Have you ever thought about why your customers do the things they do and why they buy what they buy? How did they come to that conclusion? When did they first hear of your business and when did they decide to consider doing business with you?
Subconsciously all of these questions are important and fall into what is known as the “Buying Cycle“ and/or the “Marketing Funnel”. Buying decisions are influenced by two seemingly opposing forces: emotion, and logic.
The human brain is divided into two hemispheres, known as the right and left brain. The right brain (emotional side) is the creative and exciting side; it focuses on feelings and imagination while the left brain (logical side) uses logic, statistics, and rules and is more practical and boring.
For your marketing strategies to be effective, you must understand why people do what they do and why they think the way they think. Effecting and influencing both parts of your prospects’ brains through what is known as the “Marketing Funnel” will increase your chances of turning prospects into customers.
The purpose of the Marketing Funnel is to move your prospect from unawareness of you to awareness, then on to preference, need, search, and purchase.
All buying influences begin at the top of the Marketing Funnel with the right side of the brain, the subconscious and emotional side of the thought process. This is the time when they start to create an emotional connection with you. It’s long before they want or need your product or service.
When actual purchases occur at the bottom of the Marketing Funnel, your prospect’s thought process has moved from the subconscious and emotional right side of the brain to the more analytical and logical left side of the brain. This is when they do their research. Typically, they only research those that they already have a positive emotional connection with.
Emotions are the powerful, even though often unrecognized, beginning to your customers’ perception of you. Once a prospect has certain feelings or emotions about you or your competitor, it is difficult to logically change their preferences or prejudices.
The perfect marketing strategy reaches and influences your customers’ and prospects’ emotional right brains before they are in the market and before they have entrenched opinions about you and your competitors. Getting people to think of you and feel good about you is what advertising is intended to do.
But this “perfect plan” also needs to appeal to the logical and analytical left brain to help your prospects rationalize and justify their heartfelt purchase from you.
Strategically targeting emotions at the beginning of the Marketing Funnel, and logic at the purchase end of the funnel is the perfect dual approach to reaching and influencing your customers.
To learn more about why and how consumers make purchasing decisions and to see a copy of the ENS Media Marketing Funnel, click here. To discuss how to create and implement the perfect media mix, contact your Advertising Rep, or call this station.