By Rex Hammock
Your new mousetrap is obviously better than your competitor’s. And you’ve done all the things a great marketer should do to explain to potential customers why they should change to your revolutionary new mousetrap.
So why aren’t potential customers beating a path to your door?
One reason may be what behavioral economists call “loss aversion,” a bias that causes people to be more concerned with loss than by a gain of equal value. Or, put another way by leadership expert Ronald Heifetz: “People do not fear change; they fear loss.”
“We tend to become extremely attracted to objects in our possession, and feel anxious to give them up,” economist Shahram Heshmat recently wrote in Psychology Today.
Your potential customer may not only be a believer in the adage, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” but they may even prefer keeping something broken if it helps her avoid any form of loss.
How do you help a potential customer overcome such an unconscious fear?
One of the strengths of marketing with content is its ability to provide various channels of communication focused on a marketplace’s unique needs and preferences. Such direct-to-customer media channels enable marketers to provide recurring information that helps a prospect accomplish a goal.
Having the ability to interact with potential customers over a period of time helps you comprehensively explore the “gain and pain” paradigm—finally arriving at what communications expert Nancy Duarte calls a “new bliss” discovered by adoptees of your new product or service.
The takeaway: A consistent story, told many ways over a long period of time, can help potential customers overcome their fear of loss and discover the joys of your new mousetrap.
Image: Getty Images
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