Boost Your Emotional Marketing Potential

Why do people buy your product? If you stack up enough benefits to outweigh the costs of purchasing it, do you automatically close the deal? It doesn't always happen, does it? Consumers are not calculating machines. They are soft, warm, breathing humans with emotions that assign meaning and personal significance to your products.

How do potential customers evaluate your products (or services)? How do they trade off various factors before deciding? How are their emotions involved in the process? Consumers--whether they realize it or not--use up to six categories of emotional criteria when they decide to purchase your product.

Technical criteria

Technical criteria relate to what your product does. Every product performs a function. It may also perform additional functions or have features that make it easier to operate or use. If your type of product has been around for a while, everyone assumes it will perform its basic function. Marketing battles are fought on the ground of extra features and ease of use.

Does your product perform its core function better, faster, or more smoothly than your competitors' products? Have you enriched your product with additional features? Is your product easier to buy and simpler to operate?

Economic/sacrifice criteria

Economic/sacrifice criteria relate to price. Consumers live in an approach/avoidance world. Your product's benefits are in a tug of war with its price and the effort it takes to purchase it. For most consumers, the psychological cost of paying for your product reduces their enjoyment of it. Several emotionally significant factors influence the maximum price you can charge for your product.

How closely does your product relate to the buyer's needs? How unique is your product? Do you charge a "fair" price? Is paying the asking price socially acceptable for your customers?

Legalistic criteria

Consumers are also guided by what others demand or want. Some potential buyers must obey legal requirements and this loss of control may be frustrating. Consumers also feel obliged to consider the needs and desires of others, like their spouse or children.

Does your product help your customer comply with any legal requirements? Can your product be made more appealing to your customer's children or spouse?

Integrative criteria

How does your product or service fit with your potential customer's social group or personal identity? Consumers belong to social groups. They face potential embarrassment if they don't conform. So they constantly try to strike a balance between group membership versus visibility and self-esteem. Any product or service that increases their self-esteem is emotionally satisfying.

Does your product help your customer express their identity? Can your product be described as "upscale" or "exclusive"?

Adaptive criteria

Consumers want to minimize any risk that they will regret their purchase later. The easiest solution is to avoid responsibility completely and trust the advice of others, preferably an expert. Consumers also lower their risk of future regret by imitating the buying habits of others that they assume are "in the know," by looking for guarantees, or by basing their decision on your reputation.

Are you able to offer endorsements from recognized experts? Do you have testimonials from satisfied customers? Do you offer a strong guarantee? Is it possible to offer a free trial or sample?

Intrinsic criteria

Intrinsic criteria relate to your product's basic nature--how much the consumer "likes" your product. Appeal to your customer's senses. How does your product look, feel, taste, smell or sound?

Curiosity is another intrinsic criterion. Consumers are always looking for something new and different. Familiar products are reassuring, but they are also boring. The trick is to not go too far. Every consumer has an optimal level of novelty and complexity that maximizes their curiosity and their desire to satisfy it. If you push beyond the optimal point, they will return to the familiar.

Is your product "refreshing" or "alluring"? How about "enchanting" or "elegant"?

If you focus only on rational behavior, then you choose to ignore enormously powerful emotional forces that ultimately make your customer's final decision. The rational argument should already be won by your product's high quality design. Creative innovation, savvy pricing, and persuasive presentation will win your customer's emotions.

*The six categories of emotional criteria were developed by John O'Shaughnessy, and Nicholas Jackson O'Shaughnessy, The Marketing Power of Emotion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

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Related Information of Interest:

Article Marketing for Search Engine Traffic
There are sites on the net that serve tons of traffic everyday. Traffic you wish you had, right?
The web is made up of billions of links, much like a spiderï¿½s web but on a larger scale. Search engines spider the web looking for new content to add to their massive databases so they can rank how relevant it is to particular search phrases.
What are the search engines looking for?
New content! In order for any search engine to provide relevant results to their visitors (so their visitors will repeatedly use them) they must provide the best results possible for every search performed on their site.
The best search engine gets more traffic and more traffic means more advertising money for them - so search engines have to be up to date to stay competitive in their market.
The big sites on the net, people, who have page rankings of 5 upwards, obviously serve a ton of visitors per day, provide search engines with a mass of links to follow and index. Thatï¿½s why they go back to the big sites more often than the little ones.
High traffic, very popular sites are visited by the search engine robots more often than sites with little traffic. Some large sites are visited by search engines as much as 2-4 times per month.
How can article marketing increase your search engine traffic?
By submitting articles you can get links from these high traffic sites. Furthermore you can optimize your articles with your search terms to get high rankings for that particular page. This would otherwise take weeks on a new site as oppose to a well established one such as this.
Each of these sites will have its own resource area, at the end of the article, writers include a bit of Author information on where to find out more about them. Place your website link in here and bobï¿½s your uncle the search engines will find your site through that link.
The more articles you submit with your website link in them, the more pages on the net you have pointing to you from high traffic sites and the better your ranking and link popularity.
Many good article sites these days create RSS feeds for each category. This provides an additional opportunity to market your site and article to people who subscribe to the feeds.
Start submitting your articles today. You will be amazed at the results they yield.

Richard is the Publisher of Articleprobe a Free Article Distribution and Submisssion Service. Set up your account today and start submitting your articles to Articleprobe

Iraqi Insurgents In Secret Talks; Admit May Be Fighting Wrong Enemy
Iraqi insurgent groups, in secret talks with resourcefully pacifying President Jalal Talabani, admitted they may have been fighting the wrong enemy. Upon hearing the admission, President Talibani slapped his forehead so hard he fell over backwards and was unconscious for approximately three days.

Upon being resuscitated, he continued the talks. Apparently, the insurgents, most of whom are Sunni Muslims, have slowly begun to realize that American and coalition troops, who they have been making their best efforts to kill, may not be the real enemy. It seems they are also growing disenchanted with the practice of blowing up a dozen or so of their fellow countrymen every day.

While it is far too soon to expect them to realize that coalition troops are actually the helpful heroes who liberated their country from murderous despotism and will be delighted to depart their sandy realm as soon as they can get their act together and run their own country, the groups have indicated a marginal willingness to consider giving up their various armaments and roadside explosives.

Behind the change in their sentiment seems to be, not only their longtime-overdue displeasure with dismembering their own nation, but the realization that they are dangerously bordered by their traditional enemy, Iran, as they have been for quite a few thousand years, and that, because of the continuing discord, Iran has managed to increase its influence in the country, particularly among their uneasy Mosque fellows, the Shiite contingent of the legions of Mohammed. This perception is especially upsetting to the insurgents, because, as noted above, most of them are rival Sunni “Mosque-ovites.”

Their infuriatingly slow realization of the error of their ways is likely to elicit hardly more than ironic displeasure from the many families, coalition and Iraqi alike, who have lost loved ones during their misguided rampage.

But at least their willingness to talk and to consider mending their detonative ways is a glimmer of hope for the families whose sons and daughters are still in Iraq, attempting to do the right thing by the Iraqi people, Sunni and Shiite alike.

May the day soon come when enough of the knuckleheads realize the error of their war so we and the other nations that are in the hot sands we’ve gotten ourselves into can finally get our much underappreciated troops the heck out of there.

Tom Attea, creator of NewsLaugh.com, has had six shows produced Off-Broadway and has written comedy for TV. Critics have called his writing ""delightfully funny" and "witty" with "good, genuine laughs."

Koyaanisqatsi a nonverbal film by Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke
Koyaanisqatsi is a nonverbal film, directed by Godfrey Reggio, and completed in 1982. Koyaanisqatsi contains no actors, no dialogue and has no script. Images from around the world are set to a moving score from composer Philip Glass.

In the movie Koyaanisqatsi director Godfrey Reggio tries to show the imbalance between man and nature. Shots showing the destruction of mankind are coupled and set against images of nature’s beauty and force. The images are very moving and provoke many thoughts in viewers. The musical score of Philip Glass is unconventional, as his scores often are, and yet it is a good balance to the images.

The images are shot by Ron Fricke who later went on to make the movie Baraka. Baraka has a similar theme to Koyaanisqatsi, but a slightly more spiritual theme. It was shot using 70mm, which gives a warmer and cleaner feel than Koyaanisqatsi. Koyaanisqatsi was shot between 1975 and 1982. Some of its scenes are stock footage, such as explosions and space rocket launches.
Koyaanisqatsi has its own page at www.spiritofbaraka.com/koyaanis.aspx with all of the details of the film and images of most of the scenes.

In 2003 Koyaanisqatsi was re-released after ownership disputes where settled. The re-mastered DVD image greatly improved the quality but bizarrely lost its original aspect ratio.

Koyaanisqatsi has gone on to be an underground cult movie, and often studied by film students looking to explore a deeper side of the film world.

A small genre of films has been spawned by Koyaanisqatsi. Baraka, as mentioned above has become the most popular. Other movies in the genre include Chronos: also by Ron Fricke, Powaqqatsi: the sequel to Koyaanisqatsi, Microcosmos: about insects, Naqoyqatsi: the less popular final part of the Qatsi trilogy: Winged Migration: about birds, Samsara: the Sequel to Baraka, Dogora: about the young people of Cambodia.

All of these movies where originally created to by viewed in theatres, where one gets the maximum effect. Larger and clearer televisions, as well as home cinema systems have allowed all of these movies to be enjoyed at home.

Darren is a big fan of nonverbal films and runs the Spirit of Baraka website.

Guitar Lessons – Hammer-On, Pull-Offs
One of the primary legato techniques all guitarists must learn is the hammer-on, pull-off. This technique is important because it allows for nuances in tone and expression, and it allows the picking hand a “break” since it does not have to pick the notes on the hammer-on or the pull-off. This results in a faster progression of notes, sometimes called licks.

The hammer-on is accomplished when you pick a note and then using another finger hammer down on the same string. The sound of the hammered note is less pronounced than the picked note. For example place your first finger on the 5th fret of the 3rd string, and the hammer down your third finger on the 7th fret of the 3rd string. Don’t use your just quickly strike the second fret position with the tip of your 3rd finger. This would be described in guitar tab as 5h7 or 5 hammer 7. Keep your first finger on the 5th fret because you are going to pull-off of the 7th fret in the next example.

The pull-off results when you release a plucked note with enough force such that the second fretted note rings. This may require a slight side way motion to create enough friction to cause the string to ring out. The sound of the pulled-off note is less pronounced since you aren't using your pick to create it. This would be illustrated in guitar tab 7p5 or 7 pull 5.

If you combine these techniques you can create very fast note runs or licks. Imagine how this sequence of hammer-on, pull-off’s would sound when played very quickly 5h7p5h7p5. In deed the hammer-on, pull-off technique is the cornerstone for legato and most speed playing techniques.

It takes time to perfect the technique but it is worth the effort.

Bill McRea is the publisher of www.guitarwarehouse.com and www.kansasfans.com. Bill has owned and operate a highly successfull guitar business until he sold the business in 2004.