In this weekly episode* of the Mindstate Marketing Hour, host Steve Brown of ROI Online, interviews Will Leach, author of Marketing to Mindstates, founder of Triggerpoint, and CEO of the Mindstate Group on why focusing on customers emotions and mindstates is key to successful marketing.
*Originally produced as a livestream video
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Welcome to the ROI online podcast. And this is a special series of interviews with will Leach. He's the author of marketing to mind states the practical guide to apply behavior design to research and marketing. And I'm your host, Steve Brown, the author of the funniest book on marketing, the golden toilet, stop flushing your marketing budget into your website and build a system that grows your business. And then this series of conversations, we're going to explore everything about marketing, your messaging, and connecting with your clients, your customers, your employees. So come on, and join us. And let's have some fun. All right, and we're live. The very first live stream in our interview series with will Leach getting to mind states will welcome guinea pig.
Will Leach:I am ready to be the guinea pig. We've we've worked through the issues. I'm feeling good, energetic, and it's live. So anything can happen, which is good.
Steve Brown:Excellent. So we'll see you wrote this excellent book marketing the mind states, we've been having a great series of conversations. Give us just a little bit of background for those who maybe haven't been falling long in our first episodes, but kind of give us a little bit of a background of marketing to mind states.
Will Leach:That's right. Well, the the the book is predicated on the idea that the vast majority of buying decisions and any kind of decisions are made at the non conscious kind of primal level. And because of that, it's really important to understand nonconscious factors, because when you understand it's specifically for factors, you're much better able to modify messaging, optimize messaging, to kind of meet our emotional needs. So the first episode, we talked about people's goals, and how important is to understand their higher order goals. In fact, then after that, the second part of that model was motivations and think of motivations as fuel. And that's what drives people to purchase items. And so we talked a little bit about motivational psychology. And then last week, we talked a little bit about resistance, and that we all are resistant to marketing communications. And there's this idea around approach versus avoidance, but basically, how you frame up your brand can actually lower resistance, people's resistance to marketing. And the last part of that model, today, we'll be talking about triggers, and ultimately how to what's that emotional trigger? That is required to get somebody to purchase something to act in a different way? So that's kind of that's funny, when you do these things, right? You can change your messaging to, to something that feels intuitive and natural. And when things are intuitive and natural, we're more likely to act on those things, because they feel safe.
Steve Brown:Yeah, so a lot of people, they, you know, they realize that folks are evaluating their products or services from a distance, they're reading their materials, they're doing studies, they're doing all the comparisons before they reach out and talk to you in person. And this is an area where one a brand can really get a leg up on their competition. You can make your potential customers feel safe, and feel understood. And show them a potential. Yeah, solution for the challenge that they're in, in countering what. So let's talk about the higher order goal would be understanding not just that, not just I want to buy a house or I want to do that I have a higher order goal. Talk some give us a little quick background on a higher order goal that is more than just wanting to buy a house.
Will Leach:Yeah. So when you ask people, what are they looking for? What do they want, they will tell you things called functional goals, I want to save money, I want to save time, I want to eat great food. But the higher order goal is where the emotion comes into play. and higher order goals are where we generally direct our behavior. So higher order goal is asking somebody Why is saving money, saving time, why is eating something that tastes great, important to you. And it's a technique called laddering. And when you ladder somebody to their higher order goal, it's the meaningful part of why something is important to them. And we tend to go after those things that are at the higher order of our goals. So that's why it's so important to understand those things because if you are able to tap into somebody's higher order goals to deliver on some of these higher order goals, you can expand your consideration set away from just selling a home or selling, you know, a great tasting chip. You can you can expand your consideration set into things that are there considerations that go into things that weren't even thinking about you for. So you're not just great tasting chip, you're a chip that brings fun to the party. Well, now all of a sudden, you're considered a part of a party versus just a chip.
Steve Brown:Yeah, so people are wondering, I've seen some comments like people will say, well, that's you're manipulating someone, but what they're missing is that no, no decision is really made in a logical manner. We all make decisions emotionally. And when I say feel understood, when I say feel safe, we feel safe in an environment where people get us not an environment where we feel like a stranger and most marketing makes people feel like a stranger. I agree.
Will Leach:And I think for those people that are thinking, it's manipulating, I think what you said is important, that very few few decisions are made 100% emotionally, there's always that rational side of the brain, because you have a budget, you have a timeline, you have things that are restricting you from just going totally emotional. And so for the most part, you know, most of the decisions are driven by emotional factors, but then they are also kind of a kind of guided by rational. So don't think you should worry so much about, you know, are people going to make are we brainwashing so that's just not there's nothing in the sciences, I say that that happens at all, because we are, we are creatures of habit. But we're also creatures of logic, and we just we just are.
Steve Brown:So by understanding the state of mind that someone is in when they start to evaluate a product, then you can start to dial in your messaging to really connect with the higher order go. So in we're stepping into the triggers here, but just give us a little backstory there on the state of mind or the mind state.
Will Leach:Yep. So mind states are these temporary moments of emotional arousal, and we have them all the time. So just imagine that throughout your day, you may go through 10 2030 moments where everything just feels like you're in a Zen almost like things are natural, things feel intuitive, and you're not confused, you feel safe. In these moments, psychologically, these are called mind states. And in these mind states, you're more open to messaging, you're more open to offers that feel natural. And when things feel natural, like I said, those things we tend to gravitate towards, because they feel safe, they feel intuitive, they feel natural. So it's important to identify these mind states, which I talked about in the book. And why that's important. We're going to talk about those triggers today is that when you're in this state of Zen, when I used to call it like runner's high, Steve, you know, remember, I don't know if you've ever done it, but I've gone into a runner's high route running and all of a sudden, like, I just lost time, and I had this like moment of clarity. Well, you have these moments of clarity 20 3040 times a day, you just don't know it, because you're not consciously aware of them. But these things when you're in that moment, there's a trigger. And these triggers What we want to talk about today, because these triggers take you from the moment of clarity to making a decision, we have moments of clarity all the time, we feel great all the time, you know, we may not be constantly aware of it, but we don't buy, we just move on the whole point, the last part of this book is about activating a trigger in those moments. And when you do that, then somebody takes takes it from emotionally excited and aroused. And yes, this feels great, too. I'm going to buy something and if your product delivers, if you've got a great product, great service, great food, whatever it is you're selling, and you deliver in that state of mind, people are going to be more loyal to you, they're going to remember you there's all these great benefits because you delivered on that emotional desire that they have.
Steve Brown:I think what really, really was a big light bulb that went on for me, when I started to understand the states of mind is I'd always been in the camp of personas, there's this one, static, or maybe three static personas that you need to design three versions of messaging for to connect with the folks that you think you've identified that are evaluating your products or services. But when when I read your book, it really became clear to me that, that I'm missing a lot of opportunities because those three personas that may be identified. They couldn't be aligning and states of mind when they're evaluating my product. So that totally blew up that model and in my head.
Will Leach:No, no, it's exactly right. I think sometimes these mind states get confused for personas or for a segment of some kind and they're not. You can have a great segmentation. You can have personas, and it's not that personas are wrong. But personas are built on people's attitudes and their their preferences and even their belief systems. And what's clear is that in moments of You know, this emotional arousal, your attitudes, your beliefs, your preferences, they change and I talked about in my book, where if you put me into persona you would put me into a persona as a healthy eater. Like I cuz I eat healthy salads, I like salads, actually. But if you looked at how I eat on a Friday and a Saturday, I'm not a healthy eater at all. So my personality, my persona can be very centered on healthy eating. But if you saw the things that I eat on Friday nights, and Saturdays, you you would never put me in that segment. That's the issue. It's not that I'm not healthy, that I'm not a healthy eater. It's that in these moments of emotional arousal, I want to five guys cheeseburger bat and pizza bad. That's why mindsets are so important is you can overlay these on top of your personas to understand why are they acting the way that we would have thought they would, given this persona or given this segment, it gives you a better understanding of the moments in time of these behaviors that you're seeing. And if you have both personas, and mind states, you have incredible clarity on why people act the way that they do.
Steve Brown:Alright, so let's talk about the triggers. What first kind of describe what is a trigger? And then how do we start to define the triggers and then apply them?
Will Leach:Yep. So the first one is, if you are in a kind of a social sciences field, when I say trigger, you would refer to that as a cognitive heuristic. Or maybe there's somebody who has a PhD out there, and I met PhD, just you know, basic psychology class. And there's these things called cognitive heuristics. And what that really means is that we have shortcuts to decision making. And so let me give you a number. So I saw a study that one time measured the number of decisions that you typically make on a given day. And this study said that typically, we make about 35,000 decisions, like 35,000 decisions. Now, I don't know how they did that, I'm sure that they may be counted, like when I place one foot forward, that's a decision a second foot for this third. So let's not think about 35,000. Let me just take 20% of those decisions. And let's say let's say that you really are making only 7000 decisions on any given day, it's only 20% of what the numbers would tell you. Even with that, could you imagine doing cost benefit analyses of every one of those 7000 decisions? There's no way you, you wouldn't get out of bed, if you had to think through all the decisions on why should I get out of bed, what are the costs and benefits of getting out of bed, or taking a shower in the morning. So here's what happens. Rather than you doing cost benefit analyses and thinking through, you have these things called triggers, these rules of thumb, they are things that you've learned over time that you're not even aware of, but they make decisions easier and faster. So the easiest one I give you, the one I talked about in the United States a lot is one of these rules of thumb are these triggers is called scarcity effect. And it's something that we've all learned, at least in our culture, that we tend to value things that we believe are scarce in nature scarcity effect. So when you see something on Amazon, and it says, Only five left, what Amazon is doing is they're dropping in a trigger, that's telling your subconscious mind kind of that reptilian brain of your saying, This is scarce in nature, therefore, it has more value to me. So I should I should take a look at that. That's much easier to make a decision on it's scare. So I better go take it go buy this thing than it is to really think through the cost benefits. And Steve, when you put three of these heuristics, or these triggers into a piece of creative and I've got like a website here, I just actually pulled up Amazon, just to show or talk about, yeah, I see just on the first you know, kind of slide your first page, like seven of these triggers. And if you just get a few of them into your creative, whether that's a website, or whether that's an email, you can get moving somebody from say, I really like this idea to pulling the trigger to clicking on you know, learn more to buying a book, etc. So that's kind of what what these triggers do. They move you from excitement and arousal to an action.
Steve Brown:You know, the of these triggers. You think about the time that you got excited and convinced yourself that there was a product that you were really wanting to buy, done all the research and so you were teeing up to go and pull the trigger. So you went to the website, or you went into the their place of business or whatever. But you ran into some frustration. It got confusing to you on where to go next, to finalize and go through with that decision that you were convinced to it. Do you remember how emotionally upset you were frustrated? Right? Yeah, to the point where a lot of people go and write a bad review. Mm hmm. Okay. And I got to think of why is it that Well, people get so upset to the point, they go write a review. And it's quite they feel tricked or betrayed, that what they had perceived was more frustrating than they had imagined. And so this trigger stuff that you're talking about, you're reducing frustration, you're, you're expediting their experience, and imagine what they imagined.
Will Leach:That's right. So there's, it's funny you said about that. So there's this one that I talked about in my book, it's called ambiguity effect. And the idea is just what you said, we place greater value on things that are clear and easy. So when things aren't clear and easy, we get frustrated, because we find that there's no value, you're not valuing my time, there's not a value there. So even though you're not constantly aware of this stuff, there's actually psychology behind the need for clarity, and the need for simplicity. And it's something that even I struggle with, because I want to in all of my writings or in my offers tell you all these great things, and why it's so important for you to buy this and and what really people need to know is clearly understand it, what is this going to do for me, and that's usually enough to say, Oh, it's going to it's going to help me rather than all the features you're trying to do. Those are important, but maybe somewhere else. So ambiguity effect is one of those 21 that I list in my book as being a heuristic that you need to be aware of, or a trigger that you need to be aware of, and use don't make things ambiguous. It's one of the worst things you can do we we avoid ambiguity, in most cases.
Steve Brown:Why is it that we struggle with ambiguity? It's do we feel guilty of that we're being too too assertive or too forceful? Trying To be clear, What stuff? What's the disconnect?
Will Leach:The question on what's it for the person who's being unclear or what? Yeah, I got my own personal let me go sit on my couch and lay on my couch, I will tell you what it is, for me, I tend to to you did not be clear. Because I struggle with thinking that I have to prove myself to you, with all of the things that I can offer. Like, it's like, I want to provide value just like most I think a lot of small businesses are like this, I think that let me tell you all the five ways of why I'm important, I should be important in your life, that is my ego, that is purely my ego, translating into if I show you all these great things I can do for you that you will buy and then make me feel better. So for me, ambiguity comes from my desire for for, for you as my shopper, my consumer to find me valuable. It's totally self self driven. And it's ego. And what's interesting about it is, I was talking to a buddy of mine last week specifically about this. So he did me a favor. He looked at one of my outputs for a piece of research. And he said, Well, I've been in the industry for like 20 years, and you're using words I don't there's not like a meaning behind those words. And he was he was talking about that I actually sound stupider by using big words. And actually I remind and he reminded me there's actually academic studies out there, Steve, that tell you that when you're not clear, and simple, simple with your words, like not using, you know, vocabulary for 12th grade, they say, talking about using the vocabulary of a seventh grader, psychologically, the person who hears that thinks that you're smarter. So in fact, by you using bigger words by you using, you know, trying to look for synonyms of something that should be like very clear, and you look for synonyms to sound smarter. The actual academic research will tell you that you tend to come across as not being smart. So it was so funny, cuz he said that I thought my big words were actually hurting my credibility in that crazy to think but that's how the human mind works. You You say it all the time, right? So you say, we make kind of it's that reptilian brain, the brain that's that desire simplicity. And when you use a word that could have dual meanings, your brain, it's all non conscious, it just seems like well, you don't know what you're talking about. Or I'm confused. And if I'm confused, that I don't like you as much, you're not safe. That's that's what it comes down to.
Steve Brown:Well want to pause here just for a moment and talk to you about a program that we have just released called ROI quickstart Academy for authors. Every day, I talk to business owners just like you who struggle with quickly getting their fundamentals in place. We want to create a great foundation and we want to grow our business, but the things that are in our way, our lack of knowledge about the specifics, we should put in place, what kind of technology what kind of messaging and what kind of campaigns and that problem exists for authors as well. And we just chill so good with authors because, well, I'm an author, and I understand everything that you struggle with. You have a great idea. You have a great But what do you want to do, you want to get your book in front of more people, you want to make it easy for them to find you learn how they can schedule a time to talk with you hire you for a conference, or maybe sign up for the services that your book promotes. So what is the Quickstart Academy for authors? Imagine working with a small group of like minded authors, and the experts from the ROI quickstart. Team, it's a great way to get your messaging clear to be confident with the technology in your marketing automation, and how to run a strategic campaign to get you more of what you want from the investment of your book. To learn more about the Quickstart Academy for authors, you can visit ROI online.com or click in the link in the show notes below. And now, back to this episode. So, so I did want to cover vocabulary. That's great. So when you say heuristics, yeah, what's the third grade version? For me? What's
Will Leach:Yeah, that word? a shortcut? I think that's that's the best way to a decision shortcut. Yep. See?
Steve Brown:So all of this is based on a lot of research. This is not just your your observations.
Will Leach:yet? That's right. It's on the science of behavioral economics. So if you look at behavioral economics, it's the study of the shortcuts. And that study has been around since the 70s. And it's got two Nobel Prize winners who studied nothing but that so it's, it's very foundational in the social sciences. And it's, well, it's well researched, and they're investing tons into it. Every government in the world, every government in the world, every major government in the world has people who are thinking just about these shortcuts. They think about these things. And they're using these shortcuts in policy every day. So it's well established at this point.
Steve Brown:So give us some good examples of these shortcuts. And what like what industry we're going to focus on today,
Will Leach:what I did was I just literally pulled up randomly, a Amazon book page. So anybody who's out there, if you're watching this or whatever, go to any Amazon page, and because Amazon tends to set up their pages all the same. So I just happen to I pulled up amazon.com, about five minutes before the session. And it recommended for me to read this book fix this next for Mike. Michael. Michael lockpicks. Mike mccalla. wyck makellos. Yes, yes, thank you. So he's written some great books. Profit first was a book that I read long time ago. So he's got a new book, fix this next. And so forgive me, I'm gonna kind of look over here on my on my dual on my monitor here. So at the very top, so Amazon, I know this specific about Amazon, that they use these shortcuts all the time. And by using these shortcuts, they've created arguably the largest business and entity ever to be on. I mean, it's bigger than the Catholic Church, right? It's the biggest entity in the world, because of this the most profitable entity as well. They're not doing these things. on accident. They know these things work over millions and millions and millions of transactions sometimes each day. So if you're looking at your web screen, right at the very top, you will see one of the first things they do, right is they place up on a book, any book you want to look at, you can look at it. And it'll say right off the bat, there are ratings. And there'll be a five star ratings, it'll tell you, you know, basically, is it on the average, is it getting forced to four and a half stars or five stars, right? So you get the total star ratings, those you'd call ratings. To me, I call that social proof. So a shortcut is this idea that when we see that lots of people are taking on a behavior in this case, Mike has 163 ratings on this book, and it looks like all five star ratings. Now certainly, I could look at all those ratings. And I could really think through the cost benefits. But for many of us, we look at those star ratings. And we say lots of people 163 people have said that this is five star, that's easy. I'm going to go ahead and I feel safer about that decision. It's called social proof. I use social proof all the time. And I would encourage you if you're wanting to use social proof, especially in this economy right now, where there's a lot of anxiousness and anxiety and trepidation, and ambiguity, because social proof makes us feel much safer. And we will use that as a shortcut to making a decision. So we'll just stroll down
Steve Brown:right click on that. The reason that those how many reviews were on there, hundred 63. So 163 people we can feel safe that they've dug in and evaluated and done a lot of the backward for us, right? So that's why you're calling it a shortcut.
Will Leach:That's right. That's right. It's just safe and you don't even know most people don't even know it just feels like safe and stars are not you know, they could have put in a little smiley faces, they could have put in carrots, but What didn't you stars? Well, there's an association of a star with success and with positive stars are positive. So there's that's not, that's not a mistake, or haphazard like that is a decision that, you know, Amazon made at some point, right? Right below that it says number one best seller, and it has kind of this little banner. Again, number one best seller is another example of, of a of a heuristic or sorry, of a shortcut. And what that what that shortcut is, is, um, this concept called authority, authority bias. So, if something is said to be number one in anything, there tends to be psychologically place that there must be authority, like, if it's number one, somebody gave it a number one rating. And so rather than me trying to figure out, you know, is this really good, you can sometimes look at the word number one and assume, well, if they won number one, it must be good. So it's just, it's just like one of these shortcuts that we use, guys, that is literally within the amount of a thumbprint that I have on one page on a website, they've already hit me with two of these shortcuts to make me feel safe about this purchase. And I haven't even looked at what the book is even about, right? A third one, as I'm scrolling here, and they do this a lot, what you'll see on any website on Amazon is they will have the list price, which would be the normal price, this is the price that you should be paying, and then they'll cross it out. They do this all the time. And then below that, they'll say, buy, buy new buy, used or whatever, and they'll have you they'll have the real price that you would pay. And then below that save a certain amount of money. So in this case, his list price was $26. For this book, that $26 is crossed off, and it says buy new for $18 and 39 cents. And then it says save $7 and 61 cents, or 29%. What that is, is a concept called anchoring and adjustment. It's a shortcut. So when you see a price that's high, and frankly, that 20 you know this right, we made the decisions when we made when we actually put our book on Amazon, Steve, right, right. I remember having to make the decision, what is my list price? And then what am I going to actually what am I actually going to sell my book for? That's arbitrary guys. Amazon does at that price. Most people it's an arbitrary price. So what do you do? You take this arbitrary price, in this case, he said $26, and he crosses it off, that anchors in our minds, the value of that book is $26. Why? Because you told me it's $26, it's very difficult for me to evaluate anything without an anchor. So he sets this anchor $26. And then he crosses it out. And he says, but you can buy my book for $18 and 39 cents, and it creates economic value. So if you only saw a book that costs $18, and 39 cents, you may go, it's pretty expensive. I think it is a pretty expensive book, most books are pretty expensive if you're going to spend $20 on a book. But when you're telling me that it typically sells for $26. And you're going to save almost 30% of this book, it creates value. And it's all mental value, it's all mental value, because they set the anchor. So it's an interesting concept, but anchoring and adjustment when you are setting up your prices on your website, or anything that you're doing, it's important to set and establish what value is. And since you control your price point, you should be saying, typically, it costs $10 for this sandwich, cross that off, but I'm giving you for 799 or 699 or 499. And you've now created great value, a feeling of value because you control the anchor. It's called anchoring and adjustment. Anytime you go into a grocery store, guys, you were being hit over the head with anchoring and adjustment every time you walk down an aisle. It's constantly happening.
Steve Brown:I was listening to this interview with Dr. Robert Epstein. And it was so interesting because he was talking about how there's a lot of situations where we are influenced with a certain bias. And usually we don't know it. Yeah. But what's worse, he said if you if you do or are aware of it, you're even influenced even more more, okay. And so when I, you know, you see people always put 1799 or they put that anchor price and cross it out and then put that it always goes to my mind is like, what do you think I'm, I'm an idiot. You know, I know what you're doing. But But when I heard him talk about that, that's why people do it. It doesn't matter whether you're aware of it or not. Yeah, if even if you perceive that as manipulation, yes still so impactful.
Will Leach:Well, I was gonna say, and you still have freedom, you could still look at that and say, You know what, 1799 I'm not gonna buy it. That's, that's the rational brain, I don't have the budget, I don't see the value. So you still have the ability. I don't know if that's manipulation or not, right? Because you still have the ability to go, that's still too much for me, right. But what that does is, and I love what you said, because even when you were aware of these things, they still come up. That's why I think that that the idea of byesies is really important that it's not an educational issue. Like we have a lot of social strife happening in our country right now. It's not just an educational issue, because most people can find training or education on why we should have prejudices. Cops can be trained to not have prejudices, they can be educated. But that's not enough. Because you're not aware of these things. And even when you are aware of them, they tend to kind of recede into our subconscious, when we have these emotional moments. Like maybe when I'm when I pull over something. So I remember when Starbucks was, you know, they closed down their stores to do racial education, I think it was it was a while ago, right? I remember thinking myself, if that's all you're doing, it's just not enough in these days. Because these things are non conscious, you have to do more than just education, education is a good start. So you're educated to know that, but you're still being influenced by it. And we got to get to a point in all of these decisions to understand when to see these things. And when when they're being used in a bad way. And when they're being used probably in a great way. All these all these behavioral science types of things.
Steve Brown:Yeah, I mean, to your point, I've gone and bought a used one. Yeah. And I was like, good for you, Mike, you charge in 26 bucks for a book. Okay. But I've gone and looked for a used version. It's just the same book. Yeah. Somebody just read through at first and my brother and I used to argue don't don't read, you know, don't use up my, my text. Yeah, reading over my shoulder, right. Like, as if he's sucking the value out of my book there. But it wasn't true. So that's, that's really cool. Do the, when these triggers actually are ways to reduce friction, frustration, and to help us feel understood, and, and safe. You know, even with that logical training that you were talking about, you've been in this moment where you lost your temper. Yeah. And you made a decision. And you later you couldn't answer why you made that decision. Yeah. And that's your emotional brain taking over. And going step side, I'm, I've got this, I'm going to handle this. And then later you go, I cannot logically explain why I did what I did. And you feel like a dummy. Yeah. But that's in play all the time.
Will Leach:Yeah, I think, you know, in the beginning of the book, and there's some work that was done by dimasi, a long time ago, but basically said your emotional brain is processing information at 11 million bits per second. And your rational brain is at like three, or 2000 bits per second. So that's, that's exactly right. So it's still working. But that emotional brain is overwhelming. Sometimes your rational brain can't pick up, it can't work fast enough. Therefore, you make the emotional reaction. And you don't even realize a lot of times you're even doing until it's too late. Your rational brain catches up says, boy, you just said the wrong thing to your wife, man, it's time to go apologize.
Steve Brown:But then you're like, you're still a disadvantage, because you don't have the logic to back up why you made that mistake. But I like to, to go I your emotional brains like fiber optic in your logical brain is like one of those 1440 modems we used to have. Gosh, and so most marketing is designed for the 1440 logical part of the brain when it should be honoring that fiber optic side of the brain.
Will Leach:I love it. It's a it's a great analogy. And you're right, we're getting better, but the industry is still focused on, give me the five benefits and give me my reasons to believe that my product is better than your product and the brains don't do well. Or we don't we don't make decisions in that way. We make emotional decisions. And so for every time, you know, you're being asked, I need to come up with another proof point on why my product is good. You should be questioning that because your messaging shouldn't really have a ton of that you need some of it, you need some of it, but you need to be much more emotional because that's how we make decisions.
Steve Brown:I think a lot of people first they default think of the text on their materials. And actually they need to be taken to consideration how much is being processed by the fiber optic side of the brain and images in colors in the feeling or the environment.
Will Leach:No, you know, I did for years, you know this I at PepsiCo, I ran neuro testing, and it was very quick. You'll you talk to anybody neuroscientists they show you it's the image that drives the vast majority of emotional connection. Because words take time words are hard to read, frankly, we don't like words when they work. But that's more of that kind of slower modem. So the visuals matter a lot, I think that we forget, I think you're right, I think we in the advertising and small business space, we forget how important the visual is. So what we'll do is we'll start with all the copy and then say, Now let's put in, let's go to photo stock, or go to some kind of stock photo plays and put a picture of people around a table and really show the other way around. Right, you should be figuring out that visual image first, that really important visual image, and then build a little bit of copy around that. But it's, you know, things are ingrained with us. We, it's hard for us to kind of let go of those things that feel safe, which we feel safer by using words. But frankly, the mind doesn't work that way.
Steve Brown:No, think about it, you know, silent movies, were in vogue for I don't remember maybe 20 or 30 years. Yeah, at the beginning of the 1900s. And I got thinking about it, you could take a little kid that doesn't release three years old and set them down. And then you could get someone from, you know, Vietnam and sit next to you. You don't speak the same language, but you'll sit there and giggle and laugh and tear up at the same things during that and think of all the communication going on.
Will Leach:Yeah, that's a great point. I love I love that, that, that idea. I'm going to use that, in fact, because you're right, you can get that same idea across just by using facial expressions and showing context. And it makes it universal. I think I think emotions, you know, we forget that emotions are universal to all demographic types, all everything, all races, all economic circumstances, or whatever. And words aren't. words aren't always like that, right? Words have different meanings in different cultures, facial expressions, and moments context usually is pretty universal, you know.
Steve Brown:So true. That's why I like to say you need to create content to honor the way our brains desire to be communicated to. So tell us a little bit. Well, if someone's been listening, and they're they've got a team maybe that they want to take through some of your training or coaching. Tell us where to find you where some resources, your Are you giving away a car this episode?
Will Leach:Only on our 700th person. We don't get there. And and sorry, nobody was. So you know, I think the best thing right is the book. The book marketing to mind states is the book that tells you all the foundations of Angular, sir, of what we've been talking about. And it's the basis of really practical smart marketing marketing that works today in today's cluttered world. Now you can get that book as well as lots of free resources at my website, mind state group calm. And what we're trying to do with mindset group comm is provide resources to help you you know, develop communications that get your customers to listen, care and ultimately act, right. So some of those resources, just the book, and a lot of companies and a lot of people can just read the book and get great things out of it. Then sometimes like, well, I want to take it to the next level. That's what we do workshops. And we do a monthly workshop, you'll see our next workshop is in very early October, so about three weeks away, and we do two day workshops, where we can help you think through your business and how to use this information in your marketing. And then finally, we have these workshops where you may want to bring in, you know, your agency, your your insights, people or collective group and all work on your business together. And that's when we do a very specialized workshop for you, with your team, with our experts. And we work through your data and all of your questions. And we teach you how to do audits on your own creative how to go through the process of building creative, it's very specialized, but you can learn more about that as well. mindset group calm.
Steve Brown:That's excellent. Well, so for you folks that get to see this later, we're going to be having a regular scheduled program where we're covering all the aspects of how you can improve your marketing by honoring the states of mind that people are are in when they consider your product or service. So stay tuned, we'll be promoting these This was our test run. I think it went really well. Will.
Will Leach:I do too. It's always a pleasure talking to you make it easy.
Steve Brown:Yeah. So if if you have a brand and you're wanting some help with promoting and helping communicate with your audience in the same way that we're doing with will be sure to reach out to Steve at ROI online. And this has been a great Great episode on the ROI online special series podcast with will Leach marketing to mind states. Thanks. Well,
Will Leach:thanks for having me. Appreciate it. See you next week.
Steve Brown:All right, over and out. Thanks for listening to another fun episode of the ROI online podcast. For more, be sure to check out the show notes of this episode. And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where we can chat and I can help direct you to the resources you're searching for. To learn more about how you can grow your business better, be sure to pick up your copy of my book, The Golden toilet at surprise that golden toilet.com I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI online podcast.