I’m really beginning to understand that if you want to be good at marketing, you need to be good at understanding how people think. To successfully market is to understand your customer better than she knows herself. If you really think about it, a good marketer could also be a good psychiatrist — if the marketer were more touchy-feely, or if the psychiatrist knew more about fonts.

So without further ado, here are some of the key reasons, deep in the brain, why people buy.

1. People buy because they’re emotionally invested.
People don’t base significant buying decisions on logic. They buy based on emotion, and only then use logic to justify their emotional decisions. I can’t give Naomi credit for teaching me this one. I learned it from my mother, Marcia Hoeck, who knows this both because she’s been in marketing for most of her life and because she’s married to a man who likes boats.

Now, nobody tell my stepfather about this post, because he’s an engineer and will deny 1) the truth of what I’m about to say, 2) the validity of blogging and its proponents as worthwhile members of society, and 3) having emotions. But the truth is that when he wants to buy a new boat, he buys with his heart first. He’ll see a boat; he’ll fall in love with it; he’ll decide deep down to buy it. Then he’ll determine how fast it goes, what a great deal it is, how he can absolutely afford it and will actually come out ahead once he sells his old boat (which he always erroneously assumes will happen), and how, through bending time and space, this purchase will manufacture saved transit time that is somehow worth $1000 an hour.

I’m not immune to this, either. Last summer, I bought a $6000 60-inch commercial-grade zero-turn lawnmower that I had no financial business buying. Mowing four acres of grass used to take me the entire damn day, and the old mower kept breaking and putting me in a foul mood. My father-in-law got one of these behemoths, and I realized I could mow that grass in under an hour. I saw the emotional benefits right away: more time with my two young kids on weekends, less frustration, the fun of driving that big machine. And then I went all CSI on the situation and became a logical genius, finding all sorts of reasons why I had to buy it:

• Why, hell, it was going to save me 2.5 hours every time I mowed.

• Based on my hourly rate of X times 2.5 hours per mow times Y mows per year and factoring in Z amount of “emotional pain” based on frustration and irritation… why, hell, I’d be stupid NOT to buy it!

So did I make a bad decision in purchasing? Well, it was a hell of a stretch, but I’d fight you hand-to-hand if you tried to take my mower away. Emotional quality of life is very important to me. I talked myself into that purchase, but if someone had “sold” it to me, I’d still thank them today, regardless of whether I could strictly afford it or not.

That’s the fine line, I think. Good, responsible marketing knows what people really want or need, and overcomes their objections in a way that ultimately benefits them. This isn’t manipulation; it’s the assuaging of a few select “cons” in order to arrive at an ultimately “pro” situation.

This is what I like about Naomi. She doesn’t pretend that she’s not trying to sell something to you. She’s not insulting your intelligence by pretending to just be here to give out free information as a martyr. She essentially says, “Look, dammit. I’m good. You need my shit whether you know it or not. So fucking buy it already.”

That’s a sales technique that I can live with.

But what about the more “salesy” stuff? Because let’s face it; we see that too, from everyone.

Here’s what I mean: last Friday morning, Naomi calls me and she’s all doped up on vodka and Red Bull, making for a fascinating combination of jittery and drunk. She tells me she’s pissed off, and the reason is that she scheduled the launch of Marketing For Nice People to run over a long holiday weekend both in the U.S. and the U.K. Now, at the time, I was about 16 hours away from being done with the Project Mojave launch, and I naively asked why every damn thing had to have a finish date. Why, if these projects were so great, did the creators cut them off after such a short period of time? Why not just let people into MFNP and PM forever, whenever they wanted to join up?

Well, that’s another bit of psychology and knowing what customers need better than they know themselves.

2. People buy because they’re afraid they’ll miss out.
If MFNP was always going to be available, even people who want it, need it, and could really use it might be just a little bit too tired to stand up and walk over to get their credit card. They’d figure, “I’ll do it later.” They’d say that they had just joined XYZ person’s course, so they’d finish that first. They’d reason that they’re going on vacation next week, or that the dog is sick, or that they need another cup of coffee more than they need to spend five minutes in an online shopping cart right now.

Even people who want to buy within the next few days might simply forget if they know there is no real penalty for doing so.

Creating a product launch with a deadline creates urgency. It says, “Okay, you’re tired and don’t want to get your credit card. Thanks to that, you may miss out.” It says, “By the time you get back from vacation, all of your competitors will have gotten in on this and you’ll be out, and they’ll sail past you in the market.” It says, “Okay, it can wait until you’re done with XYZ person’s course — if you’re cool with waiting a full six months until it relaunches… if it ever does.

At first, this creation of urgency sounds really manipulative, but I no longer feel that it is if you have faith in your product. If you’re Billy Mays selling fucking worthless OxyClean or that stupid Mighty Putty, then selling might be kind of dirty. But if you’ve created a great product? If you know you’ve put your heart and soul into it, and know that a person who truly, truly applies him- or herself can use it to kick ass? Then no, it’s not dirty.

All you’re trying to do is to keep self-doubt from sabotaging all the product could do for them. They want to do it, emotionally, as in point #1. By adding urgency, you’re just giving them the logic to back up that emotional decision.

Remember that urgency — even false urgency — won’t make someone buy who doesn’t want your product. It will only give someone who already wants it a logical reason to buy. They want that reason, so give it to them.

3. People buy because of exposure, buzz, and social proof.
It really is a small world, after all. I’ve been running in a lot of different circles lately, yet the truth is that everybody knows everybody. I swear there are only three degrees of separation on the Internet, and only one or two in blogging. You hang around on IttyBiz and you hear about Dave Navarro’s stuff. You hang out on Clay Collins’s blog and you hear about Dave Navarro’s stuff. You hang around a dozen other places in this incestuous little community and you hear about Dave Navarro’s stuff. And if you go to Dave Navarro’s blog? Dammit if Dave Navarro isn’t there, too.

Because of this, when someone launches a product or course, it’s going to look as if everyone is talking about it. That’s not literally true, though. I don’t have the patience to look up the stats, but the online content that you actually see (tweets, blog posts and comments, forum posts, whatever) is produced by a very small percentage of the people actually online. Most people lurk, the whole thing working like a theater with only a handful of actors onstage. When you get that small percentage of contributors all talking about the same thing, it creates a buzz that gives the illusion that everyone is getting in on the new product. And if you don’t get in on it? Well, then you can amend that to “Everyone but you.”

When enough people talk about a product, your average user is going to see it that many more times. They may not buy after seeing it three times, but how about ten times? How about twenty? Exposure and repetition create sales.

What’s more, when influencers talk about something, people buy who might not have bought otherwise. This is a part of what’s called “social proof” — a product or service has been “proven” by the testing of peers.

I’m totally swayed by influencers. If Joe Blow who I’ve never heard of offered a course, I wouldn’t do it. But what if a few of the people whose stuff I really like and respect said it was the best thing ever? Well, then I might get in on it.

(Incidentally, I appear to be getting a bit of this mojo myself, which is interesting. I had several people tell me they joined Project Mojave because I’m part of it, and that’s really flattering. To you same people, I’m also totally endorsing Marketing For Nice People as incredibly and quite honestly awesome. If registration wasn’t already closed, I’d strongly suggest hopping on board.)

I feel that when you have something to sell, the most important thing is to have faith in the product. If you believe that others can sincerely benefit from it, then it’s up to you to overcome their doubts and get them to do what is ultimately in their best interest. You’ve got to get in their heads and see what’s rattling around in there. You’ve got to think like a psychiatrist.

Just take it easy on the Vicodin prescriptions, okay?