Selling products and services: NEEDS vs. WANTS?

Oh I like questions like this.

Needs, IMO, are a far better than wants.

Thing is, if you look behind a lot of wants, you'll find needs.

Sally 'wants' to lose weight so she can look better. She 'needs' to look better because she is tired of the emotional turmoil her low self esteem brings. Her issue is that none of the males in her friendship group pay her a second glance. Her pain is the fear of loneliness.

Grace wants to get engaged. She needs to feel the validation that she is marriage worthy. Her issue is that she doesn't have that validation in circumstances where her friends do, and she feels like they must be better than her. Her pain is the fear that if she doesn't get married soon, no one will want her and her chances of marriage and a family will be lost forever.

Brad wants a Porsche Boxter. He needs affirmation of the things a fancy sports car stands for in his mind...success, power, money. His issue is making sure his peer group view him this way. His pain (whether he admits it or not) is his fear that without the status symbol which objectively confirms it, he is not good enough.

I'm not saying all unfit people are lonely, that women who want a ring on their finger are insecure, or that all people who own expensive cars are vainglorious. But a lot are!

The want is the goal, the need is what drives people to achieve it. The need is where our best opportunity to build a relationship is, because we can make them feel understood. Understanding breeds trust. Trust is good.

This type of audience analysis can be an awesome way to connect with them, so I try to start my research by asking what the average person in my target niche has as their need, issue or pain, and what I can do to help them with it!

I think building on the need idea, is immediate need. For example, if someone has a throbbing toothache in the wee hours of the morning, and this person is on the internet looking for something or perhaps information that he or she can use to get immediate pain relief.
Or someone has an immediate household or pet problem they want immediate answers for, and possibly looking for products that will take care of the problem. I personally have used the search engine many times looking for answers for an immediate problem, and it would have been nice to just find what I needed in one place, instead of searching all over for it.

Yeah good point gabby, desperate buyers.

That's a great definition of a need vs. a want.

Trouble with needs is, they are mostly commodities. And commodities are sold on price.

That's not where I want to be in a market. I want to sell the luxury item, the
thing someone has on their wishlist.

Look at how successful a company like Apple has been at turning
commodity electronics into must-have, designer products.

So, in my opinion, the wants are where the big bucks are.

Jeremy

I guess if the product is a "need" then it is not a matter of convincing them to buy the product (they need it) its more about why they should purchase from you instead of from someone else.

If you are looking to sell "need" based products online I would look into the whole embarrassing niche thing if I were you.

They need a solution and they need it now and they would prefer not to have to talk to someone in person about it. Its a perfect online product to market if you are comfortable promoting and writing about solutions to embarrassing taboo type personal issues that some people face.

Well I know that addressing needs is an easy sell. I've done that in the past with very good results. Seems like most of the stuff I've done that addresses just a want never seems to be gangbuster sales. Like maybe the odd sale once in a blue moon. But not daily sales. So I'm just debating if I should go back to the drawing board and try and find a "need" to sell too.

I would like to tell you that people will always want to buy from you, ONLY if you can provide them what they really want. I can only tell you to get most of the Late Gray Hulbert's newsletter so you can understand what am trying to imply.

The whole basis of this conversation is answered by Maslow's hierarchy of needs (see Maslow's hierarchy of needs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

It's a topic that you can only answer really by getting involved and researching / survey the people who make up your target niche or market.

Most of the basic 'needs' such as food, water, housing etc are already catered for by corporate multinationals and the state, since these basic needs are based on a mass market / low margin model (they have to be by default because the whole of society 'needs' them).

Most independent businesses are in the 'want' business, especially internet businesses, so that will be the area you'll be operating in most of the time if you are in the Internet Marketing arena.