In April 1986, an explosion occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the then-Soviet state of Ukraine. It quickly became the worst disaster in nuclear history, with a cloud of poisonous radiation spreading uncontained across much of Europe.

Yet that same type of energy, when properly harnessed, can power an entire aircraft carrier C a floating city with over 5,000 inhabitants.

What's this got to do with marketing, you ask? Plenty.

You see, emotion is the power that fuels every purchase. Your marketing should be infused with emotion if you want it to be successful. But if you don't harness it properly, your bottom line will look more like Chernobyl than the USS Nimitz.

When your sales letters and ads are full of emotion for emotion's sake, you've got yourself a Chernobyl-type disaster. Spilling your advertising dollars all over the consumer landscape with no way of containment, they cause a cancer that begins eating away at your profits.

But properly harnessed and channeled, the fuel of emotion in your marketing can power enough sales to explode your profits. All you need to do is follow these simple steps:

Step 1:Trigger the right emotions. To do this, you have to know your prospect and how she is already feeling about the problem you're going to solve. For example, if she's feeling helpless about being overweight, making her nostalgic for thinner days won't sell diet pills. Showing her that it's not her fault and making her angry at the real culprit (which the diet pill will conveniently defeat for her) will.

Step 2: Stimulate C and ask for C a specific response. Never get your prospect all worked up emotionally and just leave him hanging. Tell him what to do with his feelings C like call your 1-800 number, visit your website, or fill out this handy order form with his credit card info. If you don't tell him very specifically what you want him to do, he won't do it. And then his emotion will leak out all over the place, unchanneled. Just like your marketing budget.
Make sure you have some method of tracking which ads or letters produced the responses you get, whether it be a special code on your reply device, a different number to call for each ad, or a special landing page on your website. You'll need this information for Step 3.

Step 3:Constantly monitor output and make adjustments when necessary. Even when you're faithfully following Steps 1 and 2, some ads or letters will be blockbusters, while some will be losers. You've got to know which ones in order to stop wasting money on the losers. Use that money instead to expand the reach of your winners.

Of course, even winners will occasionally need a tune-up. By closely monitoring their performance, you'll know right away when response starts to fade and changes need to be made.

Following these three steps will help you harness the Power of Emotion C and drive the engine of your business for a long time to come!