People like to feel superior. As a marketer, understanding this universal desire can help you do an awful lot of selling.
By appealing to your prospects’ pride, you can persuade them to pay more — sometimes much more — than what you could get by appealing to any other emotion.
Let’s talk watches.
For $10, you can buy a handsome digital sports watch that will outperform and outlast virtually any luxury watch made. When these watches were first introduced (over 20 years ago), they were so good and cheap that everyone predicted the demise of the analog timepiece.
Well, it didn’t happen. The new technology revolutionized the watch industry and changed the market forever. But analog watches survived. In fact, according to one estimate, sales of $1,000-plus watches have more than doubled since the 1970s and continue to grow every year.
It’s Not Simply a Matter of Dollars and Cents
Why do people pay thousands for watches when a $29 one works just as well and looks great? (By the way, have you taken an objective look at some of the fancier Rolexes lately? Tack-eeee. Piagets? Like a muscleman in a tutu.) I like the look of the expensive watch I bought in Paris, but I’ve had to have it repaired twice in two years. And boy did they charge me for that!
It’s not reliability. It’s not durability. It’s not precision. And it’s not beauty. So what does all that extra money buy?
In a word, prestige. Slap on an Ebel or a Cartier and you have instant credibility with the fashion police. Thrust out a Rolex-clad wrist and you announce to all those around you, “I have arrived.”
You need not say a word. What could be better than that?
The idea that price equates to quality is a myth. But price does relate to value. In the case of luxury goods, that value is prestige.
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