Steve Jobs built a world-class company called Apple on the shoulders of a simple slogan:

“No Products.”

Oh, he had products to sell (hello iPod / iPad etc.), but he didn’t want to SELL them.  So he appealed to prospective customers’ emotions about how they would feel using his amazing new solutions.

People buy emotionally and justify the decision logically (so they don’t feel foolish).

Push a product out front, and most aren’t ready to buy.  Fire up their emotions first, and they have a personal and urgent reason to go for it.

So we’re all really buying emotional experiences.

The same reverse psychology made Nike a monster company when the slogan “Just do it” went viral.  People who embraced it as their own mantra felt they were given permission to stop procrastinating and pull the buying trigger.

We are similarly drawn to Tiger Woods as the perfect Nike spokesman, with the natural outcome of copycat buying of a sports hero’s brand of shoes, clubs, etc….the compulsion to own anything Tiger.

We don’t actually need those expensive products logically, but we feel we deserve them and don’t want to be deprived.

Now, we may not be able to come up with slogans as popular as Nike’s, but we can always appeal emotionally to our prospects’ major pain or fear that they urgently need resolved.

Remember it’s not about us and our solution at first, but rather about getting our ideal prospects to resonate with our lead message so they will stop and check out that solution.

If you can’t get them to stop surfing, they’ll never even see what you’ve got to offer.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE SCIENCE OF BEING HUMAN

It turns out that humans have a built-in proclivity to make almost all decisions emotionally, and then use some comforting logic to justify the expense so they don’t feel foolish.

“I shouldn’t have bought it,” we moan, worried about the shrinking balance in our checking account or credit card limit, but then we instantly make some smart-sounding, logical justifying statement such as “but hey, I’ll get more business wearing this high fashion!”

Works for buying clothes, a new car, that gorgeous house, you name it.  Our logic causes procrastination and over thinking…while our emotions kick in to want that thing no matter what.

We shop at the same grocery store, gas station, etc. because they’re in our comfort zone, a known place where with no stress or trauma we can comfortably find the usual things we buy in life.

We eat at the same restaurants for the same reason. Once we make an emotional connection to a place, there’s no more debating or logic involved.

Marketers use these emotion-based buying habits for impulse buying – the driving force for where to place key items you have to walk past to get to your most common purchases.

Quick story…Years ago I produced a film for Shell Oil Company for all of its gas station dealers to identify and solve a handful of their most common problems with customers.

One issue was low sales in their food marts, where all their profit is made (I was amazed to discover that the gas station dealers don’t actually make money on selling gas).

So the challenge was how to get more people to buy on impulse, on emotions, and not just logical necessity.

First I spent a couple of long days tracing on a floor diagram of the food mart layout the exact path that everyone took to make their purchases.

The resulting image showed the heaviest traffic aisles – and as a result, the corporate office changed the location of everything to put all the standard “staples” in the back and all the impulse items (candy, chips, donuts, hot dogs on the grill, etc.) on the way to their intended purchases.

The moral of the story: Appeal to people’s major emotional needs and they will want to buy no matter what.

Food mart profits went up significantly after this change, and that’s how all stores of any kind are now organized to get us to spend a lot than we came to buy.

The lesson for you and me is to connect to our prospects’ emotional needs to get their attention and steer them to our products and services as the solution – rather than relying on logic alone.

WHY VIDEO IS YOUR MOST POWERFUL EMOTIONAL FUNNEL

There is no more powerful emotional “hook” to grab attention and heighten people’s emotional need to buy than a well-produced video that leads with your ideal prospects’ main pain, fear, or need.

That’s what they are scanning for when surfing the Internet, so that’s what you need to provide if you have any hope of “hooking” their attention to hear about your solution.

In fact, almost 90% of marketing campaigns online are built around video messages – and yet only a small percentage of them are effectively using the emotional appeal.

That’s a major reason why 93% of online entrepreneurs make less than $400 a month…and clearly you want to be in the elite group that is making the big bucks, or at least a good living.

How many times have you seen a recipe on a video “reel” on Facebook or Tik-Tok, and wrote it down or clicked through to find it?  The lure of health and/or happy tummy are powerful and certainly emotionally based.

You see, words alone (conveying only 10% of the full meaning of your message) don’t attract nearly as well as do visuals.

Add audio and you get another 38% of the meaning and a lot more engagement.

Yet go with video visuals (when they effectively illustrate what your words are describing) and you get a lot of the remaining 52% of the message that comes from the visual cues of body language and other things you can see.

(For more details on 10/38/52, read my blog post here.)

So an emotionally-focused video…with emotion-inspiring words and related images…naturally draws us all to want to see the solution.

KEY COMPONENTS OF AN EMOTIONALLY HOOKING VIDEO

First, get the sequence of your message in this order – because it’s the order in which the human mind wants to process your message:

1. Hook Attention – your ideal prospects’ major challenge to urgently solve
2. Ramp Up the Feelings – give a few situations that remind them of how they felt
3. Tell Your Story – been there, figured out a solution, now helping lots of others
4. Show Social Proof – 1 or 3 testimonials about the transformative result of your solution
5. Briefly Intro Your Solution – name it, talk outcomes instead of program details
6. Call To Action (CTA) – Tell how to click / etc. to check out this amazing solution

The biggest mistake in so many videos is to start with who you are and your solution, especially in detail. Not what they want to hear first, because you haven’t given them something to stir their emotions and need for solution.

Second, discover and eliminate all your off-putting actions and distractions you don’t even know about – what makes people think less of you and doubt your ability to solve their problems.

I coined the phrase “Video Voodoos™” because these distractions you don’t know about are cursing your sales and haunting your reputation.

In fact, your voodoos are repelling a whole lot more prospects than you’re attracting.  When you chase away most viewers, your videos fall far short of their potential.

That’s a big reason why 19 out of 20 online entrepreneurs are not making enough sales to live on.

And third, learn how to make yourself look and sound like the go-to expert in your niche whenever you’re on camera, by following professional techniques for formatting, lighting, sound, background, and how you personally look.

The best and only program out there to help you in all three of these major video solutions is my coaching as the Video Maestro, based on over 4 decades of producing and directing videos and developing learning systems.

If you want to earn a serious living online, get your video tune-up or major upgrade and fine-tune by joining my 1:1 or small-group workshops that have made a huge difference for every single customer so far.

To check it out, schedule a free Zoom chat with me and I’ll help you identify what needs fixing and the best way to get real on-camera impact and new clients.

Click here to choose a date and time convenient to you: https://calendly.com/royvarner.

You can’t find a better solution to help you make the leap to thrive in your online business…and  I guarantee results.