The Decision Expedition

By Simon Hawk

ARE YOU SPENDING MONEY ON ADVERTISING BUT NOT GETTING THE RESULTS YOU WANT?

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

LEARN THE SECRET REAL RULES OF MARKETING THAT BIG BUSINESSES ALREADY KNOW AND USE

Marketing is all about influencing and persuading your customer. That all boils down to one simple thing - the brain

• Language: English
• Publisher: Known Publishing
• Release date: Jun 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781913717773

Book preview

Copyright© 2022 Simon Hawk

Published by Known Publishing, 2022

The right of Simon Hawk to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

Paperback: 978-1-913717-76-6

E-book: 978-1-913717-77-3

This book is sold subject to the condition it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be circulated in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise without the publisher’s prior consent.

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CONTENTS

Warning: This Is Not a Normal Marketing Book!

Meet Simon

My Story

The Lazy Conscious

Before We Dive In: Some Home Truths

My Approach: Build It, Engage It

Build It

An Introduction to Perception: What It Is and How It Works

How to Influence Your Customers’ Perception

Society: What It Is and How It Works

Tips For Your Business: How to Build Great Associations Using the Power of Society to Your Advantage

Memory: What It Is and How It Works

Tips For Your Business: How to Make Things Memorable

Bonus Alert: Goals

Engage It

Engaging the Body

Build the Right Environment

The Power of Context

Conclusion

Bonus Alert: Making Good Decisions

WARNING: THIS IS NOT A NORMAL MARKETING BOOK!

Did you know that the human brain is the most complex structure in the entire known universe? That’s right.

Yes, that thing just sitting there right now in your head.

It is made up of over 100 billion different neurons, and each one of those neurons has a unique set of its own 10,000 outputs to other neurons – which creates upwards of a quadrillion different connections and a potential combination of distinct states that is basically impossible to count!

Yes, that thing.

And you own one of those yourself! In your own head. Right now. Congratulations! You are amazing.

It is our biggest advantage over every other living creature on Earth, and it is the result of millions of years of evolution that have helped us to develop, survive and thrive as a species, all leading up to what we are now and you sitting there reading this book…

Every single action you take can be linked back to the working of that supercomputer in your head. Amazing, huh?

And you know what? Your customers have one too.

So, let me ask you – while we have established that you have one, and are even using it right now, and that your customers have one and they are also using it right now – what do you actually know about the brain and how it works? How much have you thought about that, and how it might be important to your business?

I am sure you have spent many hours thinking about how you can persuade your customers to purchase from you, but have you ever taken a step back and asked ‘What am I actually trying to do? What is the purpose of all of this at the most basic level?’

Well, let me tell you – you are ultimately trying to positively interact with the brain of another person. Simple as that. Whoever your customer is, whatever business you run, whatever product you sell or service you provide, you are fundamentally engaging with the brain of someone else.

Traditional marketing techniques are often very focused on getting you to segment your audience into different groups by their age, their earnings, their favourite type of cucumber. But, you see, what is more important to understand is this:

We all have a brain that is the same!

That’s right.

We may all look different, come from different places, do different jobs and prefer different types of flavoured milk, but we all react in similar ways to certain types of external stimuli, and we process information in certain similar ways too. All of us!

What that means is that there are certain things you can do that are more effective at engaging the brain than others, and if you use them correctly you can better persuade and influence your customer to make the decisions you want.

Interesting, eh? And, you know what? I bet you’d like to know what those things are…

THIS BOOK IS FOR…

This book is for you small business owners and entrepreneurs who are genius visionaries in your particular field of business (of course!) but have discovered that, whatever your business, if you want to grow it you also need to be a marketer!

This book is for you small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to understand the best tools and techniques to influence your customer’s decision-making, but don’t have a year (or two) to spend learning marketing theory or read 397 new books.

This book is for you small business owners and entrepreneurs who don’t have giant budgets or huge marketing teams but still need to develop effective and successful marketing campaigns that will deliver a good return on your investment (ROI) and grow your business.

So let me ask you:

Are you overwhelmed by all the different marketing options and don’t know where to even begin?

Does marketing seem to all just be a bit of a stab in the dark? Are you unclear on what to do and why? Do you worry about whether you’re spending money on the right things?

Are you wasting what little marketing budget you have on things that are not showing any obvious return?

Are you frustrated by receiving conflicting advice and not being able to work out what’s best?

Do you wonder if there is any way to put some real science behind what you are doing so that you can at least make informed decisions?

And would you like to know the marketing secrets of the big businesses who have spent millions of dollars over decades on marketing research?

If you answered yes to these questions, then this book is for you. I invite you to join me on the Decision Expedition, where we will be taking a journey together to tackle these questions and more, giving you the tools and know-how to allow you to create an effective, engaging marketing strategy that will build your business, deliver a real ROI and engage your customers with methods that actually work. These are methods that are currently being used by many of the biggest companies in the world, and you can use them too…

WHAT WILL THIS BOOK DO FOR YOU?

It’s believed that 90% of decisions are made non-consciously.¹ That’s right. I just said 90%… 90%!

Traditional marketing techniques are focused on targeting our conscious decision-making, but the majority of your customers’ decisions are not made on this level. So, what should you do about that? Well, that is what this book is all about.

This will be a deep dive (although no scuba gear is needed!) into the mind of your customer to answer the questions: How do they actually make purchase decisions? And how can I design my business to appeal to them in the right way? What are the real rules of marketing?

It will give you insight into all the key areas of how your customers’ brains make decisions. It will arm you with knowledge to apply immediately to your growing business venture, allowing you to get inside the minds of your customers and, as a result, create marketing strategies that will help you to reach your ambitious targets, whatever they may be.

When you understand the workings of your customer’s mind, you have the power and the knowledge to create effective strategies to appeal to it, whether or not you have a giant budget! Knowledge is definitely power.

WHAT THIS BOOK ISN’T

So yes, this is a marketing book. But it is not like the others. To explain what it is, let’s start with what it isn’t.

This is not about helping global blue-chip companies to ‘build their brand’ with multimillion-dollar marketing budgets through expensive and hard-to-access media channels, like TV.

This is not about marketing theory and discussing concepts like the famous Five Ps (product, price, promotion, place and people), or the definitions of marketing concepts like differentiation or positioning.

This is also not a digital marketing masterclass where you will learn all the newest marketing technology that allows you to segment people down to their favourite type of pillow.

And this is not about telling you that you need a social media strategy, or an email marketing strategy plan (which you might, by the way!), or any specific choice of marketing tool, for that matter.

No, this book is about giving you an understanding of how consumer decisions are actually made, helping you to create a framework to use across every marketing activity you will ever do and every marketing channel you will ever use.

And it is about letting you in on the marketing secrets that big businesses already know about so that you can start using them too.

There are many, many books on marketing out there that talk about marketing strategy, digital development, search and social and loads of other stuff, which I am not downplaying as it all helps, but I think that to focus on that is to start at the wrong place. At the end of the day, our businesses are talking to people, and they are the ones who will make the decision on whether to make a purchase. So I say that we first need to be as knowledgeable as we can about how our customers are making those decisions.

And when we are talking about what our customers do, we actually need to be talking about the brain. After all, that will really help us to focus on the decision-making process.

Many small business owners decide to immediately spend their hard-earned money on advertising in an effort to talk to their potential customers, but they do this without a clear understanding of which marketing techniques are actually the most effective to use for these adverts. But if you do not use effective methods of persuasion to successfully convince these potential customers to purchase from you, you’re potentially wasting your money because your adverts will not be effective!

So you need to know the best methods to engage and persuade your customer when you are talking to them, and this means you need to know what actually influences how they make decisions.

WHAT THIS BOOK WILL HELP YOU UNDERSTAND

So that is what we are going to explore. But to do that, we are not just going to peruse some of our old marketing textbooks. No – we need to do something different. What we are going to do, therefore, is travel into the worlds of all sorts of different areas of study – including neuroscience, sociology, psychology and economics, as well as marketing – and explore what really makes your customer’s mind tick.

But don’t get me wrong; you don’t need to worry about knowing every single detail of the brain, exploring every single psychological concept or sociological insight to the thousandth degree. That’s not what is important. What is important is to get a grasp of some of the relevant basics.

And when I talk about the basics, I am not talking about being able to list off all the different parts of the brain so you can win on the anatomy section of next week’s pub quiz.

No – I am talking about understanding specifically how our brain’s reactions lead to decision-making. The reason why this is crucial is because decisions are the nuts and bolts of your life. Everything that you do is a decision in some form. You decided to sit down on that chair rather than run naked around the room. You decided to get your hair coloured orange the day before your big date. Also, you decided which type of toothpaste to buy, which person to hang out with and what to do with your free time.

You can probably see what I mean when I say that decisions are the defining feature of life. And of course, the customer’s act of purchase from you is also a decision!

We are going to explore a load of different things in this book. Here are a few of them:

Why 90% of your customers’ decisions are made non-consciously, and how to develop plans that allow you to talk to your customers on that level.

How our brains learn and remember, and how you can use this knowledge on your own business.

How your customers’ perception of you is actually more powerful than the objective reality (yes, I said more powerful!), and how you can ensure you are building the right one in your own customers’ minds.

The power that society has over all of us, from peer pressure to image motivation and more, and how you can actually best fit yourself into the world you live in to attract your customer.

How to use your physical environment by creating a plan to engage your customer’s body, senses and hormones.

How to structure the physical parts of your own business, from your logo to your website and more, in ways that will allow you to influence your customers’ mood and buying intention in your favour.

Techniques for presenting your products to your customer that will best influence the choices your customers make, including using pricing psychology, behavioural economics and more.

I will be giving you the juiciest bits of need-to-know info across the sciences and, as a result, you will understand how your customers think, react and make decisions so that you can improve your marketing ROI, no matter what the campaign or platform.

I will give you the tools to engage your audience with marketing techniques that actually work and that are not necessarily based on having to spend huge amounts.

I will give you a framework to use for any marketing activity that you do from now on. Whether you are building your website, writing an email or buying an ad spot on prime-time TV, the tools you will find in this book will always, always, always be relevant. Because it does not matter which platform you are using – from YouTube to Facebook to the back page of your local newspaper – or how much you are spending, you are still ultimately talking to a human brain and, as I say, on a fundamental level, our brains are all the same! So let’s cut through the overwhelm. You don’t need to know every single thing about every single platform. You only need to do one thing: understand your customer’s brain.

By the end, you will know why you are doing what you are doing and be able to question or justify your choice of strategy. It will no longer be about guesswork or relying only on the advice of ‘experts’. If a snazzy marketing consultant, for example, suggests some complex marketing strategy, you will be able to question what they are doing in a very real and simple way – ‘excuse me, mate, but how does this engage with my customer’s brain? After all, that is what I am trying to do’ – and then see what he says. You see, you will now have the information to guide you, the knowledge to question things and a framework to use as the building block for everything you do.

None of this book is brand new information that has been discovered from the bottom of a large hole in my garden, some place that no one else in the whole world knows about. None of it is secret stuff I have stolen from some classified government files. In fact, many of these techniques are being incorporated by major brands into their day-to-day activities, whether that be the design of their website, the way their shop floors are organised, or how they price their products. And that is the point: you need to use them too.

I have read over 100 books on this topic, studied neurobiology courses and even started a business. I have done the studying and the reading and the distilling of the information and condensed it all into this book so that you don’t have to.

I found, while reading all these books, that lots of them are aimed at the individual, and how you can apply these types of methods into your personal life. The books that do address businesses love to talk about building brands like you have a seven-figure marketing budget. They are not designed specifically for the small business owners and entrepreneurs, though, in the way this one is. Lots of the information can be found in different places, but no one has seemed inclined to pull it all together into one easy-to-read package just for you!

What I have done for you is take everything that is relevant to small business owners and entrepreneurs and distilled it into this book. So, welcome to the Decision Expedition. We’re standing