Episode 4: Coaching Session with Fiona Killackey: What Drives Customers to Purchase A Product or Services?
Looking for the downloadable PDF to work through these ideas for your own small business? You can get that below (don’t worry, it’s free even though you need to checkout to receive an instant digital download).
Fiona holds her first solo coaching session in today’s episode. Learn more about the two kinds of drivers that lead customers to purchase a certain product or service - the emotional and rational drivers. She will also discuss why you need to aim for brand loyalty and how you can apply the laddering concept in your marketing and business strategy.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction [0:45]
What was the last thing you bought? [1:37]
The Emotional and The Rational Drivers [2:30]
Capturing Someone's Attention [4:43]
What is An Emotional Driver? [6:31]
What is A Rational Driver? [9:46]
Why You Need To Aim for Brand Loyalty [12:37]
What is The Laddering Concept [13:39]
Conclusion [16:09]
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Hey there. Welcome to Episode 4. I'm so glad that you can join me here today. So thanks for making that decision. And also, thank you so much for all of the lovely comments and feedback on this little podcast so far.
I'm really enjoying it. I hope that you are, too. I hope you're getting something out of every episode. I would love to know what you think of it. So if you are someone who hasn't contacted me but you have been listening to this, I would love it if you could hit me up on Instagram. I’m at @mydailybusinesscoach or please leave a review on iTunes and of course, hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes.
So today we are diving into a solo coaching session with me, Fiona Killackey. Now I do a lot of coaching. It's the bulk of my business. And today, I guess you'll get a little taste of what that is like.
So what I want you to do before we kick off this session is to think back to the last thing that you bought. Now it can be a product or service, but really think about what you bought and why. So maybe you did a crazy Covid purchase. I'm guilty of that. Or maybe you saved up for something that you really wanted to ages or maybe had to buy a gift for a friend. Or better yet, for yourself. But just take a minute and think about what you recently bought.
So have you got this in your mind? And it's really strong. Now, think about why you bought that particular product or service. Not necessarily why as in someone's birthday so I need to buy something. But why that particular brand or product or service?
Where am I going with this? Well, that will become apparent when we kick off this episode. So let's get into it.
All right. So how did you find that little exercise? I mean, it's hardly a hard thing to do, but I'm sure most of us can think of something we bought recently that we put some thought into or some thought behind. The reason that I ask you to think about that is that today's session is all about drivers and namely the emotional and the rational drivers that lead us to purchase something. Now, you know, I've worked in marketing for many, many, many years, and the mediums for marketing is in the channels have changed quite a bit over the last two decades.
When I first started my career, I was taking ads for a newspaper over the phone and I was trying to sell people. So I worked in a call center. I also went to uni at the time and I worked in a call center around my university schedule and I would get a base wage plus commission on things like selling in images into an ad or selling headings or like a font or, you know, selling lines of space. I clearly remember this sheet that we would have in front of our desk that had line of space and we'd call it LOS and you could put that down and put it. I think it was like a dollar or something extra that you got whenever you sold a line of space.
So it wasn't my best interest commercially, you know, to upsell people when they called in to put in an ad whether, as you know, the house was the sale or the car was for sale or they had it, you know, an event coming up and they wanted people to buy tickets. But it was also in the best interest of many of the advertisers to try and make their brand stand out within newspaper classifieds.
So by standing out, by making the advertisement more attractive, they were more likely to capture the reader's attention. And then, I guess depending on what they were selling or promoting, perhaps more likely to convert those people that were reading.
So flash forward, you know, two decades and the channels may have changed. We’re selling and connecting with audiences now on every possible medium, every channel. You know, we're on social media, we've got email, we've got podcasts, we've got vlogging and TV and radio and direct mail and webinars. And you've got in-store events and you've got swing tags. You know, that link to an app like the list is just endless. We are selling constantly and selling everywhere.
But what hasn't changed, though, in that whole 20 years is trying to capture attention. So it's thought that, you know, we see, the average person sees around ten thousand marketing messages every single day. So you think about maybe like, well, you know, I don't really leave my house, but look around the house, you know, your toothpaste brand, the stuff that you use in your kitchen appliances, all of these things, we're constantly being bombarded with marketing messages. And of that 10,000, it's thought that only 100 will break through what's known as the attention wall.
So this wall, I guess, breaks down when we feel we have a connection with a brand or product or service. You know, like I'm sure, you know, you've seen something in the shops before or and you go home and you discuss it with your partner or you see something on Instagram and you send it via a DM to a friend and you kind of like, what do you think about this? So I do this all the time with my really good friend Vy. We're constantly forwarding books that we've seen on Instagram, like, have you read this? Should I get this? And kind of what do you think? You know, always texting our best friends from dressing rooms when we're getting changed and so on.
So in these instances, that product or service or brand, entire brand has broken through the barriers and captured our attention and created a connection. So much so that we're sharing it with others. But feeling a connection to a brand or a particular prompter service. It's not by chance. We feel a connection because two key factors are in place.
Emotional driver, rational driver. When these two parts of the equation come together, the result can be a purchase or a stronger desire to purchase. So what does this all mean? Like what is an emotional driver and what is a rational driver?
So let's start firstly with emotion. Now, when I say that word of instantly got images of Mariah Carey seeing her lungs out, “You got me feeling emotions.” Now, obviously, I'm not a singer at all. That aside, ultimately, you do want your audience to be singing this. You want them to be singing, you know, inside their head that they have got an emotional pull to your brand and your products or your services. You want them to be feeling an emotion and a connection.
Now, research from two people, Caroline Winnett - I think that's how you pronounce it - and Andrew Pohlmann, who formerly worked at the Nielsen Company, they suggested that 90 per cent of our purchase decisions are made subconsciously, that we are not buying things to rational thought or factors, but rather we pulled into the path to purchase because of a huge emotional tie.
So what does this actually look like? Well, think back to the question I asked at the start of this episode. Think about that product. Think about that gift you might have bought and asked you to think about why you had bought that. Was there an emotional drive up behind your purchase? So you might be thinking, well, it wasn't like seriously sad or seriously happy about it. Those are, you know, human emotions. But we weren't talking about it in terms of brand and marketing. An emotional driver could really be anything from status. You know, this is gonna make me look good. When you think of certain car brands. People will buy into them. They work pretty much the same as another car. And they’re are a whole lot more expensive. And it might be they really want the status. They think that if they drive a certain brand of car, it shows that they are successful.
Likewise, ambition. You might sign up to a course or do something else because you have that ambition and you feel that if I sign up to this course, I'm kind of aligning with that ambition and that goal driven mentality they have inside of me.
Another one is individuality. You know, there is a particular brand of clothing, like a chain store in Australia where I'm from. And I used to love I used to love their stuff. And then it got to the point where I would joke with friends that you couldn't turn up to a conference or speaking gig without at least two of the women in dresses from this brand. So I just stopped buying stuff from there altogether. Occasionally I still buy some earrings. I think it's a good brand, but it's become so mass market that it's not individual at all. And so individuality might be an emotional driver for when I buy things. I'm trying to look for things that are a little bit different or, you know, even if they're from a mainstream brand.
Emulation is another thing. So maybe we've seen I don't know if you on or someone else that we think is amazing in a brand. And so we're buying into it based on that. That's an emotional driver. Pride, prestige. It could be that you think that that brand's values really align with yours that you really like or you're drawn to the founder of that brand or that you saw them in the news and and you love what they're doing as a company.
There are so many examples of emotional drivers, but as small business owners, we can often forget that when we're marketing, we're not even talking about that stuff.
We're focusing instead on only talking about the rational drivers. So that kind of leads me to answer. Well, what are rational drivers? So rational drivers are things that are you know, it's not rocket science, but they're rational. So they might be things like economy. So the price proximity, you know, it's convenient. There could be things like durability. You know, how long will this last? It could be things like versatility. Why else do we have so many black dresses? They're very versatile. You can dress them up, dress them down. Same with denim. It's a very versatile product. Suitability is another one and security. I mean, there's so many rational drivers as well.
But what I often see is these amazing brands and they're not getting the cut through. They're not getting the conversion that they want or they're not attracting the audience, numbers that they want necessarily. It's because they're only leading with the rational. So for some businesses that leading with rational drivers or being predominantly a rational driver company might work and it might suit them.
So years and years ago I worked at Amazon. You know, Amazon is a very rational driver, focused business. It's about a huge volume of product. It's about cheap prices and quickest delivery. Those are all rational things.
However, on that note, you could also say that convenience, which is a huge value for Amazon, having things be convenient for people, leads you to be able to have more leisure time. So you're not stuck in shopping lines. You're buying it quickly online and you have security that it will be delivered when it says it's gonna be delivered and therefore you've got more time to go back to the other things in your life, which is an emotional driver.
So emotional and rational drivers work really closely together.
But you want to make sure that as a small business owner, you're not only focusing on rational drivers. And the reason for that is that when you only focus on rational drivers in your marketing and in your brand, you are opening yourself up for competitors to come in and take your place. If you're only talking about price, proximity, you know, durability, there are always going to be somebody who comes in underneath to undercut you really on you know, this is cheaper, but this is faster.
Whereas focusing on your emotional drivers. So the things that really, really connect you with your audience, your beliefs, your values, the way you run your business, that enables you to carve out your own spot in the marketplace. Because when we are emotionally connected or invested in something, even with the brand and, you know, maybe people listening to this being like, I've got no emotional connection to any brand, but I would really strongly doubt that, that there's at least a one brand in your life that you have an emotional connection with.
When you do have that emotional connection, we're more likely to stay loyal. And ultimately, the ultimate aim of marketing is brand loyalty. So the brilliant Seth Godin, who we should all follow, if you haven't already and read all of his great books, once said “People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.”
So think about your marketing for your business. How often are you talking about emotional drivers? How often do you push just the rational rather than the emotional and the rational? Do you favor one over the other? You know, what might you do to ensure that both types of drivers are included in all of your brand communication, whether that's your email, your website, the way you script your phone conversations, if you have a call center or a customer service staff. How understanding the rational and the emotional drivers that influence your audience allow you to understand a little bit more what your small business is the g- to for and then show up to own that space.
So if you wanted to develop your understanding of this a little further, then you might be interested in the laddering concept. Now, this is something that was, I think, originally created by two guys, Thomas J. Reynolds and Jonathan Gutman, in their article Laddering Theory, Method, Analysis and Interpretation, which was in the Journal of Advertising Research back in the 1980s and basically in a very brief synopsis of their work, is that customers move up a ladder of sorts from understanding what your product or service does, i.e. its features, I guess, through to understanding the emotional benefit of it.
So how does this align to my own values and beliefs?
So again, I'm going to ask you to just take a minute and visualize something in your mind. So if you imagine for a minute a ladder and at the bottom is the feature. So that's the first step on the ladder, literally. What does this product or service do? The next step in the ladder is the benefits. So how is this better than others in the marketplace? The next step in the ladder is the personal benefit. So how does this product or service make me feel? And what can I do better I guess now in my life, because I have this product or service or this brand? And then last step in the latter is the emotional benefits. So how does this product or service or brand tie into my ultimate values and beliefs? Now, not every single product is going to hit that top spot in the letter. Like, you know, some things like your toothpaste or other parts of your life are not going to always have a really clear emotional tie into your values and beliefs. But by leading with emotional drivers in our marketing in it, we can give our own small businesses and the plaques and the services that we sell the best chance of really connecting with our ideal audience.
So think about your audience and think about that ladder concept that I just ran through. Where are most of your audience sitting on that ladder now? If you think about your marketing, your branding, the way you communicate, where is your audience on that letter? And then how might you move them up that ladder? What changes could you make? Now that you know a little bit more about emotional and rational drivers and how you need both to create a stronger path to purchase, what kind of things could you put in place? What kind of stories might you tell? What kind of testimonials might you gather that will holistically help provide an emotional pull or an emotional driver to somebody looking at your brand?
So there you have it. That brings us to the end of this first coaching session. If you are keen to understand more about emotional and rational drivers and the other stuff that I've talked about today, I have created a little PDF for you, which you can access at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/four, because this is episode four and you can find that link in the shownotes as well.
You can also any time with this podcast, just go into my daily business coach dot com slash podcast and you'll be able to find your way to various things and pop tunes and PDFs that I've created for this podcast.
But yeah. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope this episode is giving you some food for thought. And I hope it sparked a little curiosity in you as to how you might incorporate more emotional drivers in your marketing.
If you have found this episode useful. And I really hope that you have. I would absolutely love it if you could leave a review. This helps me get found by the small business owners who I hope will find this useful as well.
So thank you so much for being here and hopefully I'll see you in the next episode. Don't forget to subscribe. Bye.
Thanks for listening to my daily business coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
