Value is the Hook

Hooked on Value

I’ve been thinking a lot about the personal brands I follow and why their content always stops me every time. I believe the reason it's hard for us to skip over a piece of content from someone who has provided us with useful insights over and over again is because we have associated that person with VALUE (not logically, but subconsciously). What they have said before has improved our lives in some way, whether it was a useful insight we could apply to our business or an inspirational message that really made us ponder. The fact that this same person has most likely done this plenty of times for us makes their association with value a lot stronger. It's repetition with value. It's programming with value. It's consistency with value.

The more "good" stuff they keep hitting us with, the more we get hooked on their content. In neuroscience, Long-Term Potentiation means "the persistent strengthening of synapses based on recent patterns of activity." There is a lot more going on in the brain than most people talk about when it comes to good marketing and branding. The heads of the top social media platforms clearly know about dopamine. That is why we can't put our phones down and feel that urge to get on them. It's all short-term dopamine feedback loops and reward systems (read article mentioned below).

Beyond the Buzzwords

Instead of just supporting content marketing blindly and riding along with all the marketing jargon in the game like storytelling, we (VALOR) really want to dig deeper to explain to business owners why marketing with good, valuable content actually works. Why big brands like Nike pound us with motivational visuals and have been doing so for a really long time. A lot of marketing gurus and experts we come across online can give us informative insights, but most of that information just touches the surface. Maybe if I challenge myself to learn the actual science behind it all and look underneath the surface, I can better explain what is going on. I can provide stronger supporting evidence for the proper way to market a product or service in 2019.

Stop Selling, Start Earning Attention

If you are a short-term business owner who thinks they are marketing with sales tactics every time, you won't win in today's world. You won't win in the long run. The relationship between psychology and neuroscience concerning human behavior doesn't change. Human expectations change. People expect to see products and prices when they visit Amazon because that is a global marketplace. Do you think people go on social media hoping to see your direct sales pitch every time they go online?