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The Art of Selling: Emotional Buying & The Brain

Written by: Jeneth Blackert

Article Overview: If you are an entrepreneur and involved in your own business' marketing and sells you probably know that we (everyone) buy with our emotions. Do you know why? Do you know how to get someone to buy from you by moving them emotionally?

The Art of Selling: Emotional Buying & The Brain

If you are an entrepreneur and involved in your own business' marketing you probably have heard that we buy with our emotions. Do you know why? And how?

Let's start with the why. The human brain has three main components: the brainstem, the limbic system, and the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex analyzes sensory data, performs memory functions, learns new information and forms thoughts and makes decisions. The limbic system is responsible for emotions and feelings like anger, passion, and sadness. Information retention and long-term memory are stimulated by the firing of the amygdala, which perform a key role in processing nearly all emotional events. Emotions cause us to pay attention and help use decide which message to remember. The brain stem is responsible for body functions, which is very important but unrelated to this article.

Luckily, it is almost impossible to be emotionless. We are emotional beings. When writing or speaking your marketing message, you marketing message must be processed by the limbic system. Emotions tell the reader when to pay attention. Emotions are not only processed faster than logical thought, but also make the final decision. Your marketing message needs stimulate an emotional reaction.

Now for the communicating and copywriting how-to angle!

To stimulate a human emotion, the brain needs to make an associations. You see a lot of e-mail copy that says, "I am so exciting.." or "I can't wait to tell you" or "I can't believe I forgot". You get the idea, do you see how you perked up when you read these words. They do you excited and interested, which causes you to listen. Interesting. Isn't it? So the next time, you present a marketing message to your targeted audience be sure to include words with emotional associations. It doesn't matter if the words evoke a positive or negative emotion. What matters is it evokes response.

Feel what your body does when you read these words...

"The Great Depression, April 15, taxes, Uncle Sam, 1% increase in sales tax". Do you see how these words evoke a negative emotional response within your body?

You can also use words and numbers to evoke a positive response such as FREE, 75% off, Bonus.

Although you may think numbers would be factual, they are really emotional. Many times, numbers will evoke the feelings of urgency, fear of loss or security.

When you communicate whether through your writing or speaking make sure you create a feeling. This can be done through allowing them to activate their imagination negatively or positively. Have fun and experiment with it. Heck, you may want to even try it on yourself.

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Article Tags: amygdala, body functions, brain stem, cerebral cortex, e mail, emotional associations, emotional events, emotional reaction, final decision, human brain, human emotion, information retention, key role, limbic system, long term memory, mail copy, memory functions, negative emotion, own business, sensory data
Referred by: http://www.brandu.com/rd.cfm?id=743



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Re: Kevin's Case Study #10 - When to become an entrepreneur? - When the bug bite you. A lot of successful entrepreneurs started in their teens or at school. Selling sweets to fellow students or lemonade to firends in the neighbourhood.
Re: This is Marketing Warfare! - Hey GT, I guess this was from a while back, and it'll test your memory a bit but could you possibly elaborate on Unique Selling Proposition? Can you give us some examples of good USPs?
Re: Why Some Websites Sell and Others Don’t? - There is myth that if you build websites people will come. It is never through, you need to do a lot of things to make your website to work. You have many models of attracting traffics to your site. PPC Article Marketing SEO Press Release Banner Ads Forum Posting Classified Advertising Media Buying Solo Ads and a lot of more. If you are not doing any of the above your websites will just be one of the millions of the unknown sites in cyber space
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Business magazines - Fast Company is pretty good if you're into technology although it can be very on the edge. Entrepreneur has become one giant advertisement and I cancelled my subscription. Selling Power also has some useful content if you're looking at improving your sales skills / presentations.


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