Talk to the brain with your marketing
Studies prove that most purchases are made on an emotional level, and that logic is then used to justify the purchase.
No matter whether you’re an impulse buyer or someone who doesn’t buy anything without first going to four stores and doing three hours of internet research, if you really think about it, you probably buy on an emotional level, too. I’m an impulse buyer, I know I buy on emotion, and I’m happy when I can logically justify my purchase, especially if it’s expensive or if I want to get my husband’s approval — the logic makes me feel much better. My husband is very research oriented in his buying (it’s excruciating to go shopping with him), but, for things that are important to him, I notice that he still usually decides what he wants first (emotion), then does the painstaking research. Sometimes I can point out research that backs up better choices, just to try to trip him up, and he’ll steadfastly stand by his research for the product he wanted in the first place.
Think of the last car you bought — isn’t this the way you buy, too?
Knowing this, smart marketers go for the emotional first when promoting their products and services, then follow with the details. And to appeal to your prospects’ emotions, you have to appeal to their right brains.
The right brain is said to work 1000 times faster than the left brain. It learns in overviews and in pictures, and it guides the left brain into details.
According to Michael P. Pitek, III of The Performance Group, in his paper “Brain Differences: Creativity and the Right Side of the Brain,”
“The right brain functions in a non-verbal manner and excels in visual, spatial, perceptual, and intuitive information. Processing happens very quickly and the style of processing is nonlinear and nonsequential. The right brain looks at the whole picture and quickly seeks to determine the spatial relationships of all the parts as they relate to the whole. This component of the brain is not concerned with things falling into patterns because of prescribed rules. On the contrary, the right brain seems to flourish dealing with complexity, ambiguity and paradox.”
Great for engaging people, the right brain. Wonderful for the senses, with sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells, and pictures. Fantastic for patterns, metaphors, analogies, role-playing, visualization. Terrible at categorizing, analyzing, placing things in order, and comparing elements. For that, you need the left brain.
The bottom line is that people use both parts of their brains when making buying decisions — it takes both the right (emotional) and left (logical) brains to really seal the deal. Which part of the brain is used when can give marketers clues for the sequence, timing, and key elements of their marketing campaigns. Marketing that leaves out one side of the brain or the other, or presents information in the wrong order, usually leaves propective customers’ brains without the right information to make a decision.
For more interesting brain information, see this excellent article on the rise of the Conceptual Age (right brain) over the Information Age (left brain) from Wired magazine, “Revenge of the Right Brain.” Also check out “The Way our Mind Works” by Vadim Kotelnikov.
[tags]right brain, left brain, engaging people, buying decisions, marketing to the brain [/tags]
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August 17th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
[...] The implications for marketing are very clear as well  emotion trumps logic. Or at the very least, it should come first. You can always use the logic later, to justify the emotion. See my May 25th post, Talk to the Brain with Your Marketing. [...]