Most marketers try to appeal to the conscious mind.

They use logic and reasoning to demonstrate their value.
That kind of marketing can be good but….

….marketing that wins over the subconscious mind can be unstoppable.

When the conscious mind is active, your mind starts to come up with reasons for and reasons against the purchase.

It can feel like the mind has a lawyer arguing for both sides inside of it. 

This is where potential customers or clients hesitate and put off the decision to say yes for another day (which often never comes….)

Marketers need to avoid leading people into this headspace at all costs.

If the customer gets to this point, it becomes very hard to push them towards making the buying decision.

But trigger the right “psychological shortcuts” and they’ll launch themselves through the buyer journey. 

These shortcuts operate at the subconscious level.

They are very powerful…..but they are not always logical.

Colors Don’t Just Catch Attention

The biggest and best brands are very deliberate with their choice of colors.

Virgin uses red to make you feel excited.

Meanwhile Nike shifted away from red and towards an authoritative and iconic black & white.

When you look at the colors of your marketing creatives and your branding, think about how they will make your ideal customer feel.

Once you pick the right color that connects to the emotions you want your audience to associate with you & what you offer….

You can create an instant connection between the two.

This is the “emotional shortcut” that is always happening…..regardless of whether you give it consideration or not.

So choose the colors of your marketing creatives wisely.

When you have a consistent brand that creates an aligned and attractive emotional connection with your market; it will pull people towards your business.

Now That You’ve Sparked Their Interest…

The next step is to take the buyer from interest to trust.

To bridge that gap, they need a point of reference. Something or someone that tells them they can trust your product or service (but not you.)

Social proof is a strong bias that influences us every day whether we realize it or not. It hinges on the idea that if someone else does it, then it’s ok for us to do it too.

This is why the best trust reference points are testimonials and reviews. Because it’s not you bragging about yourself or your product.

Instead of taking the long route of only talking about why your offer is great at the conscious level with reasoning, let your customers do the talking for you.

That road from interest to trust is much shorter.

This is the “trust shortcut”.

To make that road even shorter, use testimonials for your specific product.

For best results: 

Use testimonials from customers who share the same demographics as your target audience for the given ad, landing page, email, or campaign

What Are Their Options?

Now you’ve got the momentum going, don’t slow them down by showing too many purchase options.

Your potential buyer has come to you to solve one main problem they are experiencing.

Even though you actually may have multiple ways to help them solve that problem, focus on one solution.

Think about some recent times you’ve been sucked into a marketing funnel or hooked by some great copy. 

It probably featured a single call to action (CTA) and funneled your attention directly towards it. 

A single option helps eliminate analysis paralysis.

Look at your marketing assets and cut out everything that doesn’t need to be there.

Even if it doesn’t take away from the offer, distractions slow down the sale….

This is the “choice shortcut”.

The Final Decision

By this point, the consumer likely knows they want your offer.

They just need a little more perspective setting to let them know they’re making the right decision.

If you offer a discount, you can leverage the “anchoring bias”.

This says that we rely heavily on the first piece of information we receive about something (an anchor).

So when we receive a second piece of information, we compare it to the first. This is why showing (genuine) discounts works so well to help sales.

To help the buyer’s perspective even more, you can compare the cost to other daily purchases vs the benefit.

For example, “for the same price as a coffee a day, you can get full access for a year to our sales training that’s guaranteed to increase your take home by 25%+”

This is the final “purchase shortcut”.

There are many other ways to trigger these psychological “shortcuts” in your marketing, including demo videos, guarantees, authority badges, and case studies.

Now you understand the core “shortcuts” and where they work in your funnels, you can plan ways to trigger them in your campaigns.

Hope you enjoyed today’s Deep Dive!