Today is part 3 of our 3-part series on using psychology to improve your marketing. In part one, I talked about how to use psychology to get attention and make a good first impression. One component of getting attention is having a tagline that both catches attention and makes it clear what you do. For ZenChange, our tagline is “The Art And Science Of Small Business Marketing”, which hopefully makes it clear that first, we do marketing, and second, the way we approach it is a little different.
In part two, we talked about targeting your message, and how important it is to segment your target audience into smaller groups in order to be more relevant to them. We are long past the days of billboards and generic TV ads hitting their mark.
Today we’ll zero in on creating a killer message. To do so, we’ll need to dive back into my favorite world of neuromarketing, or basically, understanding how the brain works so we can move people along in their buying decision. After all, according to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, “95% of purchase decisions are subconscious”. So how do we hack the brain to figure out how to send those purchase decisions in our direction?
Here are some clues. First, with the possible exception of the math majors in the crowd, most people’s eyes glaze over when you load them up with facts and data. It is an emotional appeal that will etch your message into long term memory, and not a bunch of stats that prove how amazing you are. But here is what we do know. Whenever we read something, our brains try to put us into the shoes of the protagonist, or hero. We also know that reading about doing something triggers the same part of the brain as when we actually do it. This means that when you read or think about running a race and winning, you actually trigger your motor cortex, the same part of the brain you would trigger by actually running. Now sadly, just triggering the motor cortex doesn’t burn all the calories you would by running but wow, just imagine how much skinnier we would be if it could?
But this does tell us that we can draw people into our brand world by telling a story. That story must make them feel as though they are the protagonist. By telling the story of how they win the day, you will naturally draw them in. You also need to tell the story using the type of language they would. If you’re trying to sell to doctors, you need to write like a doctor. If you’re trying to sell to tech startups then you need to sound like one.
And you need to keep your message simple. If what you do is complex, then distill it down into 3 easy steps and use graphics or images to help your message along. This is especially important because as much as 50% of our brains are wired to receive visual impact. So that old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is right on target. But so is a video. Our brains like watching videos because they don’t need to work as hard. This is one of the reasons why videos have some of the highest levels of engagement online. But I’m about to let you in on a secret that may seem counterintuitive, so since we’re talking about neuroscience, I’ll start by sharing the study. Researchers in the U.K. decided to test how participants responded to audio vs. visual storytelling. They hooked them up to sensors that measured changes in the electrical conductivity of the skin, which demonstrates emotional reaction. Then they showed them video clips of movies and compared them to audio clips and asked them which they found more engaging. As you might expect, participants told the researchers they were more interested in the videos. But that’s not what their bodies said. In fact, the opposite was true. Listening to stories was found to be significantly more engaging than watching and listening. Apparently, this is due to the fact that when we listen to a story, our imaginations are drawn into the scene to complete it, and we become a part of it. I’m encouraged to think that despite us being on lockdown, the fact that you’re listening to me right now while multi-tasking and reading your email rather than me presenting in front of you, may make me a little more interesting. At least I hope so! So if you haven’t yet launched your podcast, now may be a good time to begin. But even the written word can be highly compelling, because, like audio, we need to use our imagination to create the picture.
So now we have grabbed people’s attention, we know what makes them tick so we can tell a story that is relevant, but how do we structure our message so that story converts? I’m going to share with you a message recipe blended from neuromarketing experts Donald Miller, Patrick Renvoise, and Martin Lindstrom, three of my favorite writers and researchers in this space. Here is the 10-step sequence, as though you’re selling to me:
- FUTURE: Show me a picture of the happy end state of what life will be like after I work with you.
- FEAR: Tell me what I’ll lose if I don’t work with you.
- VALUE: Let me know your value proposition.
- PAIN: Show me how you feel my pain.
- RECIPE: Tell me how to buy from you.
- CHOICES: Give me choices on what to buy from you.
- HOMEWORK: Provide me enough information so I can feel as though I did my homework.
- OFFER: Make me an offer.
- OPTION: Give me an option to find out more.
- OFFER AGAIN: Repeat the offer.
Make a note of those 10 steps as we walk through an example. Once again they are future, fear, value, pain, recipe, choices, homework, offer, option & offer again. I’ll use ZenChange again as an example.
- Future – “Get found. You take care of your clients. We’ll take care of your marketing.”
- Fear – “Marketing is confusing and time-consuming”. That’s the messy state our audience will remain in if they don’t work with us.
- Value – “Big agency marketing at small business prices. Stop guessing. Feel proud. Measure results.”
- Pain – This is where we empathize and position ourselves against the typical marketing agency model. It goes like this. “No long term contracts. We let our work speak for us.”
- Recipe – “1. Talk to us. 2. Launch your plan. 3. Get found.” Try to keep your roadmap to 3 or 4 steps as otherwise, it’s just too much for someone to remember.
- Choices – This is where we roll all of our services up into 3 or 4 packages. This could be your lines of business, service packages, or product bundles. In our case, we can combine everything we do into “Get A Strategy. Get A Makeover. Get Leads.”
- Homework – I won’t get into all of the details here, but this would be where I would explain how the bar is higher now in marketing than ever, how it’s no longer realistic to have a couple of in house staff doing your marketing since you really need the depth and breadth of expertise of a specialized partner. The idea is that the reader should feel as though they are doing their research so they can feel good about saying yes.
- Offer – We’re trying to get people to have a conversation with us, so by inviting them to “Get Found”, we’re expressing our desired call-to-action.
- Option – Sometimes, when you ask someone to marry you, they may like you but they just don’t feel ready. The same goes for your marketing so you’ll need to give them an option to date for a little longer. In our case, we’ll offer the option of downloading an article where they can learn more about how to get found.
- Offer Again – While it’s true that no means no, it’s entirely possible that they were just playing a little hard to get, so without being pushy, we’ll at least ask again if they would like to Get Found. Hopefully, they’re ready to take things a step further.
Here’s another example we created for a certain property insurance adjuster you may know.
- Future – “Receive the Compensation you Deserve.”
- Fear – “Insurance Claim Denied Or Underpaid? Maximizing the amount of your claim is the opposite of what a profit-centered insurance company really wants to do.”
- Value – “We can help you get the compensation you deserve.”
- Pain – “If you don’t get paid, we don’t get paid.”
- Recipe – “Call for a free inspection. We handle the paperwork. You get paid.” These are the three simple steps that make it clear how to work with him.
- Choices – In this case, the buyer has the choices imposed upon them by the type of disaster so we simply highlight the types of claims you may have.
- Homework – Rather than list out a long paragraph, since not everyone understands what an insurance adjuster does, we created a simple cartoon explainer video.
- Offer – Our first ask is to call for a free inspection since it creates a high likelihood that the prospect will convert.
- Option – However, in case they’re not ready for that, we also offer the option of a free policy review.
- Offer Again – Not to be deterred, we do ask for the free inspection more than once.
So there you have it, a simple formula you can apply to your own business to build a message that will lead more of your prospects to want to do business with you.
And now, let me leave you with a quote from neuromarketing scientist Patrick Renvoise. “Traditionally, marketing research has focused on what people say they like or think they want. However, neuromarketing studies have now proven that customers cannot be trusted to articulate or even confirm what they like or want. That is why both likes and wants are poor predictors of buying behavior. Likes and wants are vague conscious interpretations of what we think we need to be happy and safe. They tend to shift over short periods based on lifestyle changes, trends, and even moods. On the other hand, our core fears and pains are more permanent. As such, they become the best predictors of how people make decisions. … The motivation that directly influences a buyer’s brain often arises from fearing devastating consequences.”
And that is why, when developing our message, we need to speak to the fear, show we understand it, and confidently lead our prospect through how we’ve got their back, and with our help, they can achieve the end state they desire.