When marketing its products or services, a business is usually told to focus on selling the benefits of those products or services. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. But this isn’t entirely accurate.
Human nature is such that people are motivated by the need for risk aversion. People will act more to avoid a loss than to gain a benefit. We fear loss more than we desire a benefit. This is known as the Prospect Theory.
From the New York Times:
…most of us find losses roughly twice as painful as we find gains pleasurable.
A professional photographer seeking new clients should frame their marketing more around loss avoidance and minimizing risk rather than just pointing out potential benefits. New clients are usually concerned with avoiding risk since they’ve never worked with that photographer before, (i.e. “Can we trust this photographer do the job properly?”).
