What Feeling Are Your Customers Buying From You?

This winter, a service tech came out to our house to fix our furnace. It had stopped running, and as the temperature in the house began dropping, I was excited to get it fixed. The tech worked on it, brought in a new part, and performed some preventative maintenance. In and out, within an hour, as he stepped out the door into the cold, our furnace was providing warmth that I could feel throughout the house.

It’s the perfect example of a marketing truth we sometimes forget. Whenever people purchase a product or service from us, what they’re really buying is a feeling.

The example above is a perfect place to start unpacking this. With the furnace not working and me starting to feel cold, I was buying the feeling of warmth. The service tech replaced a part in my furnace. I can’t tell you what they replaced because, truth be told, I didn’t care. I wasn’t buying a part… I was buying the feeling that part would bring me and my family.

It was all about the feeling. If I didn’t care about feeling warm, there would be no need to repair the furnace.

Bring this concept to any business of any kind and the story remains the same. You sell products and services, but that’s never what people are buying. They’re investing in a feeling… every single time.

OrangeBall is another perfect example of this. When someone comes to us inquiring about a new website, branding work, or any other marketing, we have a list of products and services we provide. There are options, and interestingly enough, all of those options ultimately create feelings when we deliver them.

• They want to feel proud of their presence in the marketplace.
• They want to feel confident that their marketing will move the needle.
• They want to feel seen and heard.
• They want to feel connected with their customers.
• They want to feel trusted and valued.
• They want to feel successful – they want to feel like they’re winning.

Again, it all comes back to the feeling they want to experience, just like I wanted to feel that warmth and the comfort my furnace would provide for my family and me.

If you believe in what we shared above, the next question is simple and important. Ask yourself, “What feeling are our customers seeking when they buy from us?” Step away from your specific products and services momentarily and go one level deeper. Beyond what you deliver to them, what is it that they really want? What do they want to feel?

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Break down some of the silos in your business, pull together staff from across your organization, and ask those questions above. When you get clear on the feeling you’re providing to your customers, connecting with them will get a whole lot easier.