I’ve been reading Jim Murphy’s Inner Excellence book. He talks about how what you think about creates a neural pathway in your brain. Meaning, the more you think about something, the more you think about it (massive oversimplification).
When you combine this with Hebbian theory “Neurons that fire together wire together.” We can loosely infer that if you talk to people about what they are already thinking about, then you are more likely to be remembered by them.
Of course it’s more complex. But if we start from first principles and ask ourselves if this makes intuitive sense, it does. If a friend comes to you complaining about their job and you start talking about your dog, they won’t remember. But if you talk to them about their job and have a heart-to-heart, they are more likely to remember that you helped them in a tough time.
This week I had a conversation that perfectly exemplified neuromarketing for memorability. I was talking to Shannon Matson, she’s a business coach and founder of The Social Bungalow. She created a quiz that effectively wires itself to what her audience is thinking about.
Here’s the cover page of the quiz. I want to highlight a couple of things here. First, the headline “What’s your business blindspot?” This immediately aligns itself with what business owners are thinking about. Every business owner feels like they’re missing something that everyone else knows.
But she doesn’t leave it there. She further defines what she means by saying “Discover what’s been silently stifling your income, engagement, and inquiries.” And now we’re on the neural pathway of every business owner, ever. Every owner feels like something is “off” and it’s minimizing their income, engagement, and inquiries. So Shannon immediately aligns herself with what is already on the mind of her audience of business owners.
The quiz opens up with a relatability question. This further puts you on the path of what the quiz taker is already thinking about. Your quiz taker doesn’t just want generic advice with their problems. They want advice that is specific to who they are and their situation.
I like this, because people aren’t just thinking about a topic generally. They’re thinking about it in context of who they are and in this case what kind of business they run. The alignment continues in the second question, asking about revenue goals. These two questions are important if you’re going to make recommendations. The advice given to someone scaling is different from someone starting.
The next question shifts over to diagnostics. If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes around a business owner you know they are thinking about what is not going right in their businesses. So Shannon asks about that. Again, alignment with what the quiz taker is already thinking about.
The next question jumps over into goals. Even though this quiz is from 2023, the point is relevant. You want to ask people about specific, timely goals, that are on their mind. Further aligning you on a neural pathway of their mind.
Now Shannon switches over to the personal side. She asks about what makes someone feel “seen.” This continues the trend of connecting with what the person is thinking about. People think about themselves, even if it’s in the context of their businesses. So you want to make sure you address that.
Next there is a question about dreams. Everyone dreams all the time. It’s one of the main things on the human mind. So if you can connect with your quiz takers dreams then you further align with their neural pathway.
The final question asks the quiz taker how they like to be helped “if” they were to be helped. This is a very nice transition toward offering the quiz taker a solution after you’ve been patiently listening to them describe their situation and aligning yourself with what’s on their mind.
Now, after 8 aligning questions, there is an ask. At this point if you are taking this quiz you’ve seen that the creator understands you. The questions have all been relevant to your situation. They ask about different aspects of your life and experience. You are aligned. So when they ask for your email, it’s a pretty easy choice.
When Shannon gets into the results on this quiz, she continues on the track of neural alignment. She starts off by giving the quiz taker an answer to the question that brought them here in the first place, identifying the business blindspot that is getting in the way of their success.
Then it shifts over to the diagnosis of what is driving the blindspot. Here again we see the alignment with the quiz taker. She’s continuing to talk about what they want. She’s continuing to talk about what they are already thinking about. She’s connecting her brand to their memory.
Then she continues the result with more information for the quiz taker about their situation. The focus is still solely on the quiz taker, their circumstance, and what they are thinking about. The longer the neural pathway of their mind is aligned with what Shannon is talking about here the more the neurons will fire together and the more memorable the quiz will be to the quiz taker.
Once the diagnosis has been established and the details have been laid out, then Shannon explains why the person is stuck with this result. Now in terms of the neural pathway language, Shannon has joined the neural pathway and is beginning to steer it so it doesn’t have to follow the same old pathway where the quiz taker business owner is stuck and frustrated.
She does this by simply laying out the situation to the quiz taker, then letting them make the changes they want to make for themselves. This allows for the quiz taker to have agency over their choice to adopt the suggestions Shannon provides. If we re-look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs we see that agency is an important part of self flourishing.
Moving on with the result description. Shannon taps back into what people are thinking about. She nudges them to think about what’s going on in their business by providing suggestions about what they might be experiencing given their diagnosis of what’s causing their business blindspot.
Then we get to a proposed fix. We’re about 90% of the way through this quiz experience between the questions and the result sections preceding this. Which is an appropriate time to begin your recommendations for this quiz taker. You really want to make sure you’re aligned, and you’ve ingratiated yourself into their neural pathway, before making any suggestions. This creates trust before you start pitching any ideas, and it also hedges against those folks who aren’t ready to take any action right now because they’ll remember you even if they don’t decide to work with you right away.
After offering a solution to the problem the quiz taker wants to solve, Shannon provides examples. This gives the quiz taker an idea of what the solution could be for their problem. It makes it more concrete and plays into a SMART goal framework.
Then she immediately flips back over to giving the quiz taker kudos on their abilities. Putting the ball back in their court to make decisions that are right for them. On this journey of neural alignment, it’s important not to overstep, not to make it seem like all of a sudden you know what’s best for the quiz taker. You have to leave them their autonomy, then simply come in and provide suggestions and advice. This final element in Shannon’s quiz results reflects that.
And to cap it off, Shannon humanizes herself. Introducing herself as if at a party and coming up to someone for the first time. She holds a good boundary between being the expert in the room, but also being humble.
And at the very end she links to the other quiz results in case everything she just went over doesn’t resonate with you. Or you are just curious to know what the other results are, which is very common.
People think about things all day. Often they think about the same things all the time, every day. Your audience probably has a handful of things they think about all the time that relate to your business and what you can help with.
If you can connect with those things, and become part of that conversation in their heads, then you wire to those thoughts, and every time your audience member has those thoughts, they think of you. That’s what you want, because it’s like a brain version of digital reminders. You are now in their head inbox all the time, whenever they think about that set of problems they have for which they want answers.