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IN THIS CHAPTER

❯❯ Focusing your efforts on the unconscious mind

❯❯ Discovering what really drives consumers’ choices

❯❯ Making use of social influencers

❯❯ Acknowledging people’s need for happiness and purpose

❯❯ Creating ESP profiles

When asked what really drives consumer choice, common answers include quality, reputation, brand awareness, convenience, and of course price. However, although these are influencers at some level in most decision processes, they’re not the most powerful driver as many consumers and marketers believe they are. Another more powerful influencer must be engaged in all decision processes, B2B and B2C, for both small and large purchases, before any of the others have a chance to influence people. That influencer is the unconscious mind, which drives 90 percent of people’s thoughts and behavior, according to various neuromarketing studies, including those from Gerald Zaltman of Harvard University, widely known as the pioneer of neuromarketing.

So think about that for a minute: If 90 percent of all thoughts are unconscious, why do we market to the other 10 percent? If you’re marketing to the conscious mind with “limited time offers,” “act now,” and “our quality is better than their quality” types of appeals for consumers to ponder and act on, you’re targeting only 10 percent of the decision process. That is a lot of waste!

The Unconscious Mind: The Real Driver of Consumer Choice

Traditionally, advertising has been all about promoting prices, conveniences, brand reputations, price advantages, and other appeals that the conscious mind processes. Yet people don’t always get far enough into advertisements to process the value of a given offer if the ad, content, posts, experience – whatever the medium is – doesn’t first appeal to their unconscious mind. If the research is true, you’re wasting 90 percent of your budget by appealing to just the 10 percent of the brain that drives the decisions people make. That doesn’t make for good marketing returns.

The unconscious mind makes rapid judgments about marketing materials and messages and dictates immediately how it should “behave.” These thoughts and actions are driven by our “schema,” or set of preconceived thoughts and beliefs that drive what we believe to be “truth,” real, and valuable.

The influence of schemas and the unconscious mind

We all have schemas associated with our political, religious, social, and brand beliefs and choices, and we typically pass off any outliers that don’t fit the notions we believe as anomalies, even when evidence proves our schemas wrong, or at least makes us question what we believe.

Pew Research shows that scientists and the public are far apart when it comes to believing evidence of opinions about key social issues, such as vaccines, GMOs, and climate change. And no matter what people hear about their chosen politicians, religions, and other sources of ideology, they tend to believe what they’ve chosen to believe and ignore contradictory facts despite the sources of the scientific, validated data. For example, 88 percent of scientists say research shows that GMOs are safe. Only 37 percent of the public believes them.

Think about the things you’ve believed most of your life. How much would it take for you to change your attitudes and beliefs? Convincing customers to change brands, acknowledge your brand’s distinctions and value, and try your product over another is not always that much different. You need to build a powerful case to get consideration and trial. And you’re best able to do this by applying psychological principles related to choice rather than just sound marketing messages and personalized promotions triggered by automated CRM systems, data management platforms, and more, all of which we discuss later in this book.

Schemas reflect not only the attitudes and perceptions people have developed from their culture, community, and environments; they also reflect how the brain works in general. For example, schemas are unconscious expectations of patterns, rhythms, and such. When you listen to music, your brain has a set perception for how all the melody will harmonize, how the notes will scale, and how the rhythm will flow. People like music that fits this “schema,” which was used by the masters and by modern‐day songwriters and musicians.

Just like these mental schemas that guide expectations when listening to music, aligning with political and religious organizations, and more, people have “brand schema,” or preset expectations for experience with brands they trust.

These schemas associated with products and brands are largely built on prior experiences, memories, and people’s conscious and unconscious values.

The conscious and unconscious minds often disagree

Young & Rubicam did a study in 2013 involving adults throughout the United States, South America, and Asia to see how close people’s conscious values line up with their unconscious ones. What they found, and later published in a report called “Secrets and Lies,” is surprising to most. It shows just how far apart the conscious and unconscious thought processes are. Take a look at Table 2‐1. Just like psychologists have said for years, people are driven, unconsciously, for survival, to connect with outers in meaningful relationships, and by the traditions in which they were raised, although few want to admit that if you look at attitude reports for younger generations of consumers.

TABLE 2-1 Conscious Versus Unconscious Values

Now for the secrets:

❯❯ Most interesting is that the unconscious mind results showed “helpfulness” as dead last, 16 of 16 variables tested, while the conscious mind put it as the number‐one value.

❯❯ The conscious mind listed “sexual fulfillment” as number 14 of 16 variables, even though it shows up in the number‐two spot for the unconscious mind. Perhaps people don’t like to admit consciously that they need others in their lives to be happy? Most people probably like to think they’re fine and independent on their own, but years of psychology studies show that people are all generally happier, more fulfilled, and reach their greater potential much more when they have fulfilling relationships with others.

What you can take from this is that what people say and think is often not what they really do. This alone has huge implications for what marketers need to emphasize most in marketing content, which is not what they’ve typically been doing.

PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVERS APPLY TO B2B EVEN MORE THAN B2C

Research shows that personal values influence people’s choices for consumer goods and even more so for business purchases. In fact, Google/Motista research shows that

• B2B customers are more emotionally connected to their vendors and service providers than B2C consumers.

• When personal values are present in a business choice, purchasers are eight times more likely to pay a premium price.

• In contrast, only 14 percent of business purchasers see a real difference between suppliers and are willing to pay for that difference.

This research is very telling and can’t be ignored in the highly competitive B2B marketing environment. If you’re in B2B, identifying and addressing those personal values are key to helping you gain competitive advantage because most marketers in this space don’t understand this or how to do it. This chapter sets forth what those values are and how the processes of the brain, and the conscious and unconscious minds, spark emotions and behavior associated with those values.

(To delve more into this research, check out www.thinkwithgoogle.com, “From Promotion to Emotion: Connecting B2B customers to Brands.”)

Psychological Drivers That Drive Sales

Consciously and unconsciously, all human behavior is based on two emotional premises:

❯❯ The avoidance of pain

❯❯ The pursuit of pleasure

Everything we do is driven by these basic needs, socially, professionally, and personally. When marketers understand the pain their customers are consciously and unconsciously avoiding when purchasing their product category, they can much better align their messaging to be relevant far beneath the surface of the typical decision process.

Pain and pleasure in marketing terms are simply the fear and joy people experience as life events unfold or as they anticipate something bad or good happening in their lives. For example, when you choose to purchase auto insurance, you know that you’ll be covered against losing your car or substantial amounts of money if you have an accident and gain a sense of joy as a result. You also know that you can avoid a lot of pain as a result of coverage, and both of these emotional outcomes drive your choices to purchase the category and the brand you chose.

When doing customer surveys, ask your customers what they fear about your product category. What do they enjoy about it? And what fears and joys are associated with doing business with your brand? Do they fear poor customer service, intimidating return policies, or paying too much for what they get? When you know the answers to these questions, you can create messaging, content, and experiences that are highly relevant to what drives your customers.

Neurotransmitters and how they affect choice

The most powerful forces that affect human actions related to finding joy or avoiding fear and pain are neurotransmitters, or the hormones that create strong emotional reactions to the stimuli people encounter daily in all areas of the world.

These neurotransmitters are

❯❯ Dopamine: Dopamine rushes occur when you anticipate a reward, such as a job promotion for doing good or a great deal on a new car, a great afterlife due to religious obedience, or reciprocal love. You feel euphoric, infallible, and ready to conquer your goals. This is the rush that makes people become addicted to drugs.

❯❯ Oxytocin: This hormone is known as the love hormone. When you develop connections with others and you feel that powerful sense of validation and reciprocity for how you feel about them, and being with that person makes you feel valued and loved, your brain releases oxytocin. This feeling is often described as falling in love, and it feels good. As a result, people seek loving bonds with others via social and professional hives, and when they find it, they often become loyal supporters. Research shows that when people experience an oxytocin rush, the part of their brain that governs judgment and fear is shut off.

❯❯ Cortisol: When you feel threatened physically, emotionally, socially, or financially, you experience a rush of confusion, insecurity, doubt, and fear. You respond by either fighting and taking on the challenge or by flying away as fast as you can to avoid the crisis and seek a safety zone, which often is just a state of denial. This is what triggers the fight‐or‐flight mentality that drives much of what people do.

❯❯ Serotonin: This is the hormone that helps stave off depression. It makes you feel calm and upbeat and gives you the ability to face your daily challenges with hope, optimism, and confidence. Listening to music that has the right schematic patterns and tones often creates feelings of love, nostalgia, comfort, or confidence, all of which influence serotonin rushes and your mood.

When marketers trigger these rushes, knowingly or not, they create feelings that compel consumers to behavior – either toward or away from the behavior they’re seeking to trigger. The challenge you have as a marketer is to create the rushes that create excitement for your brand, the experience and products you deliver, and not the ones that send people flying to the competition. Unwittingly, many marketers do both.

How does this relate to marketing? More simply than you may think. The first step is to know the emotions associated with the decision process for your category. For example: As mentioned earlier, most insurance customers don’t trust their carriers to deliver on the promises contained in their policies. But they buy insurance anyway because they fear the consequences if they were liable in a car accident, if the house burned down, or if they got really sick and couldn’t afford the care. Two emotions that insurance company marketers must address in their marketing, then, are distrust and fear. Three considerations may be to

❯❯ Use testimonials validating your fulfillment of claims.

❯❯ Cite industry awards from third parties showing that you meet or exceed the industry standards.

❯❯ Identify and address fears related to your category and show consumers that you understand how they feel and why. Use empathy to let them know you’re just like them, because people tend to buy from others they deem to be like themselves.

Moving from USPs to ESPs

One of the most important things marketers must do today is to move away from USPs – unique selling propositions – to ESPs – emotional selling propositions. ESPs are the messages that get through because they appeal to the emotions, such as those listed in the previous section.

A brand’s ESP is a statement about how it fulfills a given emotion associated with its category. Understanding the emotional value you provide is key to your success in all forms of marketing – direct, social, personalized, mass, and experiences and events.

For example, if you’re selling luxury apparel, what is the emotional fulfillment your customers seek by wearing something with your label or insignia and by paying much more than a functional alternative would cost? These emotions that drive the choice to buy your product at your most likely elevated price likely include

❯❯ Feelings of glamor or beauty

❯❯ Feelings of confidence and personal respect

❯❯ Feelings of superiority to others who aren’t wearing similarly unique or expensive clothing

The final emotion of superiority often stays in the unconscious as it relates to the most powerful of all related emotions: survival. When you know you have something most others don’t, and that few can afford, you feel superior whether you realize it or not. And when you feel superior, you anticipate your ability to survive over others, and you experience a form of a dopamine rush that makes you feel joy about the products or experiences that set you above others. Much of this is unconscious but very real at the same time. That feeling of superiority and associated sense of survival drives some to purchase a $60,000 Gucci crocodile handbag.

If there’s one emotion you must address in your brand’s ESP, it is the survival ability that your product offers to your consumers and your superior ability to deliver survival over your competitors. No, this isn’t a bunch of psychology babble. It’s critical insight as to how you can craft emotionally and relevant messaging, offers, promotions and more to your customers and prospects and achieve what we call “unthinkable ROI.”

Rewards versus loss

As you contemplate how to appeal to emotions in your marketing, keep in mind that humans are more risk adverse than they are reward seekers. People consciously and unconsciously want to hold on to what they have more than gain a reward, especially if they could lose something in return. It’s part of the survival instinct.

Daniel Kahnemann, psychologist and author, has conducted a great deal of research about human psychology and how people process information and make choices. His research consistently shows that when people are faced with a choice to risk losing something in order to gain something, they most often choose to avoid the risk rather than take the chance of winning the award. In other words, he found that people will pay a high price to get a sure gain and to avoid a sure loss.

Ask yourself the following questions:

❯❯ What potential losses can consumers experience by not buying your product?

❯❯ How can your brand deliver on the promise of avoiding that loss in ways that competitors can’t?

Being able to answer these questions and deliver on them is key to differentiating your product from others emotionally, and that is the most critical differentiation of all.

Brands can imitate and duplicate your product’s features, functions, and price point. What they can’t do so easily is replicate your emotional experience and fulfillment. This should be the top priority of your marketing program and everything you do based on the tactics and strategies discussed in this book.

Survival insticts

When viewing illusion art that shows either a woman looking in a mirror or a skull, most see the skull first. This is because the brain is wired to see threats to prevent harm before seeing the reward or joy.

Identify the fear that drives your customers and address it directly so you can put them at ease. After you diminish the fear or present a visible solution, you can then communicate better to the unconscious mind and more clearly to the conscious mind.

Here’s how common products tap people’s survival instincts:

❯❯ Insurance: Survive accidents or mishaps that could destroy critical possessions like homes and cars.

❯❯ Education: Survive the economic woes of not being able to get good jobs, live a quality life, and provide for children.

❯❯ Luxury cars: Survive the perils of not achieving a high social status, which could include exclusion from influential circles, interesting experiences, and respect in business.

Your ESP should encompass the fears and joys sought through your product category, consciously and unconsciously, and should be present in your marketing messages, content marketing, social dialogue, customer experiences, and sales propositions. Crafting your brand’s ESP is as critical as writing a mission statement that guides your operations and values.

BORN TO SURVIVE OR CHASE THE THRILLS

Even with all the data and research over the years that show that people are molded by environments, psychology theories hold true that many people’s attitudes and choices are part of their DNA. Psychologists maintain that humans are born with one of two affective systems that drives the emotional reactions to many of their life’s experiences and the stimuli presented to them on a daily basis. One system is driven by the human need to survive and maintain security; the other by the thrill of the chase, or a desire to take risks and live off the adrenalin of excitement. The “born this way” theory explains why kids from the same family have such different approaches to risk taking and security, yet their environment and parenting is the same.

Knowing how each of these affective systems affects people’s attraction to brands and their promotions is essential to succeed, as these drivers are some of the strongest influences over the choices we make.

Understanding the basics of human psychology

To be an effective marketer in any industry, you need to understand some basics about human psychology and how the mind triggers behavior. Many agencies have popped up in recent years claiming to be experts in behavior marketing; however, most focus on projecting behavior based on past behavior. Although this is important for your database, CRM, DMP, and direct marketing efforts, it’s not enough.

To be successful, you also need to focus on behavior that results from psychological triggers, such as the neurotransmitters mentioned earlier and other psychological processes. From psychologists and their proven theories, old and new, you can learn a great deal about how people think and act.

Following are some insights from two of the most well‐known contributors to psychology theories, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Freud’s personality theory

One of the key marketing lessons from Freud is his personality theory, which suggests that people each have three personalities, or voices, in their heads that compete with each other when making basic and complex decisions. These personalities are the id, ego, and superego:

❯❯ The id acts like a compulsive toddler that has to have what it wants when it wants it and doesn’t care about future consequences to self or others.

❯❯ The ego wants to please the id but after thinking through a plan to get it in an appropriate manner.

❯❯ The superego is the voice of reason, deciding appropriate actions to take based on social norms and life experiences to date, what is right, what is wrong, and so on.

Whichever voice wins out the most dictates people’s individual personalities and, for marketers, predicts their behavior when it comes to shopping and assigning loyalty.

Think about which personality is most involved in making the decision to purchase your category and brand within it. Are you selling cookies or doughnuts and want to spark an impulsive drive to buy some, regardless of diet and health consequences? You need to appeal to the id in a way that overpowers the ego and the superego. Oreo does this well with its ads about dunking an Oreo in milk. Shops at malls that put out the inviting smell of fresh cinnamon roles, hot cookies, and such do a great job at sparking the impulsive id.

If, however, you’re marketing fitness and nutrition products, apps, or the like, you may want to first appeal to the ego with information about responsible diet and exercise habits and then mention low‐calorie cookies that satisfy the id without throwing out the plans made to stay on track for reaching healthy goals.

Jung’s archetypal theories

Carl Jung, known for his archetypal theories, believed that the human psyche is nothing more than mass confusion because so much of all people do and think is unconscious. What marketers can learn from him is that people cycle through four main archetypes:

❯❯ Shelf: The dark side of human nature or the unbridled carnal self

❯❯ Self: The place where the conscious mind connects with the unconscious mind

❯❯ Animus: The true person individuals are in terms of their values and personalities

❯❯ Persona: The person people project to others to cover up their true self, their animus

And when you know where the core of your customers lies in terms of these stereotypes, you can again be more relevant. If you’re marketing to young Generation X adults who are a few years into their career, you may be safe to assume that they’re trying to project a sense of success, achievement, potential, and distinction in their business world to attract career opportunities. If your product can help them do this, reflect it in your messaging and creative.

Another perspective Jung gives in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul provides great direction for a brand’s positioning and messaging strategies:

Faith, hope, love, and insight are the highest achievements of human effort. They are given by experience.

If this is truly what people seek in life, how does your product support the journey to attaining these emotional outcomes? For example:

❯❯ If you’re in education, does going back to school give people the insight to reach their highest achievements?

❯❯ If you sell luxury goods, does buying your apparel, cars, or other items help individuals achieve the love they seek in life?

Ask yourself key questions about the psychological fulfillment your brand helps support. Doing so will help you see your product’s value in a much different light – the light from the way your customers’ unconscious minds see it.

Aligning with Powerful Social Influencers

Along with psychological triggers, social influencers that are rooted in some of the psychology described in the previous section drive people’s thoughts, choices, and actions. The following sections explore some of these social influencers.

Authority

Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram did a study to see how the role of authority influences people to do things that go against their values and conscious. He set up an experiment with one volunteer playing the role of a student and another playing the role of a teacher. The student volunteer was fitted with electrodes that would deliver shocks each time the teacher pushed a button, which he/she was instructed to do each time the student got a question wrong. As the experiment went on, the student missed more questions, and the shock got stronger. The teacher volunteers started to get upset, even physically ill, hearing the pain and agony of the student who was sitting on the other side of a screen. But when the leader, someone in a white coat, told the teachers to increase the volume and push the button to deliver the shock, the majority kept doing it against their own conscious.

Remarkably, 65 percent of the volunteers kept following the instructions from the person in authority. According to the study’s report, subjects were anxious and stressed about inflicting pain, and some so much so that they were “sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, groaning, digging their fingernails into their skin, and some were even having nervous laughing fits or seizures.”

This shows how powerful authorities are in influencing behavior. From childhood, many are taught to respect authorities of various types – police officers, teachers, church leaders, parents, doctors, and so forth.

To tap into the power of authority in your marketing plan, you need to first do the following:

❯❯ Determine which authorities have the most influence in your product category.

❯❯ Find out what expertise they share that makes them an authority and how this expertise is related to your brand values, attributes, and so on.

❯❯ Identify how you can align with authorities to validate your category and your brand. Some methods might include asking them to write a guest blog for your website, inviting them to speak at your events, or even paying them to be a spokesperson for your products.

Another way to tap into the influence of authority is to cite research reports, statistics, and testimonials from experts in your communications to validate your product claims and add strength to your messaging.

Social proof

No matter how sophisticated, intelligent, accomplished, or otherwise your customers are, they’re still driven by social proof, whether they admit it or not. It aligns with the human need for survival as, unconsciously, people feel weak or disadvantaged when others have something they don’t or are achieving something they haven’t yet. In these cases, people often feel inferior, a contrast to the feelings that they unconsciously seek to feel fulfilled and secure.

Robert Cialdini, a psychologist and author, has done many experiments to see how this plays out in various settings. He found that by telling customers that their neighbors, friends, peers, and so forth were doing something worthwhile, like reusing towels at a hotel or participating in an environmental program, they were much more likely to do so as well than if he just told them it was a good thing to do to support a good program.

This is where testimonials play a strong role. Numbers like a 98 percent customer satisfaction rate, a high NPS, or Net Promoter Score, and like attributes show consumers that others are like you and substantially increase their willingness to try your product and/or brand.

When trying to influence behavior, let consumers know that others are engaged in the desired behavior, and watch your response take off. Note that on pages like Amazon.com, there’s a list of like products that other “customers reviewed.” Most people don’t want to miss out on a good thing, so many will review them, too.

Reciprocity

No matter how much we accept the notion that life is not fair, we still hope it will be. At least when it comes to how people treat us. We thrive when one good deed creates another and embrace those who treat us reciprocally. This applies to our personal and professional relationships. Brands that understand that “giving back” is not just about their corporate social responsibility efforts but about giving back to the individuals who give their business loyalty to them are the ones with the most sustainability in good times and bad.

When people feel recognized and appreciated by businesses they patronize, their satisfaction is higher and so is their repeat business and referrals.

A favorite example of reciprocity for marketers is a campaign conducted by a regional bank called First Bank. It ran a billboard campaign with nothing more than the words math tutor, dog walker, wedding singer, and a name with a phone number below each title. Nothing more about the bank’s offerings, advantages, and so on. It was truly running a campaign to help its customers. It really did have customers with those names and jobs, and when the phone rang, they really did refer people to that bank. This was a brilliant campaign because it showed customers that the bank truly cared about giving back to them, no matter how big or small, and instead of just using words to make that point, it used actions and a lot of its advertising budget. According to the VP of marketing at the time, it was highly successful in stopping attrition at a time when most banks were losing customers and also in gaining new customers.

Reciprocity is a simple and very affordable marketing program. It doesn’t take a lot to give back to customers through better service, reward points, free gifts, mentions in your newsletters, content marketing, social posts, and so on. But the payback can be huge. When you develop your customer surveys, as discussed in Chapter 4, add a question asking customers to tell you how they would like to be rewarded.

Scarcity

A few years ago, Hostess Brands got in trouble and had to shut down, discontinuing some of America’s favorite snack foods, including the Twinkie, almost overnight. Suddenly, people had to have what they hadn’t even wanted in years. Adults who remembered the Twinkie from their youth stormed stores and bought boxes of Twinkies before they could no longer even buy one. Sales went up 31,000 percent (not a typo) in just days. This is a strong example of the huge power that scarcity has on consumers’ thoughts and behavior. It’s true. People often don’t want or value something until they can’t have it anymore. Then they can’t get it fast enough or enough of it.

You see this all the time in marketing: “One seat left at this price,” “One left in stock,” and so on. Whether it’s true or not and whether people believe it or not, they’ll often buy it, just in case.

These psychological and social elements apply to all your customers generally and specifically. To be most effective, you need to identify your brand’s “umbrella” position and then positions that are specific to the values, aspirations, and ESP profiles for each segment.

For example: If you’re a retailer of organic, toxic‐free household items, your ESP may read like this:

We deliver confidence knowing that your home is free from toxins that affect your health and the joy of knowing your children are protected from issues that could affect their quality of life. Families that use our products can relax and focus on other life issues, knowing that they are protected at home.

Your ESP now involves creating messaging and positioning around confidence, joy, and relaxing as a result of using a product that delivers all three.

Here’s a real‐world example of how ESPs can work in the B2B world: I (Jeanette) once worked with a financial firm that was trying to get people to invest in their real estate fund by telling them how lucrative and smart real estate investing was. No one was buying it, especially since the big Madoff investment fraud scandal had just been exposed, and real estate had not performed well in recent years. So we changed the ESP of his sales presentation. Instead of walking in with a presentation about how solid real estate was and trustworthy my client was, we started off by talking about the potential clients’ fears and their preconceived attitudes or schema about real estate. We actually said things like, “You know, real estate has had its challenges and has been risky. And we can see why investors have been leery.” We just validated their feelings, confirmed their schema, and established trust. They listened, and they listened all the way to yes. My client closed four accounts with whom he had struggled to get a meaningful conversation.

Appealing to Consumers’ Happiness and Purpose

Daily, we humans constantly strive to find and associate with happiness. Happiness is not only the greatest achievement we seek in life, but it’s also a magnet for brands that truly understand its power. Coca‐Cola has emerged as the beverage company in a league all its own and also one of the top brands globally for sales, loyalty, and brand respect. As of this writing, Coke has more than 100 million followers on its Facebook page. It became the leader of the happiness movement with its “Happiness” campaign that focused on delivering happiness to people in surprising ways around the world. Coke’s content marketing and marketing content had no mentions of its product, just videos, ads, posts, and web and social content about how to find and share happiness. Subsequently, it has held a steady position as one of the top five brands for respect and revenue worldwide in listings by Interbrand and other top analyst groups.