…there’s an elephant in your brain. 🐘
“Excuse me, what?” 😐
I KNOW. Listen. You’re not alone.
You’ve got one. I’ve got one. We’ve all got one…
…including your target audience. 😏🤷🏿♂️
Don’t believe me? Take it from Social Psychologist, Jonathan Haidt on how to best view human behaviour, and its connection to your unconscious.
“…And this helps me, how?” 😑
Understanding unconscious behaviours = better managing your decisions to realise goals. ✅
Understanding unconscious behaviours in others = managing their decisions to act accordingly, and generate results. ✅
Professor Haidt’s batsh*t analogy puts it best…
Your brain is made up of 2 parts… 🧠
…the rider (you), and the elephant (your unconscious).
Like it or not, you’re actually a team. 🤝🏼
And sure, you’re the smarts of the operation — as the rider, you can see the path you wish to take, banking on the logic of your plans to make it happen.
HOWEVER, the elephant? That’s the emotion. The POWER. ⚡
You don’t go anywhere it doesn’t want you to. ❌
So, if you ignore your elephant? Things get WILD fast.
You know exactly what I’m talking about…
Whether you’ve told yourself you’re waking up at 6am, only to stay buried in your sheets until 12…
Whether you’ve told yourself at the pub, “I’m only having one”, only to find yourself 5 pints deep…
Or whenever you’ve told yourself you’ll finally start the gym tomorrow, whilst tucking into your second Domino’s of the week (seriously, damn those ‘two for one Tuesdays’)… 😬
…no matter how diligently mapped, or well intentioned your plans are, an unchecked elephant is gonna do what it does…
…run amuck, and stomp in any which direction it pleases.
REMEMBER…
Logic = Ideal 🔮
Emotions = Reality 👊🏾
So, how do we turn the ideal into reality?
Elephants are powerful. It might be tempting but…
…yanking them, whipping them or berating them into shape is a fast way to get a tusk to the neck. ☠
BUT, if you learn how to respect and understand it?
You’ll go from belligerent rider, to master trainer in no time. 😎
In a nutshell, the key difference between riding off the seat of your pants, and being a Rockstar elephant whisperer (what a title)…
…is behavioural economics.
“Dude, please. Do I REALLY have to know what that is?”
What if I told you 6 figure wrangling consultants thrive on it? Like Melina Palmer, the CEO of the Brainy Business, who routinely guides fellow marketers to lucrative greatness? 💵
Well, I think you know the answer.
Sorry, but this is a field of study dedicated to experimentally proving psychological theories about how your people choose to spend. 🔥
Your audience is an army of elephants, waiting to charge your way with a mindset to buy…
…you just have to know how to call them. 🤯
Now, because I respect you and your elephant…
…here’s one of dozens of secrets I’ll be posting in the future. All so you can better understand what drives your audience…
Let’s start with ANCHORING
Anchoring bias is a phenomenon our elephants fall prey to time, and time again when it comes to our spending choices.
See, when we’re seeking information about a new situation, topic or thing, most of us are keener than a cat for catnip to establish a baseline…
…because we crave a reference point.
If we’re scrambling in the dark, what happens when we catch a glimpse of light?
We worship it, like a moth to the flame.
New situation = no patience.
We give whatever we first see, hear, read, or learn more than its fair share of authority, significance and weight — like an anchor.
Once we establish an anchor, no matter how potentially misguided or inaccurate it might be, any other piece of information we learn is skewed, twisted and adjusted by it.
So, mix that with something your audience already wants?
Now we’re talking 😎
My elephant loves Pizza. It’s a problem… 🍕
So, let’s take my crippling addiction to Domino’s Pizza as an example.
I see a large pizza priced at £20.
“damn, that’s a lot, I better just-”
WELL, WAIT A GODDAMN MINUTE. 👀
Before I’m even done moaning, I spot a ‘SPECIAL OFFER, 2 for 1 any size pizza deal’ in the brightest red, dimensionally rich font I’ve ever flipping seen. 😨
Let me tell you, ladies, gentleman and everyone in-between… my mind is GONE. 😵
“I CAN’T PASS THAT UP, THAT’S 2 LARGE £20 PIZZAS FOR THE PRICE OF 1”.
Now, in my local UK town of Wakefield, anyone whose found themselves on a sloppy night on the town KNOWS…
…there’s no way a regular large pizza costs £20.
HOWEVER, if you’re not a pizza connoisseur. You don’t know that.
So, seeing the price of a £20 large pizza becomes an anchor point… that becomes the standard value of a 13.5 inch pizza. So, seeing that price slashed sends my elephant WILD.
Well played, Domino’s… Well played. 😏
Need more examples of how powerful this phenomenon is? Check out InsideBE’s 12 Examples of Anchoring Bias.
“Anchoring constitutes a ubiquitous phenomenon that occurs in a variety of laboratory and real-world settings.”
Translation?
Anchoring PROFOUNDLY affects our ability to make rational decisions… PERIOD. ⚓
Boosting reach, leads and sales with the proper use of psychological phenomena like Anchoring…?
That’s how you go from your an elephant’s plaything, to bona fide elephant whisperer…
Stay connected to you, and your audience’s elephant, and follow my LinkedIn page for more psychologically powered, scientifically proven tips to understanding yourself…
…and your audience… 🤼
…to generate RESULTS! 💰
REFERENCES:
Bahník, Š., Englich, B., & Strack, F. (2017). Anchoring effect. In R. F. Pohl (Ed.), Cognitive illusions: Intriguing phenomena in thinking, judgment and memory (pp. 223–241). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.