Click on video to learn what the golden rule is and avoid falling into the fatal trap of breaking it!

Each and every one of you made 1 fatal error today in your marketing message.  Now that 1 thing might have slipped through or gone unnoticed because it wasn’t an obvious thing – like a spelling error, using a word incorrectly or not having a compelling call to action.  In fact that 1 thing – the fatal error that you made today – wasn’t anything you said at all.

That’s why no one brought it to your attention… until now.

But you know deep down (or at least you probably suspect) that something happened because a large percentage of your audience, who saw your message today, didn’t get it and they didn’t purchase your product or service.

Let’s take a look at the science of neuromarketing to find out why – so that you can take action now and turn your message into one that your leads and customers are dying to say “Yes” to.

You may not know this but your brain sees and interprets images first and makes decisions quickly based on what it sees.  And after all of this activity has occurred, much later it pays attention to and tries to process what it hears and the words and numbers you have read.

Somewhere between 80-90% of your brain activity (and what is going on in the minds of your prospects) is a result of trying to make sense of visual stimuli.  The optic nerve is physically connected to your old brain (which you already know is the decision making part of your brain) and it processes visual cues 40 times faster than auditory ones.

What happens is your retina captures images and sends that data on 2 distinct paths – one goes up to neo cortex (the thinking part of your brain) and the other goes straight to the reptilian brain.  Here’s the interesting part – this second pathway, to the decision making part of your brain is much faster.  In fact, it is about 500 times faster.  If it takes 1-2 milliseconds for the old brain to process a visual cue, it could take your neo cortex at least 500 milliseconds.  This makes that part of your brain that decides dangerously fast and hasty.

Since you and I cannot rely for our survival on the speed at which the new brain processes information, we are hard wired to make decisions at the old brain level – and as you can SEE, those decisions are primarily based on visual input.  And your new brain will only kick in much later to help you find data to support your gut reaction (the decision your old brain already made). Your eyes control your brain – and this is also true for your customers.  That’s how important visual cues are to your survival and to your sales and marketing messages.

Let’s take a look at a very good example of what not to do.  I saw this sign of the front window of a veterinary clinic in my neighbourhood this week.  In big orange letters, it took up almost 70% of the front window.

“Pet Laser Treatment.”

Now, if you were a potential customer driving by, would that sign mean anything to the part of your brain that decides? No, of course not.

The average person driving by would have no idea what pet laser means or WHY it would be a good reason to choose that clinic over the next one down the street.  To your reptilian brain, that sign means nothing.

If you are a pet owner – what do you care about?  What’s important to you in the context of finding a good vet?  If you are like most pet owners, you want to know that when you take your animal in for surgery the pain is minimized, the surgery is safe and the healing happens quickly.  If you owned a pet those things would be important to you, wouldn’t they?

Yes, now surprisingly pet laser does achieve all of those outcomes – less pain, less risk and quicker recovery – but that sign didn’t help you to know and decide, did it?  As you are driving by, that vet has 2-3 seconds to grab your attention and convey his message…and you now know that the best way to do that would be a picture, not a bunch of words, right?  What he needed to do was show you a photo of a dog or cat, fit and healthy – with a message like, “we guarantee less risk and a faster recovery for your pet, ask us how?” Or “want Fido’s next surgery to be virtually pain-free, ask us how?”

Now you may not be a veterinarian yourself but I am sure you can see exactly how this applies to your business.  How visual are your sales and marketing assets? Take a look at the very last email, brochure or presentation that you made.  Was it loaded up with words and stuff that only means something to you?  Did you even have any pictures and did they serve a purpose or were they just there to fill space?

Each and every day I see business owners just like you making this fatal mistake.  The part of your prospect’s brain that decides is a visual beast.  It’s relying on pictures to make a decision and you are trying to convey everything with words and numbers, aren’t you?  Your audience can’t tell you exactly why your message is not appealing to them…but I just did.

Your customer’s brain sees images first and words second. In order to get your audience to pay attention and remember your message, you need to quickly deliver a clear picture to the old brain. This is the golden rule of marketing and Sales Seduction – a picture is worth a thousand words.  And if you continue to break this golden rule, you will fail to close sales and help customers who really need your product or service.

We live in a world with a million possible distractions, pressures,  emergencies and interruptions – how can you possibly stay focused on your goals and sane?

There are always going to be several things constantly competing for your  time – marketing campaigns to design, team members to manage, customers to  respond to, business opportunities to explore, issues to follow up, personal  commitments etc. However, whenever you try to work on too many things at the  same time, inevitably none of them ever gets done.  Business success often comes down to focus.

To assist my clients in staying on track and keeping things simple, I  developed the following list of 5 simple techniques/questions to put things into  perspective. When in doubt – check the list for guidance.

1. Has Anyone Died? If not, relax and calm down. As long as no one has died,  it’s really not that serious and there is a solution to every challenge you  face.

2. Are You Trying to Eat an Elephant in One Sitting? Breaking things into bite  sized chunks makes the world of difference. Having broad high level goals are  good but having an actionable plan is essential. A detailed, step by step plan  can help you to identify how you can get from where you are to where you want to  be. Remember, a journey of 1000 miles begins with one step.

3. Are You In A Bad Neighbourhood? If you are not in a good place emotionally,  change your physiology immediately. That means get up and get moving, put on  your favourite song or do the “dance of joy”. Whatever it takes, do it NOW.

4. Are You Grateful For What You Already Have? It is impossible to bring more of  what you want into your life if you are feeling ungrateful about what you  already have. It has been said that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.  In many ways gratitude is a bit like that – it’s not what you say, the mere  words that count, but sum of the words and the heartfelt emotion behind  them.

5. Are You focused on What You Want or Don’t Want? Whether we realise it or not,  we are visualising things all the time – visualising either what we want or  don’t want. If you are relentlessly focused on the negative outcome and are  riddled by fear that WILL impact your reality.

It’s very easy to get so caught up in the emotion of emergencies, disruptions  and day to day activities that you can easily lose sight of what is most  important to your business success and well-being. These simple tips and questions will  help you stay more in touch which is what is most essential to you and your  compelling future. These techniques (and keeping a sense of humour) are vital to  helping you to stay in focus with your ultimate goals and business success.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2314715

Today, I’ve got a major challenge for you. I want you to take a look at what you are currently spending on marketing – whether it’s on brochures, your website, pay per clicks, PR, newspaper, direct mail, social media etc. – and I want you to slash the total budget by 20%.  No matter what you are selling and where you are selling it, I guarantee that you won’t miss that 20%.  And there is a very good reason for that.  96% of the people who see your message right now, don’t get it anyway.  You are spending thousands of dollars each year on sales and marketing materials to increase your sales and the vast majority of your prospects don’t understand your message – so they can’t possibly recall it and buy from you.

So with the money you just saved in your pocket, we are going to take a few minutes right now to re-engineer your message and give you a much better chance of getting through and being understood.  The good news is this – it is not going to cost you much to take the time right now to create a message that helps more of your prospects to say “yes”. And if more leads say “yes”, the money you do spend on sales and marketing is going to increase your sales.

To prove my point, I’d like to make you an interesting offer – I can either give you $50 cash right now or a piece of paper where I will write the net present value of a five year annuity at a compound annual interest rate of 10%, adjusted for CPI.  Which of these sounds more appealing to you? Which would you rather take right now?  Which of these can you take now, put in your wallet or spend it at the shopping centre?

Unless you are one of those very rare individuals who can calculate in your head the value of my second offer, I’m willing to bet you’d rather just take the $50.  And that makes a whole lot of sense, because everyone knows what $50 is and what it is worth. There’s nothing confusing about it, is there?

The part of your brain that makes decisions is not interested in working hard to figure out what my message means and what it’s worth. That part of your brain is looking for something that is tangible.  And if you’re unsure about whether a message is tangible or not – ask yourself “would a 6 year old understand it?”

Think about it – if I offer you a $50 note or an orange, you don’t have to think very hard about it to figure out what I am offering you, do you?  Both of them are equally easy to understand.  As soon as you see it, you know what it is and you know exactly what you can do with it. $50 will buy you enough food to cook a meal and the orange is good for you – it’s tasty and you can eat it.  There are no directions and no heavy thinking required to make sense of what I am offering you.  Your new brain doesn’t have to do any thinking (and wasting time) to get my message.

So what does this mean for you, your message and your customers?  If you are making it hard for your customers to understand what you do and whether they are getting a good deal, you need to spend some time right now making your offer more tangible.  Ask yourself “does my message include a bunch of big words, fluff and jargon?”  Could it be boiled down to something that a 6 year old could understand?  What do you need to do to communicate it more clearly to increase your sales – t0 help your prospects to be able to say “yes”? Can you simplify the words that you use or introduce photos or props to get your message across faster?

Now, I think you can guess that coming up with a simple, succinct message is a lot harder than being lazy and throwing together an ad full of useless, complicated information.  A good rule of thumb here is to remember that you should be working harder to craft and simplify your message than your prospect has to in order to decipher it.  Someone has to do the hard work – either you are committed to doing it before hand or your customer will need to think about it.

Now if you are serious about saving money and you want to increase your sales, you won’t spend another cent until you stop, take a good hard look at your materials and do whatever it takes to make your message tangible.  You don’t have to spend more money to chase find customers.  What you really need to do is take the complication and confusion out of your message so that more of your prospects can say “yes” now.