How to drive decision-making for your customers
Imagine you’re planning an indulgent, interstate getaway.
The hotel is booked.
The itinerary is a work of art.
And now you’re deciding whether to fly or drive to your destination.
Coincidentally, on last night’s news you saw a plane make an emergency landing, complete with footage of a wing on fire and smoke pouring from the fuselage.
As you recall the thick, black plumes and the emergency vehicles on the tarmac, your stomach flips a little.
With the vague feeling of averting a crisis, you decide to take the car.
This is the Availability Heuristic at work, and it’s driving your customers' decision making.
Today you’ll find out how to take control of the narrative.
In 5 minutes or less you'll discover:
How (and why) your feelings can hijack your brain
2 areas where you can beat the brain at its own game
Why you’re intentionally avoiding a huge opportunity in your sales funnel (and how to seize it instead)
3 easy opportunities to guide the conversation in your buyers head and drive more conversions
Let's do it!
Rational decisions? We’re all deluded…
You make 35,000 decisions every day - give or take.
While some decisions carry more weight than others, your brain still needs to calculate the statistics of every. single. decision.
So it minimizes the effort by using the most easily available information.
This brain-saving mental shortcut is known as the Availability Heuristic (catchy, huh?).
So what type of info is most readily available to your grey matter?
Striking images, familiar facts, past experiences, basically any memory that’s connected to a strong emotional trigger will leave a lasting impression on your mind.
These vivid, “made-you-feel” impressions are the first thing the brain will reach for to quickly evaluate a situation.
And they regularly wield more influence than a purely rational calculation.
Taking control of the narrative
Right now you might be thinking…
“How am I supposed to know if my buyers watched a plane crash on tv last night?!”
And the answer is, you’re not.
But there are two areas where you can get ahead of the narrative in your buyers heads before the Availability Heuristic kicks in.
1. The problem you solve
There’s no way you can know which random memories and experiences lurk in the brains of your buyers.
But you DO know which problem you solve for them, or how your product creates delight and makes their lives better.
Those problems and desires are connected to feelings. Deep, “made-you-feel” feelings.
When you explicitly reference the problems your buyers are grappling with, or the desires they just might not have mentioned to anyone else…
…you start tapping into the associated feelings.
By reminding your buyers of the specific emotions your product helps them attain or overcome, you trigger the Availability Heuristic in your favour.
And you take control of the narrative.
2. The objections they feel
When you start looking, you’ll find the reasons why your ideal buyers aren’t buying.
Talk to your leads and customers (via sales calls, surveys, customer service calls, feedback forms, customer research, reviews, you name it) to draw out common themes on why they hesitate to buy from you and what inspires them to take the plunge.
Are they concerned about quality?
Are they shy of the cost?
Are they wondering if they’ll actually use it?
Many brands don’t feel comfortable talking about the “downsides” of their products. They’d rather ignore them and hope it somehow doesn’t come up for their customers.
*The plan. It’s flawless*
But they’re missing a huge opportunity.
Because when you find these pieces of the puzzle, tackle them head on, and provide solutions to their worries, you start directing the conversation in your customers head.
So they’re thinking about solutions.
Not the plane crash.
Putting it to work in your emails
Ok, so you see how consciously triggering the Availability Heuristic and directing the conversation is critical to the buying process.
Here’s where and how to put it in action.
Email sequence mapping
When planning out your email sequences, keep in mind the above two areas where you can get ahead of this nifty little mental shortcut.
It’s likely (hopefully!) you have a goal for your email sequence.
To steer the conversation toward your goal, plant relevant emotional information across the sequence – just as it would come up naturally in the sales conversation.
We recently optimized a nurturing sequence for a recruitment SaaS company (no names, just NDAs).
The original sequence focused on the platform and its features.
We mapped out a new sequence that solved their pain points, actively addressed the objections the sales team were hearing on every sales call, and offered social proof to back it all up.
Here’s the difference:
We saw:
Open rates 44% higher than the industry average
A 43.85% lift in click rates
A 25.82% lift in click to open rate
And some very happy clients.
When mapping the cadence of your email sequences, remember to spread the messages across the sequence. Don’t try to do it all in one email.
As copywriters love to say – One email, one job!
Pre-purchase sequences
The first time a buyer makes a purchase they’re naturally hesitant. After all, they hardly know you!
Hijack the Availability Heuristic to see better results in your…
Welcome flows
Nurturing flows
Webinar and demo show up flows
Abandoned cart sequences
Not only will you be directing the conversation, you’ll also build invaluable trust.
Trusted Housesitters expertly addresses and overcomes a massive fear (and potential deal breaker) for their users in their nurture sequence.
Columbia tackles the price point objection head on, and entices their product-aware customer back with a discount in their abandoned cart sequence.
Bonus points for that intriguing CTA too!
When you stay one step ahead of your customers’ brain, you can soothe and delight your customers before they even realise they’re feeling unsure.
Post-purchase sequences
The Availability Heuristic doesn’t stop once your visitors become customers.
Even after they’ve purchased, your buyers are evaluating and re-evaluating your product and brand.
You can jump in front of that thought process in your winback sequences, educational emails, upsells and cross sells.
The Australia-famous toilet paper brand, Who Gives a Crap, leads the top-up conversation before their customers start considering other brands.
(And they do it brilliantly, with their instantly recognizable playfulness and sense of humour shining through)
Who Gives a Crap is the perfect example of how much fun you can have, even (especially?) when addressing the awkward bits in your marketing.
Last Word
Brains are amazing at cutting corners to make things easier for us (and them).
Which is great.
But if you’re not leading the conversation in your buyers' heads, they're going to make decisions about your products and brand based on a random collection of *vibes* their brain has kept on call.
Lead the conversation by:
Directly addressing the problems your product solves or the desires your product helps them attain
Explicitly referencing possible objections to your product and providing solutions
Give people the emotions that will guide them through the buying process, consciously trigger the Availability Heuristic and don’t leave it up to chance.