Elevating Your Product To Be Irresistible Is Hard, So Why Bother?
I’m not clueless as to why very few products are irresistible. Irresistibility is EXTREMELY hard to achieve. Taking a product from great to irresistible requires bigger budgets, more time, additional resources, greater alignment of strategy and deeper expertise. None of which is easily obtained. BUT, if you can combat these external pressures in order to achieve irresistibility, your product will be one of very few that earns raving customers.
Remember, if it were easy, everybody would do it.
Let’s begin by explaining what we even mean by “irresistibility.” Irresistibility is a state your product reaches when it both entices and convinces your customer to acquire it. They can’t not have it.
In order to achieve irresistibility, your product must do four crucial things:
Possess an enticing aesthetic
Solve a meaningful problem for your customer
Have a no-brainer price tag
Deliver your customer a delightful experience
People’s purchasing decisions hinge on their emotional connection to a product and these four factors dial that connection up to eleven.
Irresistible products reap some pretty serious rewards:
Your product stands out in the crowd
When your product is irresistible, it stands out from all of the others. An enticing aesthetic will differentiate and elevate your product, luring in customers for a closer look.
Owners of your product will savor it and then be eager to show it off because it is unlike any other.
Your product sells itself
An irresistible product does the heavy lifting when it comes to marketing. In this chaotic world we now live in, it is extremely difficult to grab the attention of your ideal customer in order to share your product with them. Instead of requiring you to beg for your customer’s attention, an irresistible product will have them coming to you.
In his book, Purple Cow, marketing expert Seth Godin states,
"...the more crowded the marketplace, the busier your customers... Half-measures will fail. Overhauling the product with dramatic improvements in things the right customers care about, on the other hand, can have a huge payoff."
By solving a painful problem for your customer, an irresistible product becomes a solution that your customer will seek out because it provides them with valuable relief. You might need to let people know your product exists, but you won’t need to convince your ideal customer of its value.
Your product becomes the only option
The book, Blue Ocean Strategy asks,
"Is your offering priced to attract the mass target of buyers so that they have a compelling ability to pay for your offering? If it is not, they cannot buy it. Nor will the offering create irresistible market buzz."
If you set the price of your product to be on par with or less than the unsatisfactory solution they are currently using, it means your customer would be crazy NOT to purchase your product.
Your product gains a following
It is quite rare to experience a product that is truly a delight to use. With that being said, people jump ship as soon as they find something that works better or is even more of a delight to use. If your product works better than the rest, you’ll earn the loyalty of customers… at least for now.
In Jon Kolko's book, Well-Designed, he explains how we should care "about all the details that a human encounters when he or she uses your product, because
these small details have large impacts on the experiences people have."
Something else magical happens when a product is a pure delight to use, people can’t help but tell their friends about it. (hey, that's free advertisement for you)
Conclusion
Let me reiterate. I am in no way saying that the coordination and amplification of all of the irresistibility factors is an easy feat, but that barrier to entry is exactly what separates breakthrough products from the sea of competition.
Anything less than irresistible puts your product in the pool of mediocrity and mediocrity is a sure bet for obscurity (in other words failure) in this competitive market.
In this case, playing it safe is actually riskier than going all in.