to them. The best salespeople are the best givers.
Contrary to what most people think, itโs not a โgive and takeโ relationship, because youโre not taking anything from your audience.
If you love your customers (of course you should), then look for ways to give them as much value as possible and let it be more than what theyโll pay for.
Even though they may buy your product, that doesnโt mean youโre taking from them. The value of your product/service is expected to be higher than the price they paid for it.
Donโt get tired of giving. Itโs your life as an entrepreneur, whether you run a brick-and-mortar business or are an online marketer.
Creating relationships that drive sales is critical to your business. Thatโs how top brands like Amazon, Zappos, Home Depot, and the like thrive in this competitive age.
The existing brain science research in psychology, economics, and neuroscience exploring the benefits of charitable giving has been largely correlational. Does it cause more happiness and fulfillment? Or is the connection between happiness and giving just a happy accident?
Happiness is a positive form of emotion, the province, and function of the limbic brain region.
To sell more products, give more value for free. According to Dunn and Norton, a study on happiness shows that the most satisfying way to use money is to invest in others. This might explain why so many people donate to charities that work in developing countries.
You can learn from two of Americaโs leading billionaires: Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Buffett donated 99% of his wealth to help charitable causes, saying โI couldnโt be happier with that decision.โ
Both billionaires give quite a bit to the world. Yet, here they willingly moved themselves down from being billionaires to millionaires. Heartfelt giving brings more into your life and your business.
Successful internet marketers who generated 6 or 7 figure incomes when they launched their products online followed this strategy.
They first started by giving tremendous value, well before selling. Eben Pagan, Frank Kern, Jeff Goins, Bill Baren and others launched their products in this manner.
For example, before Brian Dean opened his premium course โSEO That Works,โ he first taught the best way to get top rankings for free in a blog post. Iโm subscribed to his email list, so I can tell you that the value he provided made purchasing his online course a very simple decision. because he had already created tons of value for me.
If you donโt have a product to sell at the moment, it shouldnโt stop you from giving a richer experience to your prospects. Create high-quality content consistently.
Iโve been blogging for over a decade. Since that time, Iโve been creating 3 โ 5 in-depth, relevant and valuable pieces of content for my audience each week.
Thatโs why you see huge traffic spikes in my blogs and a growing customer base for my software businesses.
New studies prove that giving is beneficial not just for the recipients, but for the giversโ health and happiness. Giving promotes cooperation, positive human behavior, and social connection.
This is what you need to boost sales.
A study by sociologists Brent Simpson and Robb Willer showed that โwhen you give to others, your generosity is likely to be rewarded by others down the lineโsometimes by the person you gave to, sometimes by someone else.โ
7. To Close More Sales, Stop Selling
Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko and SEO That Works, understands how to persuade people to sign up for his online course.
Even though his online course is closed, he still sells by requesting that you join the waiting list.
Why does he do this?
Well, when people join his waiting list, they get quality advice and case studies of people achieving first page rankings, etc. By the time the course re-opens again, subscribers who joined the waiting list will be desperate for the online course.
The majority of them will eagerly enroll. After all, theyโve already received tremendous value, free of charge.
In other words, stop pushing your products to the target audience. Instead, push high-value content. Answer questions and show the results of your services or products.
One company that sells its products quite successfully without sounding too salesy is BlendTec. BlendTec took a novel approach way back in 2007 with its โWill It Blend?โ series.
The founder, Tom Dickson, understands that what people are looking for in a blender is the bladeโs sharpness and the motorโs strength.
In each video in the โWill It Blend?โ series, Tom tests his blender by blending anything from cell phones to wooden rakes.
Donโt try to push sales too much. Instead, educate more. Become a teacher. Become passionate about helping other people.
Brian Clark, the founder of Copyblogger, discovered early in his content marketing business that โTeaching Sells.โ
When he started teaching instead of selling, he turned his blog into a multi-million dollar software business. He also went on to start another new business called RainMaker.fm.
When you teach, youโre giving away value that people canโt find elsewhere. If you continually educate and inform your target audience, youโll sell more products or services in the process.
Conclusion
If you can tap into how your customerโs brains works at different stages in the purchasing process or lead funnel, you may be able to drive more sales with less effort.
The neuroscience sales tips weโve provided should help you get started thinking about how you can leverage the power of the human brain in your own digital marketing strategy.
If all of this sounds intimidating and you want help enacting these principles, let us know. Our team of experts are ready and waiting to partner with you to create a stellar SEO or marketing plan that drives sales by considering how your customers think.
Which of these cognitive neuroscience principles have you applied to increase your product sales online?