Progress Comes in Hops

To visualize what happens when someone buys a product for the first time, it helps to think of someone making a hop.

There was a before, the “before” side of the hop. And there was an after, the “after” side of the hop.

The hop can happen quickly. It might take a while to decide, to deliberate, to back-and-forth mentally about the decision, but the hop is something else. The customer says “enough is enough”, and then hop, a decision was made.

It’s true for buyers of your products, it’s true for clients buying your services, it’s true for a boss accepting your idea.

But if you’re marketing, if you’re creating an environment where word-of-mouth happens, you realize that there are many more hops on the way to your product.

People will subconsciously hop when they make space for your existence in their world. They might have known about you, but when they decide to “bookmark” you mentally, they’ve made a hop.

People will hop when they sign up to your newsletter. They’ll be glad it helps them make progress at learning the details of what they’re working on.

People will make a decided hop when they click that “Try now” button on your product page.

People will make the big hop when they’ll take out their credit card.

And people will make another hop when they say to themselves “you know what, this product is worth recommending to this friend right now.”

There are mindless, impulse buys. Of course. There are purchases that happen quickly: “where have you been all my life?”.

But the smart move is to lay out a series of hop-worthy struggle-solvers that lead to you.

Just make sure that, for each of these small hops you invite your buyers and fans to make, you know their before, you know their after, and you’ll confidently know “yes, if they see this, and they’re experiencing that ‘enough is enough’, they’ll make the hop.”