077: Mindset, Your Brain, and Online Sales Tactics with Melina Palmer

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Have you ever launched a product and said to yourself, “I really hope someone buys this.”?

I think we all have at some point in time. Wouldn’t it be great if you could understand the thought processes your customers have when they are deciding whether or not to buy your product or service? I think we could all benefit from learning a little bit about mindset, your brain, and online sales tactics. I was so excited to have a conversation with Melina Palmer about these exact things!

Melina Palmer has a background in branding and marketing. She worked in this for a decade. She decided to go back to school to get her Master’s Degree in Behavioral Economics. You may be saying, “What is that?” Melina explains that behavior economics is the psychology of how people make buying decisions. Melina specializes in how the brain works when making choices.

She then works with businesses to help them understand the way the brain actually works. And the way it works typically isn’t the way YOU THINK it would or should be. This helps business owners create better messaging to communicate with potential buyers to produce more leads that then turn into conversions. Talk about an amazing piece of information to know as an entrepreneur.

We spend so much time on the Tech of Business podcast talking about different ways you can engage with your customers. We talk about different ways to use technology to do more with your customers and for them to entice them. But I really feel like we need to understand the way the brain works on a deeper level when they are receiving this messaging.

So…what should we be thinking about when we are putting together our lead magnets, sales pages, etc?

“It’s really easy to come up with the right answer to the wrong question. But if you want to be effective, hitting the right people, and making a difference, changing the world with your business, it’s important to make sure you’re answering the right questions and solving the right problem.”- Melina Palmer

There is alot more work that needs to be done on the front end to achieve this. In order to do this, you need to know a few important things like:

  • Know who you are talking to.
  • What you are trying to say.
  • Communicate what you want people to do.

This is kind of an “everything matters” approach to things. I mentioned this in a podcast a while back about when someone is scrolling on their phone and clicking the button on their phone, how nice is it to the customer that you can send them an email letting them know that YOU KNOW they are on their phone so you are limiting the amount of copy there is to read???

It’s important to understand the intention of the platform you’re using.

This means you need to understand not only what it was designed to do, but also what mind frame your potential customer might be in when they are using it. You also need to understand the goals are actually reasonable.

Let’s take Instagram for example. It’s very image and video driven. Melina has a few people she likes to watch on Instagram. But although she likes to watch them, she would never visit their website. So when you are deciding on the platform you are going to use you need to get in the mindset of your potential customer is doing on the platform then you can say “OK what do I WANT them to do when they look at my post on instagram?”

You have to understand their mindset! It’s important to know what you want them to do to take and the next most logical step on their customer journey. Think about it in terms of an actual trip in a car. You don’t have to say you are driving from Seattle to Miami, but rather Seattle to Olympia. You know you are just going South FIRST, then you continue to add the next piece and the next piece. It’s the same thing with the online trajectory.

But…why would someone want to do a challenge vs. a download?

A benefit in doing a challenge like a 5 day challenge is setting up the consistency that creates a habit in the mindset of your potential customers. Being there on a regular basis creates a mindset piece that becomes a habit. This is impactful assuming that the thing you are trying to sell them after the fact is also in some sort of engagement with you on a regular basis. If you are selling them something after the challenge that is the complete opposite, it may be harder to make the sell. So you can see where in some cases a challenge would be WONDERFUL and in others not so much.

You have to understand the brain makes associations that are incredibly literal in a lot of ways. Example would be font sizes on price tags. So when something is on sale the original price is marked out and the new price is in bigger font. A test was done where that was reversed and the new price was put in the smaller font and a lot more people bought in this circumstance because our brains make the association of small font, small price. Isn’t this incredible???

When you think about when you hear the word Apple, your brain thinks about everything is knows associated with apples. Everything from computers and phones to the color red to oranges. That’s all happening in your brain at once. Understanding what associations may come up in someone’s brain and how you want to lead them down the path is important when you are trying to promote your business or product. Okay my brain is literally going boom boom boom right now. Talk about mind blown!

Dialing into fonts

When we get to the end of a challenge or email sequence, and it’s time to make the sale of the product you will convert more by putting the “discount price” in the smaller font than the original price. Melina says not to put the new price in red because our brains are conditioned that red means stop. Whereas, the color green is much more friendly of wanting to buy. The font size can make a difference and you definitely want to LEAD with the bigger price first. The brain will latch onto that bigger price first and then move up or down from there. This is called anchoring and adjustment.

“What you lead with absolutely shapes the perception that somebody has in their experience with you.”- Melina Palmer

There are so many studies out there about anchoring and adjustment. Melina was once speaking to a group of female coaches. She was wearing a blingy necklace at this event. Then, she asked the women to think about the last two digits of their social security number. She then asked them to estimate how much her necklace costs. It was then she told them that someone with a higher two digits like 8-9 would value the necklace higher than someone who had 1-2 at the end. Then a lady raises her hand and said that her last two digits were 8-9 and she immediately thought the necklace was worth $89 then she realized what that amount was and adjusted her estimate to $65. It’s just another example of how our brains make associations without us even realizing it.

Where is your buyer before they see your sales page? What are they doing? Are they going through your material and you are able to guide them through things? Or are they cluttered on Facebook or Instagram and your sales page is an aside they happen to click?

This is something that is going to make a big difference in their mental state and what their brain is going to let them do. It’s really important to pick who you are targeting too when you are setting up your advertisements. This could be limited on some mediums like YouTube.

Why would someone want to leverage social vs avoid social?

The human brain is mostly run by our subconscious. Our subconscious brain has actually been shown to make about 99% of our decisions. So it’s really running the show. Your subconscious is filtering through about 11 million bits per second. Whereas, your conscious can only filter about 40 bits per second. How’s that science for you? This means that things “you think” you’ll remember you actually probably won’t.

The benefit of being part of a social channel is that Facebook will REMIND you that people are posting in a group that you are in. It will send notifications that remind you when things are going on in the group and it reminds you that you are a part of that group.

Sometimes when we actually want to “learn” something you need more focus. This means you may want to be off the social forum and into a private forum. Sometimes it’s really hard to convince our audience to come along on that journey with us. But if you keep the mindset that you know people are busy and they just forget because it’s human nature, then you know you need to remind them. We have to get out of our own mindset of being a bother or a nag. You need to be putting out something that is thoughtful and helpful to create direct contact with people who wanted to engage with you. Basically you need to remind them of it much like the social channels do. This could be done via email.

This is why email marketing is such a valuable tool. You can send out emails once a day, once a week, emails based on activity… it really depends on what your goals are with that content. You have to keep yourself and your content top of mind without being an irritant. You need to set the expectation with your audience of what you might be sending them especially if you are expecting to make a shift in how often you are going to communicate with them. Prepping people for communication is important.

If you are thinking that you want to make a shift in my business and I want to do it in a way that is going to be beneficial in my audience, if you want to have a conversation with me then have a conversation with me. If there is something that is triggering your thinking that you could do better with something then let’s put it on the road-map and have a conversation about it.

Must have Tips

It’s really important when you are using technology and automated systems to not think about what’s best for you, but rather what’s best for the person receiving it. What’s the value to them? You need to be framing your messaging to convey that you have thought about what’s best for THEM not YOU!

There are so many pieces of technology that we are trying to be a part of these days and so many people have fallen into the trap of having their tech set up in a way that is ME, ME, ME. A great example of this is when you follow someone on twitter and you get an automated direct message to follow that person on all the other channels. That automated message doesn’t make anyone feel special. This makes most people want to unfollow immediately!

Thinking about THEM (the people receiving your message) matters the most.

The online space is a very noisy space. We are all unique with our own unique gifts. And we are going to attract the best, right people for us. So we want to give those people the ability to actually find us and connect with us. If we are just part of the noise it’s never going to happen. It’s so beneficial to take a step back when you are creating something and ask some advisors to look at things from their perspective. You have to realize that what you THINK might be best…may not actually be best. The good thing about that is you can tweak things until you do get the winning combination.

Automations can be very helpful. Automations that ask open ended questions can inspire people to reply back and engage with you. You can ask questions like “What coffee shop do you like to co work at?”. What would you say to someone when you are actually talking to them face to face? Think about this when you are setting up an automation.

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