“People don’t buy for logical reasons, they buy for emotional ones”- Zig Ziglar

I wrote a LinkedIn post last week about “The Power of One”.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, here’s the basic idea:

You focus your marketing message around ONE central benefit that your customers value most.

Whether it’s the copy on your homepage or the headline on your sales letter.

But as the discussion blossomed in the comments, the conversation turned towards feelings.

The emphasis seemed to be that how you make someone feel is more important than the benefits you share.

And while I agree with that statement, I found myself thinking…

That's Easier Said Than Done

I mean, philosophically, it sounds romantic.

But as marketers and business owners, the question becomes:

“HOW?”

How do we make our customers feel a certain way so that they’ll love our products, and want to buy from us?

To get there, let’s first talk about the difference between:

Features, Benefits, Outcomes, Transformation, Desire, and Feelings

Let's use a high-performance blender to demonstrate the differences:

✅ Features: The blender has a powerful 1500-watt motor and a durable stainless steel blade.

⬇️

✅ Benefits: It blends your ingredients smoothly in seconds, saving you time and effort.

⬇️

✅ Outcomes: You'll enjoy perfectly smooth smoothies, soups, and sauces with minimal preparation time.

⬇️

✅ Transformation: Transform your kitchen into a gourmet cafe, empowering you to create healthy meals effortlessly.

⬇️

✅ Desire: Feel energized and refreshed every day so that you can do more of what you love.

⬇️

✅Feelings: Feel the pride and satisfaction of nourishing your body with tasty, wholesome foods you’ve prepared with ease.

​

Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems to me like there’s a whole lot of “feelings” sprinkled in there.

Once you get to the benefits, the line separating each category gets a little bit… fuzzy. 😅

That’s because technically they’re all benefits.

• Achieving an outcome
• Experiencing a transformation
• And satisfying a desire

…Are all benefits that make us feel a type of way.

Said differently, benefits are the tools you use to make your customers feel.

Benefits help your customers imagine themselves experiencing the solution to their problem.

Some, are more profound than others. Especially when they describe a transformation or outcome.

So, naturally, when a beginner marketer tries to make someone “feel” a certain type of way, they firehose 🚿 customers with benefits. (Sometimes dropping a few features into the mix.)

To give you some sort of hierarchical system for organizing benefits, here’s a useful chart from the Harvard Business Review:

Which brings us back to the original question:

How do we come up with the right words to make our customers feel like buying from us?

My advice is to take the pressure off of yourself, and instead:

Focus on Their Desire

As the legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz once said:

“Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears and desires that already exists in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already existing desires onto a particular product.

Your task: Is NOT to create this mass desire – but to channel and direct it.”

Picture a Stockbroker

Do they create supply and demand in the market?

No.

If they could, there would be a lot more winners than losers.

Instead, it’s created by the psychology, trends, politics, and economics of the current times.

Stockbrokers just ride the waves of supply and demand.

So think of your customer's desires (what they want to feel), in the same way.

🫱They already exist.

Your job = Research what your audience desires and then position your product as the bridge to achieving it.

Here’s an Example:

🚗 Audi.

They sell vehicles.

Vehicles have many benefits. But what matters most to Audi drivers?

• Fuel economy?
• Space?
• Reliability?
• Affordability?

Not likely. That might resonate more with a Toyota or Honda driver.

Knowing a few Audi drivers myself, I would think:

• Performance
• Speed
• Luxury
• Quality build
• Progressive design

But those are all lower-level benefits, if not, features. They don't elicit emotions and feelings.

So what’s the ultimate transformation those benefits deliver that Audi drivers value most?

It might be:

• Their status in life
• Their attractiveness
• Their sophistication
• Their peer group
• Their sense of achievement
• etc…

Your job is to decide on ONE.

Then, show how all the benefits and features reinforce that ONE desire.

So, for instance:

Claiming fuel economy as a benefit for Audi would work…

…as long as it sits under the umbrella of performance (or German engineering).

Which ultimately sits under the larger umbrella of status.

Fuel economy ➡️ Performance ➡️ Status

Remember, Audi didn’t create this desire.

All they do is tap into it, and show customers how their vehicles will make them feel when they buy.

They aren’t trying to convert people who don’t share this desire.

Here’s another example:

💄BOOM! Cosmetics.

Their makeup does what all the other makeup brands do…

The benefits of:

• Beautiful, healthy skin
• Attractiveness
• Youthfulness
• Self-confidence

All fall under the umbrella of Pro-Age, not Anti-Age.

But this desire wasn’t created by BOOM!. It already existed.

Especially when you consider the fact that we have:

• An aging population
• The rise of the longevity economy
• And advances in regenerative medicine

Boom! embraces aging, they don’t fight it.

Targeting that desire, they connect with how their customers already want to feel.

And that’s why they choose BOOM! over other products.

Book I’m Reading 📚

​Coach Builder -Donald Miller

I was thumbing through my Kindle last week and I noticed I had a new book in my library.

Having absolutely no recollection of buying it, but being the curious person I am, I started reading it.

WHY I LIKE IT:

I’m a big Donald Miller fan. But beyond just being a fanboy, this book surprised me.

While titled Coach Builder, it’s surprisingly helpful to anyone offering consulting, or freelance services.

The advice in there is solid if you’re building an expertise-based business.

MY BIGGEST TAKEAWAY:

Create a framework (or system) around your services. Name it. And then keep sharing how your system solves your customer's problems in your marketing.

Thanks So Much for Reading!

That's all for today.

Keep Learning,

Nico

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I’ll be traveling to Italy soon, specifically:

• Rome
• Tuscany
• Cinque Terre
• Bologna
• Venice

If you’ve got recommendations for any of those places, I’d love to hear them.

P.P.S.This newsletter was made by a human, so some typos are probably sprinkled throughout 😉. Just like the newsletter, all typos are free.