What Brain Scans Reveal About Grabbing the Attention of Customers
If you’re struggling to gain the attention of your customer, you ’re not alone.
Imagine the noisy, busy, multitasking lives of your customers. Bombarded with countless messages each day, it’s no wonder your customers may be deaf to your message.
You may not realize it, but your customers are fighting a battle you do not see.
In fact, you’re fighting this same battle. Think back to the last conference call, team meeting, or lecture you attended.
How much of your time did you spend actively engaged and how much time were you daydreaming?
“We’re machines of daydreaming,” Mike McHargue (better known as Science Mike) explained to Don Miller on the Building a StoryBrand Podcast.
“We spend up to a third of our waking time lost in fantasy, and that’s because most of our brain’s real estate, something called the neocortex, is devoted to trying to predict the future.
You’re constantly thinking about what could happen if this: What if my paycheck comes through? What if my paycheck doesn’t come through? What if I get a raise?”
Science Mike shares a practical way to cut through the daydreaming and attract the attention of our customers.
McHargue explained, “What we found in brain scans is that when people are wrapped up in a story, they stop daydreaming and are fully present in a way that would be in like a life or death situation. That level of focus, we call attentional narrowing, means that the senses, the imagined experiences of a story become real to our own brains.”
McHargue continued, “So if you read about Harry Potter drinking Butterbeer, your brain starts to imagine what Butterbeer tastes like and even gives you some of that sensation.
If you’re watching Star Wars and an X Wing is flying through this channel on the Death Star, you feel like you’re there, like you’re moving. Like the explosions are real. Your brain turns it all into real sensory information even though it’s fiction.”
As a business owner, now you realize daydreaming is holding your customers’ attention hostage, but you may not be sure how to free from this powerful distraction.
Incorporating the power of story into your marketing helps you grab and keep the attention of your customers.
When it comes to implementing story into your marketing, focus on these three key principles:
- The reason people are going to your website, asking for help, or buying your product is they’re trying to resolve some kind of problem.
- Remember, a story is basically a character who needs to solve a problem.
- Based on the brain science, when brands engage customers through story and they help a customer solve a problem, they cut through the daydreaming and gain the attention of customers.
McHargue shared another powerful benefit of story, “When you just get someone a set of propositions, a lot of information, they feel like they’re being persuaded and they have a natural cognitive resistance. But when you tell someone a story, they become wrapped up in that narrative and they place themselves in the shoes of the protagonist.”
As a New York Times best-selling author, Donald Miller understood the elements of story.
When he implemented story based principles into marketing his business, he generated phenomenal growth. By combining his knowledge of story and his experience in marketing, he created the StoryBrand framework. He built the whole hypothesis of the StoryBrand framework on the elements of 2000 years of the best practices of storytelling.
“With story, your customers are going to be more engaged because they don’t have to think as hard. With the power of storytelling, your customers understand the subconscious language that your brand is speaking.” Donald Miller
To learn more about how to cut through the daydreaming, grab the attention of your customer, and harness the power of story so you grow your business, listen to the StoryBrand podcast with Mike McHargue – “Why People Buy: The Powerful Science of Selling.”
Catch more about the power of story at HopeSchaefer.com!