Is your marketing suffering from the Titanic Effect?
Do you think you know exactly how your clients think, or how your prospects will respond to your marketing? If so, you must have a crystal ball! Very often, clients don’t think, act or respond as we expect them to and here’s why.
- Clients don’t think in a rational, linear way. We can’t always predict what they’re going to do, because so much of their decision making is made subconsciously. Not even they know how they might react/act/buy/make decisions. You might think that if you show how your service will solve a client’s problem then they will buy it from you. Not necessarily – there is a lot going on below the surface of their ocean.
- Clients can’t explain their own thinking and behaviour. This is because so much of it is driven by emotions and memories that most of us don’t really understand. A client might tell you that they always buy from your type of business and yet when you offer your service, they decide to buy from someone completely different. And they won’t necessarily be able to tell you why they did that.
- Clients’ minds, brains, bodies and culture can’t be studied separately. You need to look at all the factors that influence them and their buying decisions, as a complicated, integrated whole.
- Clients’ memories are not accurate. They will remember different aspects of a marketing message, depending on where they are and what they’re doing. Our brains change how we remember everything. Your clients won’t remember your marketing message in the way you want them to.
- Clients don’t think only in words. Different people think differently. Some think in words, some in pictures/colours and some in a mix. This means that you need to craft marketing messages to suit them all, and also to reach them on an emotional level.
- Clients won’t see marketing messages as you want them to see them. They won’t always understand your message – no matter how clearly you think you’ve spelled it out!
The next time you’re putting together a marketing message for your business, remember to dive far below the surface. Don’t make any assumptions about what your clients will think or feel, or how they will react. Ask questions. Test. Ask more questions. Test again. The more effort you put into understanding the emotional needs of your prospective, the more chance you have of turning them into paying clients.
