Imagination is Killing your Sales

When was the last time you asked a consumer to “imagine what it would be like if…” 

Undoubtedly you have done it before (we all have), maybe even recently. It’s a common content marketing tactic, and usually a mistake because abstraction is hard to imagine. 

Here’s what I mean: 

Imagine you are selling green smoothies. You ask your ideal customer to imagine feeling “healthier than they’ve ever felt.” You even give examples like sleeping better, more radiant skin, weight loss, less bloat, and more. 

However, despite consistently repeating these messages across social channels and other key places, your smoothie sales still aren’t what you’d like them to be.  

What’s going wrong?

Your customers don’t know how to picture the future very well because humans don’t do very well with abstraction, which is essentially what asking a consumer to imagine the future is…a bunch of scenarios. Instead of asking for abstraction, ask your consumer about a concrete experience or feeling.

Here is another try with the green smoothie:

“When was the last time you felt utterly healthy? What did you eat? What did you drink? Where were you? Did you feel lighter? Did your skin feel softer? Were you at an ideal weight or level of fitness?” 

As I am asking all of these questions, you are imagining this feeling right along with me. I have you right where I want you. Now is the time to ask the next question:

“Would you like to feel that way again?”

Enter the smoothie that your ideal customer already really, really wants. 

It’s a crowded world out there when it comes to marketing messages. Consumers don’t have time to imagine things. It’s an exhausting part of decision making that still leaves us as human beings unsure. If customers remember something related from the past, though, you’ve already leapt over that hurdle. 

In marketing, we call this a “trigger” and it almost always increases your sales.

There are plenty of places to use imagination in marketing. Just don’t ask your customers to do it… their concrete memories will get you much farther.