How Can You Sell An Attainable, But Still Idealized Lifestyle?

In some ways, all of the marketing industry is designed to sell you something you don’t have, that very something being the one object or service that could improve your life if you tried it. The Coca Cola Corporation wants you to think that if you enjoyed Coca Cola at lunchtime, your meal would go down more smoothly and you’d feel more refreshed than with other soft drinks. They do that by implying that without the product, you’d have an inferior experience.

Yet the balance here is exceedingly important to achieve. Selling Cola this way is hardly an intense proposition – the product is cheap enough to purchase for most people, and easy enough to drink for all age groups. But what if your lifestyle offering is not only idealized, but takes hard work to achieve?

For instance, if promoting a gym space, you want to make sure that customers feel a great body is achievable, but not that they have to look like an ancient Greek God to fully experience your options. How can you sell an idealized lifestyle in this way that still feels attainable, without diluting your core message of inspiration? This takes a deft approach, but we believe you can do it. Let’s look at some tips, below:

Make The Onboarding Process Seamless

Offering trial periods, introductory programs, or even just obvious options can help a customer feel less apprehensive about moving into that idealized space. Perhaps as you accept payments at your gym, you can point customers lovingly and clearly towards your treadmills or exercise bikes with a beginner tour, showing them how to operate the equipment while also feeling comfortable about it. This way, trying isn’t a barrier.

Offer Money Back Guarantees

Some companies and services now offer money back guarantees, sometimes unconditionally if a customer wants to cede their membership. It’s why free trials for streaming services exist, but in the idealized space, it can help you show what the lifestyle envisions. For example, companies that product high-end liqueurs and spirits will often sell small sample bottles so you can see how they might fit in your cocktails or how you might enjoy the taste. It makes an expensive luxury more bitesize which can inspire more people. Also see how expensive fragrance sellers will often provide a small spray on your wrist to help you acclimate to the scent profile, completely free.

Make It Relatable

Now, you don’t have to take on the exact characteristics of a customer to relate to them, but think about their needs and wants and try to make your offering more understandable. Think about a fragrance video advertisement – sure they can often seem outlandish (like having a celebrity run in the nude with wild horses or something equally as silly), but what are they really selling here? The feeling of adventure, sensuality, abandon, freedom, strength. We can relate to those. For some, it’s about feeling attractive and desired. What seems silly and abstract on the surface is actually tapping into what we want in our daily lives. If you can be relatable, you can be more present with your audience, but not necessarily too explicit to the point where it waters down your idealized presentation.

With this advice, we hope you can more easily balance your promotional efforts between the ideal and the attainable.