If you want better response from your marketing, don’t start by trying to change people.
Start by accepting that human nature always wins.
One of the surest ways to boost response is to attach your message to something people already want to do.
We’re all wired the same way: we seek advantage, we want things with the least possible resistance, we move toward pleasure and away from pain.
Biologically, we’re programmed to survive by consuming calories, to procreate by seeking sex, to avoid danger, and to conserve energy and resources.
That wiring doesn’t turn off when we open Instagram or walk into a store.
It’s the unconscious filter behind almost every choice we make.
That’s why a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument.
It takes a lot of energy to talk someone into a completely new way of thinking.
It takes far less to plug into an existing compulsion they already feel.
Jeff Bezos built Amazon around this idea.
When asked what would change in the next 10 years, he said he didn’t know. But he did know what wouldn’t change:
- People will always want the widest possible selection.
- They’ll always want the lowest possible price.
- And they’ll always want things as fast as they can get them.
Every new technology Amazon adopts is in service to those three, unchanging desires.
Your market has its own version of those desires.
Once you understand them, your job gets much easier.
You can design offers, services, and experiences that ride the “jet stream” of what people already want, instead of fighting headwinds trying to make them care about something they don’t.
In the long run, tactics, tools, and platforms will keep changing. Human nature won’t.
Human nature always wins.