Using the Seven Deadly Sins to Sell Ecommerce Goods
By Space Coast Daily // November 22, 2018
The mechanism behind operating your own ecommerce business is simple. The more people buy, the more you earn. Thus, if the goal is to increase earning, you need to increase (excessive) spending.
Some ecommerce entrepreneurs leverage marketing, promotions and the like to boost income. But what if you created a business model based upon exploiting the idea of excess? What if you pushed excessive spending by celebrating the excesses of sin?
Below are a few tips for using the seven deadly sins to sell ecommerce goods.
Lust
Surely you have heard the advertising credo “sex sells.” It’s based around the idea that physical attraction, innuendo, or overtly sexual imagery is useful in capturing consumer attention. While going overboard in lustful marketing might hurt your brand or make you appear crass, posting something along the lines of a wink or a nod to the concept might help draw in more customers. A perfect example is using the peach emoji to advertise a pair of well-fitting jeans.
Gluttony
Gluttony might just be the preferred sin among Americans, especially around the holidays. Who doesn’t love stuffing their faces full of sweet pies, salty turkey legs and fine wines? If your ecommerce brand specializes in foodstuffs, promoting culinary indulgence is a must!
Greed
The cardinal sin of greed is an easy one to exploit. All it takes is a nudge in the right direction: “Get more, more, more with hot deals! For a limited time only!” By pushing the idea that customers can get more products or services for less money, you are essentially promoting greed. Similarly, greed is a great motivator for selling collectibles, unique wares or limited time items. Greed hates to be starved. So be sure to feed your shopper’s greed with impressions they need to have this right now, or lose out on a fleeting opportunity.
Sloth
One of the reasons retail is fading while ecommerce is surging is convenience. It is easier to order packages to be delivered to one’s home than it is to drive 20 minutes to the mall. If you want to leverage sloth, you’ll need to provide your potential buyers with a similar amenity. Examples include next-day shipping, one-click checkout and lax return policies. Make ecommerce shopping easy for your customers and they’ll reward you for it.
Wrath
Wrath is a tricky one, because it’s something you should allow your customers but never your staff. If a customer gets angry about a late order or incorrect product, they might air their grievances on social media or through an online review. Go ahead and let them blow off steam. This is more common than most companies would care to admit.
However, you cannot “blow up” on your customers. This will only hurt your brand reputation. Instead, do everything reasonable in your power to get back in their good graces. Otherwise, you risk losing them as a customer.
Pride
Conversely, pride is a sin you can practice and invite your customer base to practice too. For example, if you are proud of your ecommerce brand, you’ll do everything in your power to ensure an ideal shopping experience top to bottom. This means leveraging free website themes to make your webpages shine, selling quality products to beat your competitors and pushing your messaging every chance you get.
On the consumer side, this means inviting shoppers to post images of themselves using and loving your products. “Love BCC T-Shirts? Post your pride with a selfie of your favorite BCC merch to Instagram for a chance to win a $200 gift certificate!”
Envy
Prospective buyers feel motivated to buy when they see other people posting about it on Facebook and Instagram. Similarly, you can host a contest for “Biggest Fan!” on your social media profiles. This might entice your community of followers to top one another, thus giving your e-store more visibility and more competition.
As you can see, there is no shortage of ways to use the seven deadly sins to sell ecommerce goods. Perhaps you even came up with a few of your own. Are you ready to make your ecommerce brand as enticing as sin?
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