Most health marketers think selling is all about convincing someone to buy your product, literally changing their minds from a decision of not buying to buying. But that’s not actually true for any business, and it’s even further from the truth for a business that sells natural supplements, vitamins, beauty products, personal rehab equipment, or any other health related products online. The reason for this is mainly, because, health companies are not in the business of changing minds, they are in the business of tapping into belief.
At Creative Thirst we see belief as the intersection of who your customers are and the challenges they face.
Our formula for belief looks like this…
Belief = (Desire x Self Story) / Challenges
That is, Belief equals Desire, a strong feeling or wish for something, multiplied by the customers’ Self Story, which is the narrative your customers tell themselves about their situation. Divided by their Challenges, which are the obstacles your customer faces in the way of their desired state.
You see, people don’t buy a bottle of supplements because they need to take more vitamins. People buy health supplements and other health products, because they believe that it will help them overcome their challenges, reinforce their inner narrative of who they are, and achieve their inner desire. In other words, health buyers, buy because they are motivated by what they feel the product will do for them emotionally.
They Buy Because Of Their Beliefs
Selling any type of health or beauty related product is about finding people who want to believe, and then making them feel comfortable. Comfortable with their self expression of desire, their identity through their self story and trust in the solution to overcome their challenges.
But in order to tap into your consumers’ beliefs and transform them into motivational emotions, you first need to figure out two things:
- What are the motivational emotions that drive your consumers’ decision making and behavior in your product category?
- Which of these motivational emotions is your product uniquely suited to fill, based on the level of marketplace sophistication and trust for your product category?
The emotions that drive your consumer decision making are thus embedded in their belief system. Their inner desire is the pushing force away from their existing situation towards their desired state.
Your prospects’ self story however, can either be a positively charged pulling force toward the purchase decision or a negatively charged pushing force, away from the buying decision.
In the positively charged pulling scenario, the prospects’ self story aligns with the solution of your product and reinforces the narrative that explains who they are to themselves.
Where as in the negatively charged pushing scenario, the prospects’ self story is made up largely of their anxieties of the new solution, which is your product, and their current beliefs.
In a negatively charged scenario, their current beliefs are what keeps them stuck in their current state of non-decision, which in many cases is the default of doing nothing or switching from their current solution. It’s simply more comfortable to just do nothing when it does to your health.
What many health marketers miss is that they are not only trying to get a prospect to buy buy they are also trying to get them to move to a new habit. There is a pre-existing emotion already attached to the current habit.
If the prospects’ negative self story is too strong, then it can’t be broken and there is nothing you can do. They might buy out of pure hope but they won’t stick and keep taking or using your product because it goes against their core belief.
Tapping Into Belief
Tapping into the belief framework of desire, self story and the challenges of your prospects is the the key to selling any health product online. Unfortunately, many health marketers and optimizers simply don’t go deep enough into the research stage to dig deep into belief. The process we use to uncover belief here at Creative Thirst is a combination of open-ended surveys and one-on-one interviews. But belief is only one part of how people buy health products differently, than other products, the other part is trust, which has it’s own unique framework. When combined together, trust and belief guide health purchasing decisions online.
There Are Three Funnels Every Health Supplement Business Needs To Build A Multi-Million Dollar Empire…
The problem is most dietary supplement companies only have one funnel. Through our work in the online health space, we’ve had the opportunity to observe hundreds of health businesses. What we’ve uncovered are the three critical funnels that each work together that make the difference between the average supplement company just selling on Amazon and a multi-million dollar health empire and compiled our findings in the book below. Click here to get the ebook delivered right to your email for FREE.
