Five Brain Facts To Keep In Mind When Creating Marketing Messages

On a very personal note, I have done a great deal of research on the brain as of late and I'm afraid that in some strange way, I relate everything I learn to marketing. Blame it on my brain!

Brain 101: Every human being has a right brain and a left brain.

This is probably something you already knew, having heard your spouse or your kids refer to your left brained obsession with the cost of leaving all the lights on in the house, or your right brained obsession with velvet pain-by-numbers artwork. To that point, each of those hemispheres perform different tasks, including how they relate to and perhaps remember or immediately forget marketing messages!

1. The right brain works in sensual imagery, not in words.
2. Right brain images are direct reflections of reality as gauged by the senses, not abstract symbols of reality, such as the words in this post
3. The right brain plays the lead role in determining the relevance of incoming information and messages
4. The right brain, which looks for patterns or relationships, forms more complete images than the left brain, which focuses more on the details
5. The right brain is inclusionary and detects relationships; the left brain is exclusionary and detects categories

What this all boils down to, is that while most businesses focus on features in their marketing, all customers focus on feelings. See the problem?

Assess your marketing message for what it says about the relationship with the potential customer. For example, does it reflect images of who they want to be rather than who they are, leaving them pining for your product or service? With all the strength of the right brain's job in processing outside messages (as above, and I suggest you read them over again), you definitely don't want to leave out its most intense desire to be connected emotionally in some way to your message. It's the way to becoming memorable, even viral.

The scary part is that much of it happens in the first-impressions stage of introduction of the message. Based on the demographic of your market, a first impression can either kill the chance you will ever get a customer or win you a lifer! Find the right brain message in your marketing and write your ticket to success.