Why People Buy
Insights from Ca$hvertising (Chapter 1)
Since this is my first post for Knowledge Grind, I’m going to start off with a quick note on how this post will flow.
First up will be a brief summary of what the chapter is about.
300 words is my limit.
Then, I’ll list out my three insights and how to apply them. They will be relevant to my side projects in tech and to those who are also doing side projects. Not everything I write will be related to what is discussed in the chapter.
I hope you enjoy this.
What Chapter 1 Was About
Chapter 1 of Ca$hvertising discusses why people buy. For the author Drew Eric Whitman, the reasons are simple.
The Life Force 8
People are biologically programmed with these eight desires, which Whitman calls the Life Force 8 (LF8 for short):
- Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension.
- Enjoyment of food and beverages.
- Freedom from fear, pain, and danger.
- Sexual companionship.
- Comfortable living conditions.
- To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses.
- Care and protection of loved ones.
- Social approval.
To Whitman, you’re biologically programmed to want to have your LF8 desires met.
Tension and Opportunity
When one or more of our LF8 desires aren’t met or aren’t met well enough, we feel tension.
Tension leads to desire, which then leads to action to satisfy the desire.
How an individual decides to act in response to an unmet LF8 desire is where there is opportunity for the marketer.
But given the many ways that are now available to satisfy each and every one of these LF8 desires, how can you ensure that consumers buy your product when faced with an unfulfilled LF8 desire?
Imagery
Desire starts in the mind. This can happen in two ways:
- Reading about or hearing about how others have satisfied their LF8s. Whitman calls this vicarious LF8 desire fulfillment.
- Reading or watching something that paints a mental image in your mind.
Both ways plant a mental image in the individual’s mind.
How well that mental image is painted will determine whether said individual buys.
End of summary.
My 3 Key Takeaways
1. Emotional Connection
From my experiences, emotional connection before buying matters most.
Customers are emotionally connected if they can:
- Visualize themselves using your product (Seeing)
- In this visualization, feel the emotions that you want them to feel (Feeling)
- Derive enjoyment from feeling those emotions (Enjoying)
All before buying the product.
Note that this is just vicarious desire fulfillment broken down into a framework.
Two examples come to mind of brands that do this well:
Apple —The AirPods Pro commercial, in case you haven’t watched it, is a video of a girl listening to music while walking.
Throughout the video, switches are made in between the real world and a dream world that’s supposed to represent your mental state when you’re listening to music on your AirPods Pro and are actively noise cancelling.
The dreamworld is romanticized, made to look futuristic and fancy, and probably symbolic of said mental state.
Seeing —The narrative alone reminds you of times when you’ve listened to music while outside, and how great it would’ve been had you had great noise cancellation.
Feeling — You then start wondering about what it would be like to use AirPods Pro — would you also have access to a dreamworld while listening to your music? How great would that be? To be at work but in your own world?
Enjoying — You crack a smile — it’s a romantic notion that excites you.
Joshua Fluke’s YouTube channel — People who watch his channel are probably also trying to start their own YouTube channel or online business, and are probably at odds with corporate life.
In his videos, this one for example, you see a normal guy talking about topics like starting your own business, finding a job, and how he started his own business — just to name a few.
Seeing — If you fit the aforementioned profile, immediately you begin to feel like you too could be like him.
Feeling — A few hours go by and it begins to sink in — those pleasant feelings of what it could be like to have true freedom and independence as you digest what he said in the video.
Enjoying — You feel good about yourself, about the fact that you’re thinking for yourself and looking out for your own interests.
You can also see yourself as a regular consumer of his content — after all, you’re the kind of person who’s always looking to grow.
So what’s the actionable insight?
- Pick a LF8 desire that your product fulfills. Then, vicariously fulfill that desire for your customers by painting a mental image in their minds of them using your product, feeling the emotions that you want them to feel, and deriving enjoyment from feeling those emotions.
2. Pain-points and Product Opportunities
All of the LF8 desires can be a source of pain.
Recall that tension can arise when one or more of the LF8 desires aren’t met.
If that tension is left unaddressed for long enough, it can result in a lingering pain.
For some products, this is an opportunity not only to sell, but to better someone’s life.
Take the example of DropBox.
My guess is that DropBox grew out of LF8 desire no. 3 — freedom from fear, pain, and danger.
For as a student at MIT, founder Drew Houston would frequently forget to bring his USB, which probably caused him fear at times (maybe from not having the files needed for some important school project?).
He found existing solutions to the problem of not having his files accessible at all times unappealing and frustrating.
He also guessed, and rightly so, that if he had this unfulfilled LF8 desire (living in fear of not having important files at hand when needed), others probably did as well.
So what’s the actionable insight?
- Look for people who are currently experiencing tension due to an unfulfilled LF8 desire. This can lead you to an interesting opportunity for a product.
3. Capturing Desires Through SEO
Why do you Google search? So you can find an answer.
Why does an answer matter?
Sometimes, it’s for something inconsequential.
Other times, you’re looking for something that relates to fulfilling a LF8 desire.
You might, for instance, be looking online for a new apartment (LF8 desire no. 5, comfortable living conditions) or something to help with filing your taxes (LF8 desire no. 3, freedom from fear, pain, and danger).
Your search has intent, and behind intent is a want or need.
Switching to the marketer’s perspective, how do you ensure that your product or website shows up to people you want to sell to?
By being clear about what your customers want and how they’re expressing it on the internet.
Once you’re clear about how your customers are expressing the desire you want to fulfill, target words and phrases that specifically have to do with the expression of that desire.
So what’s the actionable insight?
- To know where your customers are on the internet, you have to know how they express their desires. A lot of that comes from understanding how they search.
So that’s it for Chapter 1. I’ll be reading Chapter 2 tomorrow.
