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(part 4 of 5)
If you’re looking for a way to make a lot of money without the pressure of making sales calls, direct response marketing is the most low-pressure form of selling there is. No sale will actually happen without pressure. Direct response is so low-pressure in fact, you have to elicit the sales pressure within your prospect, which is the selling skill that trumps all others and all master marketers have it.
Apple computer actually uses direct response marketing methods like perceived scarcity and elitism, which is an emotional hot-button in some people. Apple claims they cannot meet demand for their latest products, Ipads or whatever, which causes people to be desperate to be the first person they know to get one. It’s a bit of reverse psychology really and also very well integrated with the intentional elitism embedded in all of Apple’s branding and advertising.
When you buy the pressure you feel is your own desire to get an advantage for yourself or meet some basic need. Without pressure coming from either outside of you (your spouse pressuring you, for example), or inside of you (need to keep up with the Joneses, perhaps), you aren’t going to buy anything. People who don’t feel pressure in some way aren’t inclined to take any action at all.
The brilliance of what Jobs and Apple did is create a rich psychological template customers could be part of. Apple customers tend to identify with the brand – they may even think themselves superior to PC users because they chose Mac. I’m saying Mac isn’t a good product, just that the marketing is brilliant because the company put an actual identity into the product that buyers could slip into like a pair of jeans. They turned a functional tool (which is all a PC is) into a “gotta have it” fashion accessory for a large number of people. These people willingly pay much more than they need to for the computing power they get in order to participate in the shared reality of Apple’s brand.
It’s all a bit surreal, don’t you think?
The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses For 20%-30% sales growth in the next 12-18 months. He writes regularly about marketing and life at his Entrepreneur Blog.
