Persuasion Economics 1: How The Mind learns to BUY — Review

In the following weeks, (with next week being Sunday), I would share tips from my learnings and experience as a Copywriter and Mindset Coach. Combining both skills has given me an edge in the market place and recently, I took up a course on Digital psychology on CXL and I would be sharing my take home from these learnings.

Each piece of content would contain my thoughts and/or learning from CXL’s teaching and a personal “How Can I Brand This” section, where I would share tips on how you can use the information for your brand success.

For this week, I would be focusing on LEARNING and BUYING. How the mind learns and retains information, as well as how the mind buys.

Before learning anything, either by reading a book or taking a course, I always have certain expectations in my mind on what I expect to get in return in terms of learning, and how the information could be put to good use subsequently in my life and business.

I do that either by taking down some questions I want the learning material to provide answers for in the course of my learning or simply taking down personal notes on areas I feel are concerned with me. Sometimes, I do both.

Learning and memory are two important steps to retaining information. Learning involves just acquiring a skill, and memory involves retaining the information of the process of acquiring that skill.

On Learning

There are 3 distinct ways our minds take in information and they are:

1. Classical Conditioning: Classical conditioning means learning something new by attaching the new learning opportunity or idea to an already known old experience. It is a sort of conditional learning by habit.
2. Operant Conditioning: Operant conditioning means learning by attaching a certain positive or negative reward to the outcome of learning.
3. Observational Conditioning: Observational conditional is mostly how children and even adults learn. It is learning by observing others. Most people are able to do something because they observed how someone else did it.

How Can I Brand This?

• Can you introduce your new brand or product by linking it to something your potential customer or target audience is already used to? So that subconsciously, over time, when they think about that particular thing, your brand pops in their head.
• Can you introduce a sort of reward system when your potential customer or target audience does something that you approve of? And a negative reward when they do something you don’t. This subconsciously makes them only want to gravitate towards doing only things that you approve of.
• Instead of just talking about your brand or product, how about show people how exactly your brand does what you want them to do? Chances are, they are likely to observe and do same as well.

On Memory

As with learning, the human mind also processes information in 3 distinct stages as well and they are:

1. Encoding: When the mind takes in certain information for the first time, the process is referred to as ENCODING.
2. Storage: When the mind takes in information, it dissects or breaks down the information and sieves out what to store and what to throw out. The information your mind takes in can be stored up in our Mind storage vault for as long as possible until we are ready to use them.
3. Retrieval: Retrieval is the process of bringing up information already stored in your mind for use when you need them.

How Can I Brand This?

• Consider your target audience’s priority and position your brand or product message to fit perfectly into that priority.
• Consistently emphasise your brand’s message or product to your audience to ensure it is perfectly encoded and stored in their minds so that when it comes to making a decision, your brand or product is the first that comes to mind.

On Buying

Fogg Behaviour Model

The fogg Behaviour Model is a persuasion principle that states that, to get people to take a desired action, you must do 3 things and they are:

1. Motivate: To get a person to take any action, you must be willing to motivate them to do that thing. For humans to act, they need to be highly motivated to do so, and there are several ways to do that.
2. Ability: Simply motivating them to take an action doesn’t mean they would if you make it extremely difficult to take that action. We all like to “relass and be taken kiaruf.” So you must communicate your message such that, it is easy for the target audience to perform.
3. Trigger: Just motivating them and making it easy to perform doesn’t mean they would go-ahead to perform the required action. You must make them take the action by prompting or encouraging them to do so.

The Fogg Behaviour Model can be summarized with this formula.

Behaviour = Motivation X Ability X Trigger.

To condition a human to act in a certain way, exhibit a certain behaviour or take a certain action, you must follow this 3 step principle to the latter.

How Can I Brand This?

• Motivate your team, potential customer or target audience by making them see what they stand to benefit if they take the action that you require of them.
• Don’t ask them to fill 1 million fields in a form just to download a free book. Make the action super easy.
• Don’t assume they know what they do. TELL THEM. “Download the free tool now!” “Buy now!”

In business, you don’t assume your target audience knows exactly what to do. A countless number of times, I have found myself confused on some sites without knowing which way to go or what next to do. No matter how easy you may think it is, it is wrong to assume someone else sees it as easy as that. You may be losing out on a lot if you assume your target audience knows exactly what to do.