Marketing on Emotion – Red Brain/Green Brain
What is Red Brain /Green Brain?
Have you ever heard about the red brain/green brain concept in sales and marketing? Yes, but you don’t get it? No, no freaking idea?
Awesome! You’re in the right spot!
Firstly, why is this red brain/green brain thing important? Successful understanding and application of this concept will help you to grow your business. It will help you to connect more and have better relationships with your customers. What does that lead to? Better business! Better customers! More referrals! More revenue! And more revenue means that you can continue to do run your business for whatever the purpose of getting into business in the first place was!
So, now you know why it is important; it would probably be good to understand what it is and how it works.
The red brain / green brain concept looks at how humans make decisions (which we’re notoriously bad at). Most humans go into looking for a product or service in the red brain – logic brain. “It has to have X and do Y and when I tick off the Z then I know it’s mine.” If you sell, with “well this product has X and does Y and it also has Z” you’ve got around peg (product/service) in a round hole (customer problem/expectation) and they’re sold. BUT what happens when you have someone who also has an A, B C criteria that you don’t know about… you’ve then got a square peg that needs to go into a round hole.
How do you change the peg? You don’t, you change the hole – i.e. You change the way you connect with the prospect!
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How do you do this? You tap into the customer’s green brain – their emotional brain. (People rarely just buy with their red, logical brain). People are attracted to products and services by how they FEEL when consuming it.
Take Coke – Coke never promotes itself as a sugary, fizzy drink. It sells you the experience that you’ll have with Coke. Their marketing is all about having fun, enjoying the outdoors, being happy and being surrounded by family and friends. So they are selling to your green brain. They’ve been doing so with great effect for decades.
Apple – Apple isn’t about technology. Apple is about beautiful design. They don’t tell you how many gigabytes and RAM their product has, they talk about smooth edges. They’ve built a tribe of people who love Apple (you can’t be in a creative industry and use a PC that’s for sure). What’s the green brain tactic? Emotion – beauty, belonging and, of course, being connected.
I see a lot of businesses that believe that the best way to market and sell is to give the sales prospect every detail of what the product and service offers. Then, when they don’t win the sale, they wonder why. I suggest a better strategy of focusing on looking at what the customer wants to experience and how they want to feel as a result. This strategy is sure to transform your marketing and sales results. We’re talking about an 100% more successful strategy.
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So, how does this red brain/green brain approach apply to your business and marketing?
- You have used a combination of red and green brain tactics
- Ask yourself what does my product or service really do for my customer? For example – A holiday isn’t a holiday- it’s relaxation, new experiences and cultures and it offers variety. Why would they go with you? They want security, and they want to know that they can trust you.
- In the sales process, ask open-ended questions such as “what would be the purpose of X”, “how are things going to be different when you’ve achieved X” “how is this important to you”
- Focus on the emotion of the experience of using your product or service.
In a value-based business, people will only buy if you connect the red brain (logic) with the green brain (emotion).
This is really powerful stuff, and when applied will ensure; no buyers remorse, better customer relations and happier customers.
What to do next:
If you would like to know more about this approach to sales and marketing or would like to know more about how I’ve helped business owners grow their businesses so they can go home happy please feel free to get in touch!
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