Archive for On Writing Better – Page 9

Neuromarketing Books for Marketing to Brains

By Patsi Krakoff
Sunday, October 24th, 2010

If you want to know more about how to write content that makes an impact on the brains of your readers, here are some interesting sites and books about the emerging field of neuromarketing.

There are new neuromarketing companies and books galore, and I believe most offer important clues for content marketers. Here are a few of my favorites:

Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Copy
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7 Ways to Market to the Subconscious Brain:
The Homer Simpson Guide to Content Marketing

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Content marketing and the people who write marketing messages must understand how consumers’ brains work if  they want to engage and create trust and loyalty. The problem lies in assuming people are in charge of their own choices…

Everybody thinks they are in control of their behaviors and decisions. We think we are rational, logical, and smart human beings. But we may not be so smart if we don’t recognize our own and others’ irrationality.

Our behavior and decision-making is affected, 95% of the time, by the unconscious processing in the mid and old brains. 95% of our decision making and buying and Web actions are heavily influenced by unconscious processing.

85% of the time our brains are on autopilot. But marketers continue to write messages as if people were paying attention.

Market research: in 2005 corporations spent more than $7.3 billion in US alone. In 2007, $12 billion. That doesn’t include marketing, advertising, etc. which carries an additional annual $117 billion tag. Most of it is spent in the wrong places and fails.

Companies and brands are gathering the wrong information, because consumer surveys and focus groups can only report back what they consciously experience …and it’s falsified by biases and flaws. The only true market research comes from monitoring brains of consumers as they react to messages, through neuromarketing.

8 out of 10 new product launches fail. Could it be that we’ve misunderstood how to capture attention,  emotions and be memorable to consumers? Could it be we assume people are conscious and rational?

Health warnings on cigarette labels actually trigger smoking behaviors, they don’t deter any smoking at all, quite the contrary. How do we know? Not because smokers report they ignore the warnings. They all say they read them and believe them and want to quit smoking. But their brain scans show they actually want a cigarette even more. (Buyology, Martin Lindstrom) Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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Content Marketing that Speaks to the Old Brain

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

You get better results with your content marketing when you speak to the “old brain,” the one that’s also known as the primitive brain or the survival brain. Knowing how the brain works will help you write better as well as help you with presentations to influence others.

There are a few principles to remember, and here’s a great story that makes this come alive…

A Marketing Moment with a Homeless Man…

I want to share an excerpt of a story by Patrick Renvoisé, from his book Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Customers’ Brain. He tells the story of how he earned the equivalent of a $960/hour consulting fee from a homeless man…

One evening as I was entering a restaurant in San Francisco, a homeless person stopped me. His sign read, “Homeless. Please HELP.”

The man showed all the signs of distress with sad empty eyes. He looked me directly in the eyes, and I was compelled to hand over a few bucks. However, something led me to go further with this particular man.

Like many of my clients who try to get responses from marketing, his message was weak, and certainly not unique. So I gave him $2 on condition he let me change the message on his sign for at least 2 hours.

The man agreed, and I wrote a different message on the back of his sign. Later, we met up again.

He insisted on giving me $10, because he had made over $60 while I was having dinner. His usual take averaged $2-$10 an hour.

As my entire interaction had lasted only 30 seconds, this eight dollar profit translated into a $960/hour consulting fee, not bad.

All I did was apply what I know about the brain and marketing messages that get people to act.

Here’s what his new cardboard sign said: Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Copy
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Brain Scans Reveal 3 Elements of “Buying Brain”

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

As more brands are being studied in laboratories around the world, consumers are being hooked up to brain imaging machines, fMRI, EEG and other devices so that they are monitored while they read marketing messages and make decisions.

Neuromarketing is extremely expensive market research to do, but fortunately most brains work the same, with some exceptions for age and gender. So the results acquired for companies with big budgets are showing us how to create messages that have a powerful impact on the brains of all consumers.

So far, neuromarketing studies have shown that these three factors determine whether or not a consumer is inclined to make a buying decision:

  1. The degree of ATTENTION
  2. Whether or not there is emotional ENGAGEMENT
  3. How easily the message and the brand is encoded to MEMORY

Attention, emotional engagement, memory: 3 keys to priming the brains of your audience to buy or take the action you want. (Source: The Buying Brain, A.K. Pradeep, CEO of NeuroFocus)

And this makes sense, doesn’t it? … you can’t get someone to the point of wanting to buy something without first getting their attention. And if your message resonates with them on an emotional level, they’ll have trust. It’s well known that experiences that carry a strong feeling have better chances of being remembered.

In order to buy your brand, they have to remember where they saw it, and where they can go take action.

Think of a monkey waking up in a tree… he swings through the branches and he sees a bright yellow banana through the branches. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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What Drives Us? 4 Keys to Creating Compelling Content

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, October 18th, 2010

I’m extremely curious about the subconscious drives that compel people to do the things they do, in their work, in their choices, and their buying decisions, aren’t you? Sometimes, you feel driven to do things, and you don’t really know why.

Engaging the hearts and minds of readers through written content isn’t easy. The Content Marketing Institute recently surveyed content marketers who report that’s their #1 challenge:

How to write content that is “engaging,“ that gets readers to pay attention, the compels them to take action.

I think to be successful with content, one has to appeal to fundamental human drives and motivations, the ones that our primitive ancestors passed down to us over the last 100,000 years.

Recently, I came across a fascinating book I read 10 years ago, based on evolutionary biology, sociology, and psychology: Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices by Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Noria.

These two incredibly smart professors propose a theory of four fundamental motivations at the heart of all human behavior.

  1. The drive to acquire objects and experiences that improve our status relative to others.
  2. The drive to bond with others in long-term relationships of mutually caring commitment.
  3. The drive to learn and make sense of the world and of ourselves.
  4. The drive to defend ourselves, our loved ones, our beliefs and resources from harm.

This theory says that humans and social groups will enjoy an advantage to the extent that they are able to fulfill all four of these basic human drives.

It suggests these drives have a strong emotional component, and would probably show up in the limbic system of the brain if monitored under brain scans. What that means is that they are embedded in the subconscious mind, out of our awareness.

After reading this book and a few others on human motivation, I can see how these four drives apply to writing emotionally engaging content that compels readers to take action:

Content written to appeal to each of these four drives will engage the emotional brains of readers.

Let me tell you a story that shows how this works. Information passes to the brain through the sense organs.

Let’s say Fred is reading the news online, and his eye catches a picture of an ad: a business man driving to work in a red sports car. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Copy
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Neuroscientists Discover “WIIFM” Center in Brain…

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Through the magic of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), neuroscientists are able to look inside the brains of consumers while reading marketing messages.

Copywriters and content marketers have been telling us for years how important it is to address the “what’s in it for me” filter in consumers’ minds.

Really Big News: They’ve found this WIIFM center located in the old brain!

Thanks to advanced scientific formulas and algorithms, we can now market directly to the subconscious mind and get anybody to do what we want without even knowing it!

I’m just kidding you… If that were actually true, it’d be really scary. It’s not that easy, neither is neuroscience easily applied to content marketing. Every time I read about a new neuromarketing study, it seems they’re only confirming what copywriters and marketers knew all along.

But here’s some new information, which could improve your marketing messages. Although we can’t directly cause people to do something, we can use knowledge of the brain to improve our chances of influencing their buying decisions. We can write better content because we understand how consumers make decisions.

We know more about the subconscious functions than ever before. We know what kinds of messages reach the emotional brain and the old brain, even though consumers aren’t aware of their influence. More importantly, we now understand that much of our decision making goes on in the old brain, out of conscious awareness.

Neuromarketing and science can help improve your content writing so that it has more of an impact on people in your target audience.

I just love this site: SalesBrain, a neuromarketing company. Founded by Christophe Morin and Patrick Renvoise, authors of Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Button Inside Your Customers’ Brains. The company does sales training using neuroscience as it applies to what influences buying decisions.

I recommend you visit the site, as it is clear and easy to navigate to find great information about buying decisions. I found the page on 6 ways to stimulate the old brain especially illuminating.

Here’s an excerpt: Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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Emotional Attention + Memory = Content Marketing

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

How do you write good blog posts that connect emotionally with readers and turn them into loyal fans? Oh, heck, that’s easy. All you have to do is:

  1. Grab their attention
  2. Get them emotionally engaged
  3. Make a memorable impact

There you go, right? Easy-peasy. This is what you need to do whenever you write any content designed to market your products and services. Attention, emotions, memory.

Neuroscientists are now showing that the two most important elements of persuasion are emotional engagement and memory. Of course you can’t get either of these unless your marketing messages gain readers’ attention first.

Why this is so important? We’ll go into how to do it another day, since this involves quite  number of suggestions and tips.

These three goals for your content marketing are required if you want to write stuff that is effective to attract prospects, and get them interested and primed for making a purchase or other desired action.

This information comes from research on neuromarketing and what makes people buy. If you’re interested in learning more about the brain from a marketer’s viewpoint, I recommend The Buying Brain and Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer’s Brains.

Neuroscientists are monitoring brain activity in consumers as they are exposed to marketing messages. You probably don’t have access to the brain imaging that is being generated by these studies, and quite frankly, you don’t need it. All brains are alike. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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Writing Well: A Little More Authenticity, Please…

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

How do you go into someone’s office (or send them an email if you’re working virtually) and request them to “put a little more authenticity into your writing, please?” Sure, marketing is vastly improved when it sounds authentic.

All the trend data shows that people prefer doing business with authentic brands and authentic professionals. The problem is that as an instruction it is totally unactionable. Authenticity is a noun, not a verb.

Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existential philosopher, viewed jazz as a representation of freedom and authenticity. But what does that mean for content marketing?

So as I was thinking about this incident that a colleague told me about, I starting thinking about the big picture. What does it mean to live authentically, to live well, write well, and do your best work?

I think about these things because, as I age, I become more aware of how limited time is on this Earth. I can’t do everything or learn everything, nor do I need to. Which means I have to choose which things to do, and say ‘No” to a few activities I’m sure I’d enjoy.

I meet weekly with a group of 10 women to discuss the meaning of life. (No, really…Some people have book clubs, or  exchange recipes and garden tips. I go for the big stuff: what really matters.) Each of our members is highly educated, accomplished in a profession or the arts, and brings a different perspective. Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content
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Content Marketing Biases: Your Attitude Is Showing

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, October 11th, 2010

How biased are you about peoples’ faces, ages, skin tone, body size, ethic origins? Scientists know that our attitudes and prejudices are subconscious.

We may think we’re fair and all-inclusive, but our brains operate surreptitiously, sending us intuitive messages that influence our speech, our decisions and our behavior… and if you’re a content marketer, it will permeate the content you write!

Don’t believe me? Or, maybe you believe me and are saying “So what?” You need to know how your customers and clients see your biases showing up. Your biases are reflected in everything you do, including your content marketing.

If you’re creating content that markets a product or service, how can you become aware of your prejudices, since they lie hidden in our subconscious brains?

Take the Implicit Associations Test, the IAT, offered online for free by Harvard through a site called Project Implicit.

Here are a few things they’ve discovered after hundreds of thousands of web visitors did their tests:

Findings observed in seven years of operation of the Project Implicit web site

  • Implicit biases are pervasive. They appear as statistically “large” effects that are often shown by majorities of samples of Americans. Over 80% of web respondents show negativity toward the elderly compared to the young; 75-80% of self-identified Whites and Asians show a preference for racial White relative to Black. Read More→
Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better
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Content Marketing to a Caveman’s Brain

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, October 7th, 2010

How do you gain the attention of readers? How do you get them to stay and read your blog post, your web pages, your newsletter?

Your brain is 100,000 years old. You may not wake up in the Savannah of East Africa, grab your spear and walk miles to hunt prey for food. But on your commute to work in traffic, the same stress hormones (cortisol) are surging through your body as you fight traffic to get to your office.

Once there, your senses scan the environment for prey, competitors and allies, and the same goal-seeking behaviors are at play. The male of the species, in particular, is driven to acquire and achieve to protect his family and status.

For women, it’s slightly different, but not entirely. Women tend to the feeding of their offspring and mate, attend to the shelter, and are acutely aware of emotional needs of her family members. She may also fight traffic and go to an office full of stress, competitors and allies. As a female, she multitasks many responsibilities and skillfully uses language and relationships to get things done.

Our brains haven’t changed in 100,000 years. Our world, however, has. Most significant in the last 20 years is our ability to communicate and stay informed on a global level. Marketing is changing along with this world that offers multiple media channels to spread more messages to more people. Content marketing is growing rapidly as a way to connect with consumers who have become adverse to interruptive advertising.

Here’s what I’m reading in an excellent book, The Buying Brain by A.K. Pradeep:

The questions remains, how do we engage with the primal brain – embedded deep within us – in this modern world? How do we soothe and seduce it?

How do we send it messages that are important enough to be noticed and remembered?

How do we stand out from the amazing barrage of sensory stimuli to be the one product or brand that makes sense and is embraced by the brain?

How do we make life easier and more fun for this miracle of nature that’s perpetually on guard?

More importantly, how do we start treating our customers as the smart, evolved people they are?

With respect and dignity, compassion and caring, delivered in a way that invites and engages, but doesn’t over-stimulate or alarm? Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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