Neural Digital Marketing - where Marketing has the lead over Sales

Digital Marketing is an important tool for any business, and it can be put to use in many effective ways. One way to look at applying it to boost your business, is to implement part or parts of it as a strategic tool for your marketing execution.

It always amazes me to learn about how we make decisions, and why we react as we do in certain situations. My pet peeve being sales and decision triggers, I have been reading up on a lot of the literature and have listened to a lot of smart people I know - and I am sharing little bit of that here.

First and foremost the theory says there is basically only TWO DRIVERS in your brain, and they are controlling your every decision and move in life:

• What You Fear (want to avoid)

• What You Want (what you desire)

Breaking these down a little further and putting some words around it, I will line up the other strong feelings that impacts our decisions once we are past the "FEAR" or "WANT" scenario the cave-man brain is making a quick decision on.

Guilt

Is a very strong feeling that can drive us to do the most amazing things, we all know from personal life that we feel guilty in certain situations and make good and not-so-good decisions that are purely based on guilt. Guilt is reminding you of sending flowers to your significant other on anniversary dates, reminds you to call your Mother regularly, makes you behave in social settings - but guilt also makes you unable to think straight and to concentrate. So if you market your product or service as a guilt trip, there is a pretty good chance you can activate the feeling and make the buyer make the decision based on guilt. You may think of guilt as a good way to get someone to do something for you out of a sense of obligation.

Value

Is the outcome of any transaction in your life - you always weigh the cost against the value, and your decisions depend on whether or not you perceive the value to be higher than your cost. Should you go for a run in the pouring rain, or stay home with a coffee and a donut? Is the value (benefit) higher than the unpleasant weather? In business the deliberation on decisions follow the same pattern, so unless the value is presented and perceived as higher than the cost - the customer moves on, and you lose the business.

Trust

You trust your parents, your friends and family, because they have given you all the reason in the world to trust them. How about a business? You have to build trust with potential customers by proving yourself worthy of that trust, and it takes time. Nobody will trust you if they only just heard of you and your product/service - they need to learn about you through interactions and through recommendations and references. Marketing must provide this to potential customers, so when the sales cycle kicks in, there is already a foundation of trust.

Belonging

You want to feel like you are part of something bigger than just a simple business transaction. Being part of the 'Tribe' is what every customer wants. So marketing must position where the customers belong, it can be shoes for runners, shoes for hiking, shoes for formal occasions - these are all tribes where a customer will feel part of the tribe.

Make sure you offer your customers a virtual home, where they can communicate, exchange tips and tricks, memes and more. Think 'User Groups', online forums, Facebook pages, Instagram pages - have marketing build the virtual meeting places and attract potential customers here. Once they meet the 'Tribe' they will be inclined to buy from you in order to become or to remain a member of the group.

Data, Data and Data

Marketing must automate as many as possible of the processes, so cross-posting, updates and communication about the products and services reaches the right people at the right point in time. Track the prospects on your different channels, send them emails, newsletters, blogs and texts to keep them engaged. Drive deep data that will help not only addressing the market as such, but be able to communicate on a one-to-one and a one-to-many basis directly with the potential customers. Collect as many data as possible, and make it as easy as possible for the potential customer to overcome all the feelings listed above - so you can help them with the right solution at the right point in time.

Where Marketing hands off to Sales

The majority of new leads and interested prospects arrive to the business from marketing generated activities, and will demonstrate their interest in buying through their behaviour which will be documented by marketing using all the good tools to track customer engagement, so when a prospects is reaching out to buy your product/service - they will be handed off to sales along with all the solid data marketing have gathered over time, so the engagement with the prospect will be a continuation of the 'customer journey' the prospect started early on with marketing.

Closing remarks - Marketing is the driver in today's business

Sales people have to work closely with their marketing team, and stay active on the same social platforms as potential customers, be not only a member of the tribe, but build trust by providing insight, guidance and good advice to prospects, so the potential customers are aware that your business has knowledgeable people, and that they can safely reach out to start an engagement.

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