Facebook works by monitoring everything you pause to view, everything you like or comment on and every group you join. They then feed you more of the same because they want you to stay engaged as long as possible. That makes sense doesn’t it? They target your confirmation bias. Unfortunately, this confirmation bias is polarising people’s beliefs and is not helpful. You cannot have meaningful dialogue with others when all you see confirms what you believe is true. You can use this with your marketing by understanding your prospective customer. If you can get someone to believe in your claims – not by reason, but by emotion and gut feeling – then no amount of reasoning can talk them out of how they feel. When you know your prospect’s values and who they feel are villains, you can get an idea of what they already believe about the world and how it works. From there, it’s not hard to construct things that they feel would be true from their point of view. Typically, people don’t question information that confirms their existing worldview. Once they accept the emotional truth of a thing, it can be challenging for logic to intrude and dislodge the belief. Does this sound sinister? It can be. It’s how people fall prey to conspiracy theory addiction, for example. They have an emotional belief in dark forces secretly oppressing them. Explanations that lack logic, but support that emotional belief, will be accepted. Once accepted, opposing explanations will be rejected if they don’t support their emotion-based belief about how “true” it feels. But let’s examine what is at work here. Your logical brain exists as a stop-gap mechanism. It’s meant to help keep you from hurting yourself with emotion-driven behaviour by allowing you to think through the consequences. The problem is that your internal protective mechanisms can overreact to things and use logic to talk you out of taking any risks, even if the benefit might be more than worth it. For example, not committing to a potentially rewarding relationship out of fear of the possibility of heartache from rejection – or even an eventual break-up far in the future. So your sceptical bodyguard brain tries to use logic to hold you back from making bad decisions. But the flaw in your mental programming is that the sceptical protection mechanism can only go to work on the behaviours, plans, and ideas you don’t honestly believe in. If you believe in something deeply and emotionally, your logical brain won’t touch it. It treats it as though it’s a proven reality. That’s why persuasion works best when you convince emotionally first. Once you do, only reason that supports the belief can be allowed in. Reason that refutes it will bounce off. For example, say you sell a weight-loss supplement. Suppose your prospect has emotional disbelief in all such products as “snake oil”. In that case, no amount of proof will sway their logical mind because they’ll emotionally believe that these “facts and figures” are falsified, to begin with. But if you can go to work on that emotional belief first, acknowledge it, and reveal that you know why they felt that way. You know how they came to believe it and justify it. Validate it. But then shift and explain how that “truth” isn’t universal. It’s not carved in stone forever. And that they should take their valid scepticism and apply it to this new material that opens up the possibility of a new belief. That yes, most supplements are phony crap because XYZ. But some supplements might not be because of ABC. Teach them how to tell the difference. Then, start supplying the logical support that proves your supplement is in the ABC category. Put more simply. Logic can help validate an emotional decision. If this makes sense to you, and you believe you can learn to apply it, you can peel back the barriers of the world around you and begin to chase down what you really want. Not just in using copy to sell stuff, but in getting everyone to do what you want them to. Use with caution. Be a good guy. Regards, P.S. Want to learn how to write to the reader’s emotions? Become someone who can make a living by emailing and writing blog posts? Finally, shut up that damned brother-in-law who laughs at you and your ‘little internet business’? Become the hero in your partner’s eyes when you show them the bank balance? You can. |
Where the marketing is easy.
