Getting into the mind of the customer and prospect of today is not an easy task. We all have a built in BS Meter when it comes to marketing messages of any kind. Let’s take a closer look at what I call “persuasion nets” in our minds that often build up over time with cynicism and doubt when we’re confronted with most marketing messages.
Here are a few key persuasion nets that shape our BS Meter in relation to marketing messages:
Managing Overload: The typical North American is hit with an average of 3000+ marketing messages per day, and the number keeps increasing.
Societal Programming: Sales is a “dirty word” to most people even though everyone is engaged in selling, whether they realize it or not.
Time Challenges: In a sped up digital world, we’re all trying to maximize and manage time.
The Choice Paradox: We love having options, but it often stifles our ability to discern and in many situations make a decision.
Short Attention Spans: This is only going to intensify in a real-time mobile talk, text and online-driven world.
Sales Baggage: This is often not discussed by many marketing pros, but it is very real. It’s the past experiences, good and bad, related to sales that impact and shape how we trust or distrust any marketing message when it appears or “captures” us on our mental radar.
Age: Time is a great teacher and the more life experience we accumulate, the higher degree of habit force and pattern recognition that occurs when we sense or pick up on messaging that attempts to persuade or sell us.
Why You Must Work On Building Authenticity Each Day
for Yourself & Your Organization
Knowing how challenging it is these days to get what I call “Mind Capture” with people, it’s essential that you lead with your strongest marketing bullets or evidence when engaging prospects directly or indirectly in the offline or online space.
To keep and engage people, you must quickly demonstrate why they might have a need for what you do, but more importantly, why they should possibly believe that your claims are real.
In the age of instant search and massive choice, your ability to lower the BS Meter with skeptical prospects isn’t easy. However, as we’ll soon discuss, there are several timeless and new strategies that when combined will help you build evidence in your own marketing efforts to quickly differentiate, and persuade with maximum effectiveness.
With a tightening economy, here’s another major reason authenticity is so important: The competition will often make attempts to discredit you, undercut prices, and make false claims out of pure desperation. A great reputation and strong marketing evidence in your arsenal helps to not only diffuse the competition, but also attract powerful referrals via word-of-mouth in both the physical world and the “word-of-mouse” online world.
Partial reprint from Chapter 9 of Mind Capture: How to Awaken Your Entrepreneurial Genius in a Time of Great Economic Change © 2011, by Tony Rubleski
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