Can We Use Brain Science for Business?
The company with the better story wins. That is not always the company with the best product or the best team; it’s the one that’s the best at attracting attention and telling the best version of its story.
How do you tell the best version of your company’s story? The answer is simple: strategic messaging.
How to define what we say about ourselves
It all starts with the brain. The human brain is wired for extreme environments, like the grassland savanna; it makes sure we survive and thrive there.
Our brains have evolved to help us survive. Everybody has a brain, and all brains are wired the same way — they all have instincts, heuristics, and biases.
Brain Science is the science that studies how we think, how we remember, and how we decide: the very things that Sales and Marketing people constantly try to control and influence.
So, can we use Brain Science for business? The straightforward answer is yes. It’s not always justifiable or ethical to do so, of course —there is the potential to manipulate people through their brains — but there are some things that we can do to help people make sound business decisions.
How can Brain Science help us craft our messaging? If you know the basics of Brain Science, you’ll know how to share the right message at the right time, to the right people.
Optimize the buyer journey with Brain Science
Anything can be a buyer journey — in Marketing, it ends with people giving you their email address, in Sales with a handshake and a closed deal, and in Customer Success with a contract renewal.
The problem is that — in many companies — these journeys aren’t aligned.
The solution is both straightforward and complex — your company messaging should be carefully crafted and based on one of 5 intents behind your communication. You’ll want to start with this question: what am I trying to do with this messaging?
- Fascinate — what makes you interesting? Why should the customer care? Does this even matter to the customer?
- Educate — what is this? What’s its value to the customer? How does it work? Educate with an easily reproducible story that the customer can repeat to everyone in the company, including the decision-makers, many of whom you will never meet.
- Differentiate — why should they consider you and not something or someone else? Why should they choose you over your competitor or an alternative approach altogether? Remember, the status quo is safe, and the brain always goes for safe.
- Validate — establish trust. Why should they trust this? The customer needs to be sure it’s not going to cost them their job, so your goal is to de-risk your offering and make people feel safe.
- Motivate — this is where the customer makes a decision. But why should they do this now? What is the urgency? Scarcity, a limited amount of something – that’s how you encourage a speedy deal-closure.
Make sure your narrative covers these questions, and you’ll never run out of things to say. What’s more important, your messaging will be aligned throughout the company, and you’ll increase effectiveness and retention rate.
Ambassify tip!
Piet’s five intents are not only precious guidelines to a more effective communication strategy. They are also the perfect starting point to smartly communicate with your current and future Ambassadors.
Look at them as 5 essentials steps to promote Advocacy internally when first launching your Advocacy program company wide, for example.
What do you do first? You fascinate and educate your employees. Breaking the news of a new Advocacy program first, and then explaining how it all works and where the value for them lies.
Then everything else follows in that order precisely: show them what sets Ambassify apart from other platforms, establish trust toward you, the company, and the program. And then make it fun — from gamification to rewards, there are many ways to motivate your employees to give it their best.
If you want to know more about Piet Saegeman…
If you’re interested in finding out more about communication and how to improve it within your company, if you wish to tackle a specific project, content pitch, strategy, website content, or simply want to discuss alternative communication approaches, don’t hesitate to reach out to us — we’ll make sure to put you in touch with Piet Saegeman for a 15-minute consultation.