With so many products flooding the marketplace regularly, it becomes tough for consumers to find ones that meet their requirements. Subsequently, only a handful become widely popular, creating massive demands and generating higher profits. But, unfortunately, others slip between the cracks, ignored by customers.

If your product is struggling to climb the popularity charts, you need to use the Hook and Trigger methodology created in 2013 by entrepreneur Nir Eyal. In this theory, he suggests marketing strategies to engage and retain your customers, including potential customers. Read on to find out how you can successfully tap into this strategy.

How to create a Great Product?

What differentiates an outstanding product from a good one is the value it brings to the table. An excellent product hooks a customer for a lifetime. It is how brands are built!

So, what makes a product worth the customers’ attention?

Value-addition

The product should positively impact the buyer with its features and functionality. For instance, a newly launched kitchen appliance must accelerate the cooking process. Likewise, a smartphone feature should improve communication time.

Ability to fulfill the need

The product should be designed with the consumer’s needs in mind. Hence, it must have a clear purpose and deliver a unique value proposition.

Ability to exceed expectations

The product must exceed customer’s expectations and impress them. Subsequently, it enhances the buyer’s experience with value-added services. For instance, offering a one-year free after-sales service will certainly boost the sales of your product.

User-friendliness

With thousands of products competing in your commercial niche, how can you bring yours to the fore? First, analyze the competition and offer better features or services to highlight your product. Then, design user-friendly, highly functional, and provide unique features that ease the tasks for which they are designed.

Ability to stir emotions

Customers form a profound bond with products, which often evokes an emotional response. Subsequently, creative marketing and advertising strategies should be developed and used to accomplish it. For instance, a brand-new car resonates easily with a customer as the feeling of “leaving the world behind in the fast car” stirs up in them when they take the driver’s seat.

Addictiveness

The product should immediately engage a customer’s attention and leave them craving for more. Therefore, invest in building brand loyalty by engaging with customers in incentivized pre-sales and post-sales phases.

How to Sell a Great Product?

Do you have an excellent product but still struggle to gain new customers? Have you invested in the Hook Model?

In 2013, entrepreneur and behavioral economist Nir Eyal developed the Hook Model. The strategy focuses on hooking the customer to a product or service to form an attachment to it. In his book, Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products, Eyal discusses how companies control consumer’s minds and design habit-forming products. The model has four phases: Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, and Investment.

Phase 1: Trigger

Products are created from two forms of triggers, external and internal. External triggers involve places, people, routines, and situations. Internal triggers are emotional responses. External triggers primarily catch customer’s attention, while internal triggers are difficult to identify. For instance, imagine a young woman comes across a pair of chic stilettos from a famous shoe designer while browsing social media. Naturally, she becomes eager to purchase them as they perfectly match her wedding gown. Moreover, she does not want to miss a designer label on her feet on her special day. Thus, the wedding serves as her internal trigger and gets activated.

Phase 2: Action

The second stage focuses on the customer’s response to the initiated trigger. Let’s consider the above example: If the bride-to-be immediately lands on the website to complete the shoe purchase, an action is taken. However, if she closes the browser or skips to a different product, the cycle is interrupted. Hence, for your customers to act immediately, offer them a choice that’s easy to make and psychologically inspiring.

Phase 3: Variable reward

An Action is executed anticipating the reward. The customer receives the reward, but now they desire more. At this stage, the Hook Model truly activates. Businesses use variable rewards tactics to entice the customers and leave them craving for more. For instance, when the bride-to-be arrives on the website to purchase the shoes, she discovers more products at highly discounted prices are being offered for her perfect bridal trousseau. As a result, she will immediately browse the site and add more products to the shopping cart.

Phase 4: Investment

Now that the customers are satisfied with their purchase, they invest their time or money in the product or service. For instance, they could engage in word-of-mouth advertisement on their social network and earn brownie points or become a repeat customer due to their vast experience on the website. Marketers understand this psychology deeply, and hence, they create strategies to engage with the customer regularly. Over time, they hook them and convince them to make more purchases.

How to Use the Hook Model for Building Great Products

Often, businesses struggle to convert their exceptional products into addictions for consumers. However, with the Hook Model, they can convert their failure into success.

The Hook Model nudges you to manipulate your customers. By creating a solid craving for your products and services, customers begin to notice your brand and eventually develop an attachment that is hard to resist. First, however, it would help if you delivered on your promises. Otherwise, this technique can go south.

Are you interested in applying the Hook Model for your business? Consider the following facts to establish a strong presence in your niche.

Use both internal and external triggers and ensure they are well-aligned

Analyze your target audience to identify their needs, pain points, or activities (internal triggers). Further, curate resonating content for emails, Tweets, online advertisements, or apps (external triggers) and share it with them. Both these triggers must complement each other and encourage your audience to act on them.

Design a simpler user interface for your audience

Design a user-friendly web interface for your audience to engage and act per your objectives. Keep the interface simple, interactive, and encouraging for the users to easily navigate through the products and services on offer and make quick, hassle-free purchase decisions.

Offer incentives

Reward your audience with freebies or redeemable points when they invest their time and money in your business. Your reward program could contain referral bonuses, gifts, or discounts coupons that will delight your customers and hook them to your business forever. However, you must also expend some time and effort in maintaining the hook through regular engagement with your audience. You can do so on social media and other marketing, advertising, and communication channels.

Parting thoughts

Your customer is king, so comprehend and analyze their needs to create excellent products that you can sell using internal and external triggers, as explained in The Hook Model. Use a simple user interface that instantly engages your audience, hooks them to your product/service, and keeps them coming back for more with new customers!

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