Internet marketers are famous for their long sales letters and their “hard sell” approach. Indeed I know one Internet marketer whose basic approach is “Do you want it, or not?”. In other words, either pay for it now, or move on so I can find someone else who’ll buy it.

While the hard sell works, it does not have the impact of an altogether different approach – the emotional sale. Hard sell frequently triggers one emotion – negative empathy. In other words, the individual on the receiving end doesn’t like you and will almost certainly never return to your web site.

Triggering positive emotions is essential if you want long term business. That means for your Internet marketing where you are trying to get repeat business and keep customers for the long term, you need to trigger positive emotions right at the beginning. This is confirmed in a recent study of banking published in The McKinsey Quarterly.

This study showed that at the point of a transaction taking place, if the customer had a positive emotional response the most likely thing that happened was an increase in sales value. In other words, 58% of people with a positive response spent more at the bank than originally intended, simply because they felt good about what had happened. A further 29% went on at a later date to purchase more.

However, when the customers had a negative emotional response at the point of sale, 38% went to the competition, 10% gave up the idea of buying and 14% spent less than they had originally intended.

The message in all this is clear for Internet marketers – do everything in your power to give your web site readers a positive emotional experience. Make them feel good about themselves. In other words, concentrate less on selling your products and more on building up a good relationship with your customers and potential clients.