26 Reasons Why People Buy

The late and great U.S. advertising legend, Ed Mayer compiled 26 reasons why people are motivated to buy:

1. To make money 2. To save money 3. To save time 4. To avoid effort 5. To get more comfort 6. To achieve greater cleanliness 7. To attain better and fuller health 8. To escape physical pain 9. To gain praise

10.To be popular 11.To attract the opposite sex 12.To conserve possessions 13.To increase enjoyment 14.To gratify curiosity 15.To protect family 16.To be in style 17.To have or hold beautiful possessions 18.To satisfy appetite

19.To emulate others 20.To avoid trouble 21.To avoid criticism 22.To be individual 23.To protect reputation 24.To take advantage of opportunities 25.To have safety in buying something 26.To make work easier

Now, as you scan down the list, you have no doubt thought to yourself, “Yes, that’s why people buy from us … and that too … and yes, that too …”.

That’s great. But now ask yourself, how compellingly do your communication pieces, your ‘collateral’ build and develop on those motivators? How often does your literature fall back into ‘we have a big factory’ mode?

If you’re going to MOVE people to action, you need to really get inside their heads, understand what their ‘buying drivers’ are, what their fears and uncertainties are, and their doubts … and address those compellingly.

When you do that, when you craft your message with this sort of compelling copy, and your competitors don’t … that’s when you start to get ahead of the market. That’s when people buy from you because you’ve educated them that you’ve got what they WANT. This is when there’s a focus on what you have, and not on price.

Do you think now might be a great time to do a ‘communications audit’ across all of your marketing collateral and see how well you stack up?

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