S1 Ep12 Make it about them

[Music] Your offer might be good, but it reads like it's about you. Your process, your features, your experience, your awards. The problem is the buyer is looking for themselves. Today, we're unpacking self-relevance. Why the brain pays attention to something that feels personal. And how to make your marketing feel understood? Not just personalised. If your message is clear but still not converting, this one matters. Welcome to ThinkShift, the podcast where neuroscience meets business. [Music] Hey Leon, how are you doing? Hey, how are you doing? I'm alright. I love in the trench coat today. Yeah, I know. I've got my cropped trench on, which is from Zara, but it is a copy of Yves Saint Laurent. Which is YSL, to the rest of us. Yes, very good. Yeah, look at you go with your acronym, your fashion, your fashion acronyms. And I know at least three others. Dior and Chanel and maybe Hermes. Oh my god, that's impressive. That's impressive. To sweat on those. Wow, okay. Yeah, no, I've got on top of my ThinkShift T-shirt. Which is the most important thing. That's right, exactly right. Yeah, the designer ThinkShift T-shirt. Which I designed. You did, actually. Even more important than myself. It's the Clint Nielsen Fashion House. Alright, so today we're talking about making it about them, about your customer. We're just talking about making it about me. Is that what you're saying? Yes, we were. It does, let's move on to the customer. Let's talk about the science behind self-relevance. So your offer might be good, the message is clear. Your design might be polished, but the audience doesn't see themselves in it. They move on straight away. So let's first talk about what is self-relevance in plain language? So self-relevance is literally what's in it for me. So what is it that is relevant to my brain, to me as a person without the fluff? So it has to be something that I can see myself in or see myself doing. Yeah. That's a trench. Yeah, like the trench. You should see yourself being that before you bought it. Exactly right. And that's true, right? And that's also funnily enough that you bring that up. Some websites, clothing and also hair websites, okay, forget the hair one for you. I don't know what that is. I don't know exactly. Is you can create. So you get a picture of yourself or you take a picture of yourself. And you put a hairstyle on or you'll put an outfit on your body. And so you, and that's create, create, self-relevance. So doing is creating something called the endowment effect. So the endowment effect or the Ikea effect. When you see yourself in something, all of a sudden it's more valuable. And so that's what happens with self-relevance. Yes. When we see that, all of a sudden becomes extremely valuable to us. A lot more than what it would if it was just something that was interesting but not super relevant. So it increases attention. Yes. And the memory is an imprint, a stronger imprint, would you say? So it creates almost like a blueprint. But we have a blueprint too. So we actually have a blueprint of how, what we see that's relevant and what we see that we want to see. That is, we give it attention. So, and that just, yeah, exactly an imprint. Okay. And consolidates that blueprint that we have in our brain. What is the brain prioritized self-relevant information? Because it doesn't have time to prioritize what's not. So, you know, we're running out of a million miles an hour, you know, going back to your process theory with system one thinking. We need something that evokes an emotion. Triggers something that is important to us. And that's what we give attention to because we purely just don't have the time to give in time or in information that's not relevant. And we don't think that we're going to benefit from. We talk about cognitive load a lot and then here I've got personal relevance, reduces effort. So again, the reduction of. If it reduction. Effect reduction. The brain loves less. So the more we can give it less, the more is that heightened hormones or endorphins or does that. Endorphins dopamine? Yeah, endorphins dopamine? Yeah, endlow is cortisol, which is what's important. So cortisol is what stops us from making really good decisions because in a way, it paralyzes the prefrontal cortex, which is the conductor of the orchestra, the orchestra being our brain, our body. So our really good decisions come from our prefrontal cortex, the raised cortisol up regulation of cortisol stops that. So we can't make a decision. So what happens is when it reduces that, we can. So that's when we allow information in to make some really good decisions, which is, you know, the area of decision sciences. But we have to pick and choose. So we can't pick everything. And we generally choose the path of least resistance because it creates. Our brain has a working capacity. It has a certain level or limit. And we need to work within those boundaries and those guardrails on how much we can let in. So we're selective. There is a confusion between relevancy and personalisation. So I'm going to ask you now on that. What's the difference between those two? So personalisation is very superficial. So, you know, it's surface level. It's, you know, the shell or. Like adding your name into comms, crystal. Yeah, yeah. It's a very conscious action. Very conscious action. So we, someone's consciously done it or we're conscious that it's being done. Where relevance isn't. It's a subconscious trigger and it evokes a neurological response. It can deregulate or upregulate even our nervous system in the way that. And allows us to look for danger or safety in a way that we. Yeah, we're the motive response. Where personalisation. Yeah, it's very, very superficial. So we like to personalise and customise things. But you need to personalise and customise something that's relevant. We can easily personalise something that's not relevant. That's right. And that's a disaster. Because it can feel fake if the message. Well, yeah. Like we use the example, if something comes in our inbox and says, "Hey Clint, try out my new hair volumising shampoo." And I'm like, "There's no relevancy here." So now it looks like I've been spammed. Yeah, exactly. So we have a came into my inbox. I'm like, "Oh great. I can get my bleached hair even higher." You know, the more the matter is like, I'm trying to, you know, "March Simpson, I'm joking." Yeah, the more volume and the more memory my hair is curly anyway. But the more that I can control this, the better. So it's absolutely relevant for you. Yes. It's a load of nonsense. Load of nonsense. What does true relevance feel like to a consumer though? So it needs to be really authentic. Yeah. Again, another overused way of. It means the problem that they're feeling in that time. Yeah, that's right. So it needs to be authentic. It needs to feel genuine. There needs to be a connection. Is it language? It uses their language, you know, almost need to feel like you are in their shoes. They understand me. I'm understood. Understood, yeah. And that is often missed. And I actually see it. I mean, I'm interested in get your opinion on this. I actually see it miss more than he the target. Yeah, look, with a framework called Story Brand that I've often used for developing websites, putting the. We understand your problem is probably the most important part of that website. So structuring the site in a way that is. This is what we do. This is some uniqueness to why you should read a bit more. So the three key things that we do differently to others. And this is how we understand you right now. So it goes straight into understanding the customer straight away before you tell them that you can solve that problem. This is how you solve it. This is our process. This is some people and our testimonials that have gone through this and agreed and clicked, you know, sign up now. So that's a very tried and true process. But it's so often missed on websites that haven't had this process done. Putting the customer's problem up in front and center and recognizing that, you know, we understand it. We understand that problem. That's a big part of it. So we've just talked about, I guess, what makes personalization feel a bit false. You know, what can make it feel creepy? Is there a creepiness that can go one step too far? I can. I mean, it's being. It's not being too familiar? Or, um. Yeah, so how did you get that information? Too familiar. Yeah, it makes sense. Too familiar. You know, how do you know that? Or you haven't earned the right to know that. Or you haven't earned the right to communicate in that. I haven't provided that information. You know that. You have permission. And it can feel a little bit icky. And that's what we're talking about. Sales can be a bit icky because you push, push, push, you're using information. That is not relevant at that time. Or you haven't earned the right to use that information at that time. So it can be creepy and icky. But often people think, well, the more I know about someone, the more I say, you know, I know that. That's a bad idea. Yeah, it's like, well, hang on, no. I haven't actually ever talked about that. Yeah, you haven't heard that right. To talk about it. So yes, it can. Absolutely it can. So people reject messages that seem technically personalized. The message gets the surface detail right, but the motive wrong. It feels automated. It doesn't solve a relevant problem. And it triggers suspicion rather than connection. So a big problem. Before we continue, don't forget to follow ThinkShift on all the social networks, like and subscribe. So you can keep up to date with what's happening and when the next shift is coming out. So Leanne, let's talk about where Self Relevance shows up in marketing and user experience. So Self Relevance isn't just a copywriting issue, it shows up across the whole experience. And I'm going to talk about now where businesses usually miss the Self Relevance right. So I just mentioned before homepage design and homepage messaging and hierarchy, homepage headlines that lead with the company, you know, products and services, features of benefits, product pages that list features before needs, onboarding that asks questions if it doesn't use the answers, emails that segment by date but not by motivation. So these are some really crucial ones that I see. Are there any that you see? Yeah, a lot of language that's we this, we, we, we, all about we. Yes, okay. Did you just redo that? Yeah, great. Can I come into the story here? Yes. So instead of what we do for you, but not overusing, but using you or what we do together, or yeah, so using collective language and collaborative language rather than, or it's all about us. Yeah. And I find most websites I read is we, we do this, we solve this, we provide this, we help you. Yeah. And why do you think that is though? Why do you think we're so keen to put ourselves as the hero in these situations as a business? Like I said, almost a default. I actually don't think people know how not to. Right. I might, yeah, I actually don't think they, and it is a much harder process. Yeah. Making your customer a consumer the hero, which is what it should be. But it is a lot harder. It's a lot harder to write about it from a copy perspective, to design around that, to talk about they even come up with the narrative. It's a lot harder. And we also, we know what we do really well. It's easier just to go, blah, with the information, we this, we that and talk about ourselves. Yeah. And also, we do like talking about ourselves. We do. As, you know, humans, we do. We like talking about ourselves, what we've achieved, what we've done, how good we are. It's why quizzes, I mean, I have my archetype, quiz, but it's why quizzes and, and, and, you know, those, you know, find out about how you rank in a certain thing. And quizzes work really well because I want to know what I am. Yeah, against everyone else. Against everyone else. I want to know how, you know, what score I get, where competitive, you know, species. Well, no, what score I get, I want to know where I come, I want to know where it's this, I want to know how many votes I got. Yes. You know, and, and so that works really, really well. And so we tend to find it much easier to talk about ourselves and talk about the customer. So, we can talk about now the risk of getting relevance wrong. And one of the key things here is that it can feel manipulative at the really bad end. Yeah. Is there anything else that's, you know, the risk of getting it wrong? Well, you could be misunderstood. You're misinterpreted. You know, you know, you intentions. And what they are. And this could be by accident. Yeah. I mean, there is a statistic that over 50% of emails, I misunderstood that when I read that, that absolutely. Yeah, absolutely blew my mind. Right. Because people don't get the tone right or they're writing for themselves rather than for the reader. I mean, that's a lot over 50% of emails misunderstood. That's from Harvard. And yeah, and that happens because we aren't, we're communicating in the wrong way. And we're talking about the wrong thing and things that aren't relevant. And so it's a disaster. And people feel, people feel misread. So they'll often then go and start publishing that on online platforms. And there's a big brand risk right with that associated with that kind of behaviour. Yeah. You know, suddenly they're on LinkedIn going, "Oh, I just spoke to Insert Company Name and they sent me an email and it was this." And I feel put off by that and, you know, it could be catastrophic in some way. Well, okay, because we also share our lives on social media. Yeah. I mean, we're told to be visible and people take that literally. I mean, we're extremely visible, but in a work capacity. But people do. They go, "I'm going to call you out and I'm going to put you on the socials." And I, I, again, it's all about me. And I want you to comment and justify that you also think that this is incorrect. Yeah. And we're going to talk about self-preservation in a way, which is why we then, you know, blast it out to the world and, you know, with a megaphone and shout it from the rooftops. And we're going to talk about as a business, how to make it about them. Let's talk about that. So it's not about more data. It's about better interpretation of your customer. What should businesses do before writing or designing anything and not just hire us? Yes. Well, one of the first questions we would ask anyway is, what's the problem? Yeah. And these two softs. So what's going on? What's happening with your customer? What is it that you do that helps solve a problem? So what are your customers thinking? What behavior? What decisions do you want them to make? Who are they? Where are they? Who are the decision makers? What industries? And what is it that you do that solves a problem? So I actually don't want to know about your products and services. I want to know what the outcome is first. What is the outcome? Always start with the outcome? What is that first? How do we avoid that outcome happening or how do we enable the outcome? Yeah. And, you know, I often will use a lot of loss of vision by. And, you know, the solution is a cognitive bias where we put more than double or over 50% of emphasis on losing something rather than gaining something. So where we talk about, well, if you do this, you'll get this. Or if you do it this way, you'll achieve this. Rather than if you don't utilize this, you won't get. Right. And often when we use that kind of language, people will sit up and go, hang on. What do you mean I'm not going to get it? I'm missing out. What? What a mess. I mean, I need that. Or I don't want to feel like that. I want to feel like this. Interesting. I better then engage. So it's, you know, using and also using behavioral science, our, I mean, the entire, the industry of behavioral science is around understanding human decision making and how we behave and how we think. And obviously we bring in neuroscience and psychology into that to, you know, power up that tool. Understand that it's, it's, it's incredibly successful and understanding where your customer is coming from. So it's not just about what they're saying. It's around the behaviors behind that. So if we can find out a way to uncover that, then we know how to communicate. Yeah. So that, then that's what we need to do. Because we're emotional beings. 95% of any decision is emotion. We then justify it with 5% of logic. Yeah. And we're talking to that 95% brain, not the 5%. That's right. So, Dr. relevancy here, how do you make copy, feel more relevant first as a business? I was going to try and make my copy more relevant. How would I do that? Well, it needs to speak to the customer and it needs to be using language that's collaborative. Understand their situation. Make them the hero as you said. And, you know, in a design perspective, I mean, you're the expert here. What do you think from a design? Well, this is a copy question. But in terms of design, I would make the hierarchy very clear and obvious and lead with a headline. And in the body copy. And in the, and in the copy, people need to read themselves in the copy. They do. They need to read the, yeah, about all that resonates when they're, oh, yeah, I've had that problem. All that, yeah, I can see myself as I'm reading this. I see myself as I'm reading this. I see my problem here or I see now how this can be solved. Yeah. Or I see it with a great headline. I see, I see how this fits into my world. Yeah. It's a big tick for me. Yeah. Yeah. Replace broad benefits with specific outcomes. Yeah. Is another one. Yeah. Show who the offer is for and who it is not for. Potentially. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, um, that's an interesting one. Yeah. And people often you read and I see this. Well, who this is not for. And I often question. I'll say, how do you know? No, but seriously. Yeah. You don't know all situations and there's going to be outliers. But often, and people use this as they think it's, they think it's a persuasion tactic. I mean, I'd be interesting to know and send us a comment or a question. And it'd be good actually if you guys have questions to send them in because we read them and answer them is who does that? You know, it'd be interesting to know you guys who actually says, oh, this offer is for this and who it's not for. Yeah. And that was a trend that was happening a couple of years ago. And I still see people doing that. Yeah. And I, I challenge it every time. So of course. Yeah. But how do you know if you have a skill to solve a problem, why wouldn't you want to solve it for someone regardless of where they are? Another ridiculous example could be try our new volumizing shampoo. Who this is not for as a photo of me. Like ridiculous, right? Why would you do that? Why would you show something who doesn't need the product, right? That. So yeah. And that's obvious. broader perspective. If I get it from a service perspective, I think it's very damaging. I think, I mean, I talk about something called the pyramid of priorities. Maybe we can do an episode on that, actually, the top looking at, now I taught you the pop. You know, T1, T2, T3, T4. What that, who this is not for, is only looking at your T1, which is the tip of the pyramid. But if you look at T4, which is the bottom, there is so much unrecognized need. There is so much business there, we're living money on the table by saying who this is not for you, not actually engaging with anyone from T4, which is where a lot of business is. So I really challenge those. I mean, obviously, the example you gave is obvious, but I really challenge a lot of who this is not for. I actually want to know from you, how do you know? Yeah, it's a good question. How do you know they're not in your T4? Because if they're not your customer, they're your competitors. So you're actually missing out on business. Please comment and ask your questions. I'd love to know. Yeah. They'd be great. Okay. Next I'm going to talk about how user experience can create self relevance. So letting the user self select, using God of Pathways, ask fewer but better questions. Again, I know we talk about cognitive load so much here, but it chimes in here again. It's ask less is more. Ask fewer, more direct questions. You'll get better answers and better engagement. Adapt next steps based on context. Show relevant proof near the decision point. I think that's really, really powerful too. So that means testimonials, things of that nature, near where decisions to be made, court of actions, forms to be filled out, things like that. So proximity or proximity? Yeah, proximity. Yeah, proximity. Just want to move now to teams. So we're talking about in a business sense, what should teams stop doing? So one thing I see, especially in the enterprise or corporate space, is companies talking about themselves. Yeah. You know, we've done these. We've got, you know, company history basically. Yeah, company history. So like, yeah, we've got this or even, you know, to the point where, you know, we've been around for 50 years and they're all charted, even all charted, we do this and we've got this team just check out our timeline, look at our team and looking at our team in our about page and all that is great. I get that, but this is not this is. This is, yeah, this is heading up on the on the on either on the homepage or landing page or I see often in presentations, people starting a presentation with the company history. Yeah, we're leading with the team. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now there's a time and place for the data in the deck. Wow. So yeah, stop leading with it. Stop leading again with your capabilities and your features and benefits. Yes. Like I call it flipping it upside down. So start with the outcomes first start with the solution what problems that you solve. Then you go into how you do it. Then you go into the features and benefits and then you go into the authority piece, which is the company history and, you know, that we've got these super duper to, you know, teams with all these knowledge that can help you. Great. So it can solidifies every step. Yeah. We get to the point and go, well, now I understand this is an outcome. Well, this is a problem that we can solve. Yep. Great. So, that's a good example. These are the features and benefits. Okay. Now I see how that and these are the people that do it well. Yeah. Well, it makes sense. Always recommend. Makes sense. Where do I sign? Always recommend team at the end. Yeah. Even on pitch decks. Yeah. You know, this is how we're going to do is all these things. Who's behind it all? 100%. Well, yeah. My proposals and this is one thing I get a comment on often is they'll say, oh, you talk about yourself at the end. So I'm actually at the end before the terms and conditions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's someone to you. That I wonder. It's me. It's me. So because it's not about you. No. It's not about you. And I then once you see what the value is and what you're going to get, then I solidify it by saying, hey, I'm the expert behind this. This is why you're able to get this and people go, yeah. Hello. Yeah. Hello. Here I am. This is me at the end. At the end. Yeah. Yeah. So what I see is where they start with this is the team. This is the problem. This is us. This is what we can do. It's feature benefits. If you've gone many pages in before you even get to something that's relevant. Yeah. I think another important one is stop talking to everyone. So in your messaging. Yeah. If you're talking to everyone, you're talking to no one. Yeah. So make it targeted. Make it focused. Pick the lowest hanging fruit and then target them and not everybody. It's quite often, you know, it happens all the time. Make sure you get the same thing in your business when you ask that question. Who are you talking to? Who's your audience? And they say, oh, you know, everyone, 20 to 80 men, women, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're just going, oh my goodness, this is going to be really hard to focus and target the messaging now. Yeah. Let's just pick your 80% of who you want to target and let's go for them. Yeah. And then we'll test that and then change later. But it happens all the time. Do you see a bit of that? Absolutely. 100% and I actually get people who I work with them on doing positioning statements. And we do a minimum of three. So this is not a UVP, you know, unique value proposition or unique selling proposition. Those of you that know me know, I actually don't really agree with that because it doesn't showcase you well enough. But a positioning statement is the position of the business and the identity of the business and what you do and what you do well and what is unique making you incomparable in a comparable market. And we have multiple of those because depends on who you're talking to. So rather than doing something because normally when we do positioning statements and when I get people to do them, it's, I do all this, you know, I have a marketing agency and I help you become more visible. So what? That's what everybody sees. What is it? And we do multiple positioning statements so people can actually use them for particular audiences and concentrate on and focus on, you know, a particular audience or particular segment or target certain people or certain industry or a certain group. So then it is more relevant. You know, one thing I really want everyone to take away from this is that self relevance and relevance bias is a thing and it's a huge thing. So the brain will not allow, we will not allow itself to take on messaging unless it sees an impact in it. So unless you are talking to the person, the brain will not compute. So that's, yeah, something really important for our listeners and our viewers that it does need to be relevant because there is a cognitive bias that will stop our brain from processing your information if it isn't. Wow. Yeah, that's a really good message there to wrap that up. A measurement focus. I just want to briefly talk about how to measure effectiveness of these things we're talking about. So an obvious one is click through from segment specific messages. So you've got marketing out in market and say LinkedIn ad for example and checking the click through rate on that on that marketing is a really obvious one to your landing page and then through to check out. Check the journey, make sure someone's landing then going all the way through. If not why is it messaging, is it the design, is it something else, at least tracking it? Two retellers and you call it action. Another one is conversion by persona or segment. So checking which personas are converting. Like I said before, is it age 20 to 80 and only the 80-year-olds are converting then you know who is it working or who is it who sees? Yeah. Okay. And the last one is inquire equality. If you're getting emails and your forms are being filled out by the right people or they being spammed and hit by web development companies in Europe or so. That's an example. All right. I think we've covered everything. That's great. Okay. Awesome. Here's a shift. People don't respond because you personalize. They respond because they recognize themselves. Self relevance is the moment someone thinks this is for me. This understands my problem. This fits who I am right now. That is what earns attention. That is what drives action. One action for the listener this week, pick one key message. Ask whether it could apply to almost anyone. If it can, sharpen it and make the audience visible in the message. And that's think shift. I'm Clint. I'm Leanne. One idea won't shift in on the 30 minutes. If this episode changed how you think, show it with someone who makes decisions for a living. And follow think shift on all the socials and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss what shift is coming up next. See you in the next episode. Bye. Bye.