How to make a sales pitch
Making a Sales Pitch Work
The impact of a message depends upon not only what is said, but also how it is said. You must decide on the style, tone, words and format factors that put the message across in the most effective way.
For example, the following different styles can be followed:
- Slice of Life ‑ Product shown to be used by people in their normal day to day life.
- Lifestyle ‑ Emphasises how the product fits into a particular lifestyle.
- Fantasy ‑ creates a fantasy about/around the product (e.g. a frog eats cough sweets and turns into a prince).
- Mood or Image ‑ Builds a mood around a product such as beauty, love or serenity.
- Musical ‑ Showing characters singing a song or jingle.
- Personality symbol ‑ Associates product with a character (e.g. Ronald McDonald, Mr Sheen etc.).
- Technical Expertise ‑ Shows technical expertise behind product or service being provided.
- Scientific Evidence ‑ Presenting statistical, survey or scientific evidence to support product.
- Testimonial ‑ Highly credible persons endorsing the product.
The tone of the advertisement or sales pitch can be varied from the serious advert which avoids humor, to the humorous advert which attempts to convey the message indirectly and through subtle approaches.
What words sell
Certain words are known to trigger or catch a person’s attention, and are widely used in advertising for just this reason.
Such words include: “you”, “your”, “how”, “new”, “who”, “free”, “money”, “now”, “people”, “want” and “why”
Emotions and Buying Behaviour Response
Much of marketing psychology relies on the influence of emotions on buying behaviour. A lot of research has gone into trying to understand how our emotions affect our buying behaviour. Whilst we may like to think that we make our purchases on rational decisions, the truth is our decision making is largely driven by emotions. This is what produces our (possibly irrational) brand loyalty, as discussed previously. Emotions can affect our buying behaviour in many ways. Here are some examples:
- Feelings of inadequacy, or a desire for fitting into a particular social group, may motivate a purchase.
- Feelings of sadness or depression may promote purchasing of comforts such as chocolate, takeaway food and movies, or a spending spree of new outfits and haircuts to “make yourself feel better”.
- Feeling happy might motivate you to buy flowers, or gifts for other people.
- Feeling stressed or rushed might result in you making a spontaneous purchase of something you don’t really need/want.
The use of language and imagery in marketing campaigns and sales pitches can go a long way in evoking emotions to inspire purchases. For example, a holiday business may use images of happy couples strolling in idyllic tropical islands, a car salesman may talk about their “inexpensive, great investment options” – rather than buying a cheap option.
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