If there’s one thing that’s impossible, it’s trying to achieve the impossible. Ok, so I’m babbling, but consumption enters the realm of the babble-zone. Consumption is when you’re trying to get the customer to ‘consume’ what they’ve purchased. While in theory, that ‘consumption’ is none of your business, in reality it is.

Firstly, customers don’t always consume. How do we know that? You download files that you never read. You order meals that you never eat. You throw away stuff all the time, because most marketers give a damn about consumption. They don’t care at all if you’re going to use the product, because their job stops at conversion.

But does it?

The third audio/notes on Consumption show you otherwise. Getting customers to keep coming back, is not a matter of pestering them to return. It’s a matter of consumption. If you get them to consume, they’ll see the value, and they will return. Doesn’t mean you don’t or won’t nudge them. But hey, you don’t need to ‘persuade’ these customers any more.

Consumption does all the hard work for you! And yes, completes the unending cycle of attversumption.

But before we head back to babble-zone again, here’s the audio/text. Enjoy.
http://www.psychotactics.com/websitemasterclass02.htm

Can your business exist for ten years? Or twenty years? Or five hundred years? Maybe a few thousand? And if a business could last that long, and be very profitable, it means that business needs to run without you. Yes, without you. How can that be possible? That’s what we’ll explore, reveal and what you’ll find a solid plan when you get to the Website Masterclass. Check it out. You’ll be amazed at what you find.

Is conversion as hard as it’s made out to be? Sure it can be. But only when you goof up big time. There’s a time to convert, and there’s a time to lay off converting. And how the heck are you going to know when’s a good time? Well, you can start guessing, or you can start reading and listening to this audio/transcript on Conversion.

http://www.psychotactics.com/websitemasterclass01.htm

And yes, those 6 seats aren’t going to stay cold for long. What you’re going to learn in California, isn’t just some hyped up stuff. You’ll learn how to build a business without affiliates, without joint ventures, without advertising, without stomping on your competition, and without a huge list. Sounds incredible? Welllll it is (the workshop, I mean). Check it out. I think you’ll like what you see.

If you’re looking to create attraction, there are ways. And there are ways. But seeing the entire picture takes some doing. That is, you need to see Attraction, Conversion and Consumption in one picture. But let’s face it. It’s a lot to take in the whole concept of Attversumption at one go.

So here’s Part 1: Attraction.
http://www.psychotactics.com/websitemasterclass00.htm

And hey, there are just 6 seats left for the Masterclass in Campbell, CA.
If you don’t have a huge mailing list, you’re stuck–unless you find a way out–and how to work a small list. You’ll find that information about the Masterclass on the Workshop Page

Here’s why ‘WHY’ is such a powerful attraction factor“Stop taking two and three plates of food,” my mother said to me angrily.

I was at a wedding and seven years old. Back then, at a lot of the weddings we used to go to, the food would be pre-served on a plate. I could never get enough of those calorie-ridden platters. Waylaying different waiters, (so I would not be recognised), I’d polish 3-4 plates without blinking an eye.

Mum wasn’t impressed, and told me to stop and desist.

“Why?” I’d ask. Her stock reply was always, “It’s bad manners to do that.” This Dustbin Hoffman (yes, I do mean Dustbin and not Dustin) act obviously got her goat, but it left me unfazed. It must have bugged her more than I expected though, because in a short while Dad was peering down at my food-stuffed face.

My question remained unchanged. “WHY?”

“If you invite a hundred people to a wedding, how many would you cater for?” he asked. “A hundred,” I answered, proud of my analytical genius. “If you ate four plates,” he continued, “how many would remain?” He prompted quickly, “Ninety-six right?” I nodded vigorously. “That means some people don’t eat. If you’re so hungry, we can go out after the wedding and get something to eat, but don’t deprive others.”

Dad Made Sense. Do You?

Dad understood psychology. He had to sell my brain an idea that my rumbling stomach didn’t want to understand. And he did it by answering the question, ‘WHY?’ How many of us ignore this powerful trigger in our marketing because it seems too obvious, almost too simple?

 Why ‘Why?’ Puts Elvis’ Shaking and Moving to Shame

Let’s examine the six honest men. What, How, When, Where, Who and Why. Which one of these is the most powerful psychological movers of them all? This would be better answered with an example.

Let’s assume you needed to go to the supermarket. All the other triggers (how, when, where, who and what) would make absolutely no difference if you didn’t know ‘WHY’ you were headed there. Everything else would be totally irrelevant. Once you know WHY you’re doing something, everything else is just a matter of logistics.

Why Does 90% of Advertising and Marketing Communication Go Down the Drain?

Simple. Look for the WHY in advertising and scarcity pops up instantly. All the fancy layouts and the smart headlines can’t quite compensate for the niggling question that goes unanswered. All your customers want to know is, Why should I choose you? Why should I take this decision? Why should I spend this money? Why should I look at your website? Why should I read your brochure?’ Why should I listen to your speech? ‘Why? Why? Why?’

Dump the cotton woolly fluff. Get your customer’s brain to go scrambling like an over-enthusiastic pup after a Frisbee. Once you have enough WHY factor built into what you’re selling, everything else is just clip, clop, fall in place stuff.

Be an Accountant, Do an Audit

Look at your communication. Like reeeeeeeaaaaally look at it! What about your website? Does it answer the question WHY straight up? And does it do it on the first page? How about your brochure? Does its headline make it a cinch for dustbin land? What about your speech? Do you have enough beds to compensate for your lack of WHY?

I could go on, but I suspect you get the message.

Be merciless. If the WHYs don’t stack up, dump the communication. Or chop and change it till it does.

Finding the Right Level of Why Power

If you noticed, Mum actually answered my WHY question. She just didn’t answer it to my satisfaction like Dad did. Herein lies a subtle, yet formidable difference.

It’s not enough to simply have the WHY question answered. It’s got to be the most ‘Rambo in your face’ answer, or it will bounce higher than a defaulting cheque. Let your WHYs loose on each other, and let only the one with the most testosterone come out shining.

We are dealing with customers that inherently detest change. WHY is the only motivator that allows them to make that shift. Change is still a scary word, but at least the justification sits nicely in their cranium.

In fact, if you look closely, even a WHAT question like, What’s in it for me?, is really a “WHY” issue. All it is saying is ‘Why should I pay attention?’ Give your customers the WHY factor and their buying sprees will reflect nicely in your growing bank account.

This is simple, down to earth advice. Yet it represents one of the most powerful psychological triggers why people buy. WHY on earth would you ignore it?

Have you run into instances of why? Or lack of why? Does why cause you to buy?

—————————————————————-

If you haven’t done so already: (That’s a clue!)

You’re at Emile’s
This isn’t just a restaurant.It’s Emile’s on 545 South, 2nd Street.

You’ve been dying to get to this restaurant forever. You’ve read all the glowing reviews. The food they say, is ‘exquiseet.’ The wine is straight out of Wine-Spectator’s award winning wine list.

You’re smacking your lips. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for.

And then it happens…

The waiter, in his black vested suit, brings you your housemade roasted “Saucisson” on a bed of red lentils with bacon. And it’s served with caramelised onions and demiglaze.

The aroma Wafts through the air and snaps your brain to attention. You smile a goofy smile in anticipation of what can only be a scrumptious meal.

Except you don’t eat the food

No you don’t.

You just sit and stare at it.

You appreciate the onions. You poke at the bacon. You admire the saucisson.

But you don’t eat any of it.

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? I mean why on earth would you order such a delicious meal and not eat it? Even as you read this piece you’re salivating about the meal, so why would you skip eating it when it’s sitting right there in front of you? You ordered it, didn’t you? It smells delicious doesn’t it? So why the heck would someone not eat it?

The answer is not as ludicrous as it seems. You’re sure to lose your appetite when you realise how you lose truckloads of dollars simply because you don’t get the customer to consume what they’ve ordered. Read the article below and find exactly what you’ve been missing…and then fix it. Let’s skip the apéritif and go straight to the main course, shall we?

The waiter is confused

The maitre d’ is flabbergasted.
The chef has made a rare guest appearance to the table.

The hum in the restaurant has been replaced by a deathly silence.

Why won’t the customer eat?

To answer the question let’s vrrrrooooooom out of the restaurant and head down the road to the tall building which houses a software company.

This software company creates an interface where business people like you and moi can have a shopping cart, autoresponders and more whiz bang stuff that helps us run our e-ecommerce side of things without too much of a bother. You pay a subscription each month and voila…you have a smorgasbord of mouth-watering applications to run your business smoothly.

The problem that this software company has, isn’t one of getting customers. Oh no, they keep getting a stream of customers. Yet for some crazy reason, the customers seem to buy the software and almost never use it.

Dang! The customers won’t ‘eat’ what’s in their plate!

And if the customer won’t eat…

They won’t experience the power to automate their business. They will be swamped in doing the mundane, repetitive jobs that swallows up the day, the week and the year. And because they haven’t had the time to experience the wonders of the software, they simply won’t renew their subscription to the shopping cart software.

Ah don’t need no darned software…

That’s the conclusion about 45% of the customers arrive at each time their subscription comes up for renewal.

As a result, the software company has the tedious job of always finding more customers on an ongoing basis.

And the software company isn’t alone…

If you sell ebooks or real books. Workshops or consulting. Products or Services the problem always lies beyond just
getting the customer to buy.

It lies beyond the ‘yippee-yahooey-I’ve-made-a-sale.’

It lies in consumption.

You’ve got to make that customer eat your housemade roasted “Saucisson” on a bed of red lentils with bacon served with caramelised onions and demiglaze.

You can’t afford to have them nibble.
You can’t afford to have them appreciate the look of the meal. You sure as hell can’t afford to have them sit there and do nothing.

Your job is to make the customer eat!

If you’re the hotshot CEO of the software company, make sure you train your customers. Create a series of seminars both online and offline that help them learn.

Demonstrate how others are using their software. Better still show these customers a bunch of case-studies. People just like them who started up with nothing and have used the software to make their Caribbean cruises and Martinis a reality. Teach the customers some marketing skills if you have to. Have a monthly/yearly award ceremony with nice, fancy prizes for those customers who create most income with the software.

And it’s no different if you’re selling information or consulting

It doesn’t matter if you’re hawking ebooks on the Internet, or workshops up and down the country. It matters little if you’re doing some fancy-schmancy consulting gig or if you’re selling sunglasses.

The key is to go beyond the sale. To get your customer to consume time and time and time again.

Ask Emile, if you don’t believe me…

Emile knows that everyone that gets to his restaurant in downtown San Jose must eat their meal. They must drink the finest wine. They must roll their hands over their tummies and smack their lips in satisfaction.

The customer must waddle out of the restaurant if possible.

Emile knows how crucial consumption is to the future of his thirty year old restaurant.

It’s more than Grand Marnier Soufflé baybeh…

A customer that has ‘waddled’ out of Emile’s will be ten times more eager to come back again, once they’ve had a great experience.

But there’s more.

Customers don’t just consume. They also like to talk, even brag about what they’ve consumed.

They want to let their friends, family and business associates know about the fabulous experience.

Now you’ve got referrals flowing like Champagne!

Consumption breeds evangelists. Yeah, it does. When you watch a movie that’s great, you tell everyone! When you listen to a CD that blows your mind, you blow every one else’s mind too! And when you use the software, read a fabulous book or actually
implement what you learned at a workshop or in consulting, you just can’t help but tell the world.

Emile knows that not only will you spread the word, but you’ll be back for more. Sacré bleu, that’s even more money in the bank for Emile!

Stop and look at your customer’s plate

Is it full?
Is it empty?
Is it half eaten?

Get your customer to eat well, mah friend.
You’ll know when they’ve had their fill.

You’ll hear the sound of satisfaction.
It’ll be soft, yet distinct. Listen for it.

Burp!

Let’s assume you desperately want to knock off some weight. And you’re serious enough to get onto a structured eating system.

Let’s also assume, you were presented with two diets

Diet 1 consists of:
Chocolate.
Cake. Maybe even chocolate cake.
Pasta with Cheese. Some butter chicken.
Vegetables.
Fruit.

Diet 2 consists of:
Vegetables.
More vegetables.
Fruit.
More fruit.
The occasional cake or chocolate

Don’t tell me which one you’ve chosen

I already know.

But hang on a second. You said you needed to lose weight, right? So you know darned well, that Diet No.2 is the one to choose.

So why on earth are you eyeing Diet No.1?

Because you know what you need. But it’s not what you want. You want to eat. You want to drink. You want to enjoy yourself, not watch in envy as others around have a rollicking time, while you’re on another silly boiled veggie diet.

And that’s where Weight Watchers comes in

To quote their website: Eat all the foods you love on the Flex Plan… -Enjoy the full range of food options, while making better choices with the POINTS system. -Choose any food, as long as you control how much you eat. -Easily handle any food challenge, even when choices are limited.

Notice what they just sold you?

Not what you need. But what you want. The people that go to Weight Watchers aren’t veggie eaters.

Not by a long shot.

The customers at Weight Watchers lurrrve their food. They adore their wine. They want their ice-creams and their chocolate. And Weight Watchers gives them what they want–namely the ability to eat what they want–as long as they stick to the eating plan.

It’s the same reason why teenagers buy anti-pimple cream

It isn’t because of the rich, wonderful perfume. Teens give a damn about the perfume. What they want is to have flawless skin–so they can get a date.
So look at the anti-pimple cream ad on TV

What’s it talking about? It’s talking about the darned texture of the cream. It’s talking about the fragrance. It’s talking about the new packaging. Oh c’mon give me–and all those teenagers out there a break.

They don’t care about the whiz bang features of your cream.
They don’t care about your background or your company heritage. They don’t care about your la-dee-dah packaging.
They just want the date, get it? The date. Nothing but the date. And only the date. So sell them the date, will ya?

Businesses make this mistake every thirty five seconds

They try and sell software.
They try and sell marketing strategies.
They try and sell copywriting services.
They try and sell better websites.

But does the customer really want any of the above?

Like hell they do. If someone on the next block–or even the next planet, was able to promise your customer money, freedom and respect, your customers would all be exiting through la salida,
mucho rapidemente! Yes, without so much as sniffing your strategies, software, websites or whatever it is you’re selling.

I want you to listen carefully to what I have to say…

Because it will get you more customers–and hence more
profits than ever before.

Ask your customer what they want. Then give them what they want. Word for word.

Don’t get all misty-eyed with the product or the service you’re selling. It ain’t going to help you sell better. Or more. Or more often.

And here’s what you need to do.

Do some research

No, not some $85,000 research. Just speak to your customers. Ask them what they want most for their business.

Possibly even make a list of possible things your customers could want, and then get them to rate what’s most important on the list. Then collate the list. And put the things that your customers reeeeeeally want, at the top of the list.

Weight Watchers is teaching you a lesson…

But are you listening? Weight Watchers knows fully well what the customer needs. But they sell what the customer wants. Because eventually by tapping into the wants, Weight Watchers
is able to give the customers what they really need–namely weight reduction and overall fitness. Not to speak of improved eating habits.

But Weight Watchers knows that the motivation can only come from eating the yummy stuff–and almost never from munching boring broccoli.

The secret is always in the want.

As in: I want my MTV. I want my IPod. And all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth! And all I really want is my Porsche!

The Porsche ad that sums up the Want Factor with one question.

Go to a pond where you can visibly see a lot of fish. Take a stone and throw it in the water. Notice what the fish do? Yes, they race towards the stone in anticipation of a feeding frenzy?

Of course you know what happens next

The fish figure out you’re just teasing, and with disappointed guppy faces, they swim away. Um… if you continue to throw stones, they’ll keep coming back, till they work out it’s useless to humour you any more.

But what if you throw a piece of bread?

Aha, now it’s bedlam in the pond isn’t it? The fish are not just attracted to the bread, but there’s not a shred of bread (hey, that rhymes!) left in the water.

You may not have figured it out instantly, but you went through three distinct steps of attraction, conversion and consumption.

And it’s vital to separate the three, if you want your marketing results to improve.

Why separate attraction, conversion, and consumption?

Separate? Why do the three factors need to be separated? You’ll find your answer by listening to just about any ad on the radio.

Notice what they’re trying to do? They’re trying to sell you product by screaming louder than the previous radio ad. So what do they achieve? Why nothing. Because your brain shuts down and waits for the ad to die a natural 30-second death.

But what if the radio ad concentrated solely on attraction?

What if they focused on a specific target audience?
What if they offered a free-something or a discount or bonus?
What if all you had to do was call or email or write in or visit?

The company that put the radio ad on the air, would then be able to clinically measure the response of the ad.

They’d be able to accurately measure if their ad was able to get their target audience’s attention in the first place. And once they maximised the attraction factor, they could move on…

Down the road to conversion

Instead of being unable to measure general traffic from specific ad-driven traffic, they’d now have an exact figure of prospects who’ve opted in.

Now they can speak to these prospects on a completely
different level. These prospects are asking to be converted.
They are keen on being sold, if the offer is right. Now all the company’s got to do is create a compelling offer that will get the prospects to say ‘Yes, yes and yes!’

To speed up conversion, here are some tips:

1) Tell the full story (http://www.psychotactics.com/artfullstory.htm)
2) Create Urgency (http://www.psychotactics.com/arturg.htm)
3) Reduce Choice Chaos (http://www.psychtotactics.com/artconfusion.htm)

And phew, it’s consumption time…Finally!

As we’ve clearly demonstrated by filling ponds with stones, anyone can do the attraction bit without too much trouble. With a little understanding of what causes customers to buy, you may also get the customer to zip-zap that credit card and purchase your product/service.

But that doesn’t mean you can make them consume what they’ve just bought.
(Read: http://www.psychotactics.com/artconsumption.htm)

No siree…that ain’t gonna happen. They aren’t going to ‘consume’ what they’ve bought, and therefore create a big dent in your future profit.

How would a lack of consumption cause a dent?

Because the real profit-margin isn’t in the first sale. Or rather, the real profit-margin is extremely tiny in the first sale. It’s when the customer comes back time and time again to buy, that you are really getting the kind of profits you’re looking for.

Er, did I say profits? I meant pretty substantial profits!

The customer who comes back, is now more likely to buy in larger amounts than ever before. A Psychotactics customer usually goes in the sequence of:

1) The Brain Audit
2) The Membership at 5000bc
3) The Brain Audit Applications
4) Courses such as Product Creation/Copywriting, etc.
5) The Protege Program

Each of the levels are more comprehensive, and costs more than the first level. But until and unless the customer actually ‘consumes’ the Brain Audit, he/she doesn’t come back for more. Yes, they’re attracted to the Psychotactics site and subscribed and read the articles (See? Three distinct steps!)

Yes, they are attracted to the Brain Audit and convert
by buying the product. But it’s only when they consume the
product that they move up the chain to buy more comprehensive and higher priced products.

What works for products works for services

It’s not a whole lot different, despite what you think. The concept of attraction, conversion and consumption apply to both services and products.

Which kind of brings us back to the fish pond

The trio of attraction, conversion and consumption are equally important. But attraction is marginally easier.

Work really hard on conversion. Because if you don’t get to conversion, you don’t move to third base… namely consumption.

And if you can attract, but can’t create a feeding frenzy with conversion, it’s just a stone in the pond.

A stone that gets no results.