How to increase your sales using influencer marketing
The goal of any business is to sell and make a profit. But consumers are no longer attracted to classic sales techniques, and businesses must resort to various creative methods to convince consumers to buy or buy more.
WHAT IS INFLUENCER MARKETING?
In a simple sentence, influencer marketing is marketing that brings you more sales. It uses persuasion techniques and principles to stimulate the buying behavior of potential customers.
IS IT SUITABLE FOR EVERY FIELD?
The answer is yes, influencer marketing can be applied to every field of activity. From a simple online store to large airlines, influencer marketing contributes to increasing sales. However, great attention must be paid to the principles used.
IF IT'S EXPENSIVE IT'S GOOD!
Price is one of the factors that influences people's perception of our products. A prime example of this is given by an Indian jewelry store in Arizona. This store had, during the height of the tourist season, a batch of turquoise jewelry for which the price was correctly reported and although the store was stormed by tourists, the jewelry was not selling.
The first strategy the store manager tried to implement to sell the jewelry was to change the location of the jewelry in a central area of the store so that it stood out. A good strategy, considering that you can change people's behavior by changing the interface, but we will discuss that a little later, in another article. In their case, this strategy was not successful. Then they tried to promote it through salespeople, but the jewelry still did not sell.
Since the jewelry had to be sold and the manager had to leave town, he left a message for one of the salespeople to cut the price of the products in half. The manager was not surprised when he returned and saw that all the jewelry had been sold. But due to a misunderstanding, the salesperson doubled the price of the jewelry instead of halving it, and all the jewelry sold for twice as much.
Why did this happen? It's quite simple actually. Buyers, not having much knowledge about turquoise, applied a simple principle, the “expensive=good” stereotypeThus, tourists who wanted "good" jewelry considered turquoise jewelry to be more valuable, even though nothing had changed except its price. In this case, price became the most important characteristic in assessing the quality of the product.
This "expensive = good" principle has been demonstrated in many cases because normally the price of a product increases in relation to its value, and people acted mechanically, confirming the "expensive = good" principle so many times that they did not analyze other details.
THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTRAST
The principle of contrast highlights an expensive item that you want to buy, then accessorizes it with other equally expensive products that are presented to you in an order so that your decision is easy.
A prime example of this is a men's suit store. When someone enters the store, the salesperson greets them by offering them a suit for sale. The contrast principle involves offering the most expensive items for sale. After the man agrees to buy a suit for 700 euros, a sweater for 115 euros no longer seems excessively expensive, as does a tie for 70 euros, a pair of shoes for 200 euros, and a leather belt for 85 euros. On the other hand, if he were first offered a tie, he might certainly resist the idea of paying 70 euros for it, but after he has already purchased a suit for 700 euros, the price of the tie no longer seems so high.
The same principle is used by car dealers. Think about the fact that when you buy a car, the dealer offers you the car with certain options and equipment for X price, and then offers you extra options such as head-up display, keyless parking or 3D car visualization on the on-board computer. Considering that all these options are often less than 10% of the car's value, they don't seem as expensive to you.
The principle of contrast was used in the opposite direction by a real estate agency that sent an agent with clients, and they first showed the clients 3-4 houses that were in a deplorable condition, then went with them to the houses that they actually wanted to sell, and this allowed them, through the principle of contrast, to increase the price of the house.
OFFER TO GET SOMETHING IN EXCHANGE!
Amway is a direct sales company from the US that was founded in 1959 and deals with the sale of jewelry, electronics, cosmetics, insurance, etc. and which in 2016 had a revenue of 8.8 billion dollars, and in 2015 it had a revenue of 9.5 billion dollars.
They use a special bag in the sales process that contains samples of Amway products from bottles of furniture polish to shampoo or jewelry. Salespeople are sent to people's homes with these bags that they will leave with them for 24, 48 or 72 hours at no cost and urge people to test the products. It is an offer that no one can refuse. At the end of the trial period, the salesperson returns and takes the order for those products that the customer wants to buy. Since in such a short time the customer cannot use the entire contents of the product, the salesperson takes the samples and goes to the next customer.
This method of selling involves providing potential customers with products that they can try for free. Basically, they get an agreement that the customer will usually buy the products they have tried... And of course, Amway is one of the companies that knows that this will be the case.
THE PRINCIPLE OF CONSEQUENCE
Have you ever wondered what toy manufacturers do after the holidays? We all know that there is a huge influx of toys sold during the holidays, but what happens after that?
Some toy manufacturers have realized that after the holidays are over, sales decline at an accelerated pace, not because children no longer want new toys, but because parents are much harder to convince and would not pay for other toys. So, in order to succeed in having sales during the holidays, toy manufacturers have decided to change their marketing strategy and use the principle of consistency.
Every year before the holidays, they would choose a few toys to promote intensively in order to arouse interest in them. Those of you who have children are convinced that you know how important a word is for a child and you would not break a promise if you made one. This is exactly what the toy manufacturers were counting on, but instead of parents buying those toys they promised their children for Christmas, they bought them others because the toys they were supposed to buy were no longer in "stock" or at least that's what the sellers said.
In fact, the manufacturers' strategy was exactly that, to make parents make a commitment to their children that they would buy that toy, and because they would only be put on sale after the holidays, the manufacturers would record consistent sales even after the holidays.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL IMPACT
Let's not forget, however, how we humans have the ability to influence each other's decisions. We buy because it's trendy, because our friends have it, because we've heard that the product is very good or simply, we buy for the status it offers us. That's why, currently, the emphasis is on promotion campaigns through influencers in the field. Here we are no longer talking about a principle but about a means of influence in itself through which if you have chosen the right people, the results cannot fail to appear.
These are just a few of the principles of persuasion and in conclusion we can say that although there are many, they must be chosen very well so that they bring long-term results. The emphasis must be placed on the experience offered to people throughout the buying process and even afterwards to convince them to come back.
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