BONUS: special 'uncut' episode.

Simon Hawk is the best-selling author of The Decision Expedition and the instructor for the Nerds of Business course, Neuroscience Your Marketing. In this interview he explains what neuroscience is, why it's so important in marketing, and how it can help boost sales and cut ad spend.

Guest Bios:

Simon Hawk is the founder of https://www.thedecisionexpedition.com/

What to listen out for:

05:00 What is Neuroscience

10:50 The nerd bot awakens – Choice Architecture

16:55 Simon’s experience with BIG corporate brands

20:40 How can you exercise neuroscience techniques

25:30 Semantic Markers

28:37 What are the benefits of applying neuroscience into your marketing

35:11 Associative memory

36:22 What is Neuroplasticity

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Well, hello listeners and welcome to the Nerds of Business Podcast. My name's Darren Moffatt. I'm your host. It's great to have you with us. And today we are getting very, very nerdy. Indeed. We are going into the realm of neuroscience. Don't freak out. It's not as intense as what it sounds, but it is very interesting and particularly relevant to people who are in marketing, sales or when is running their own business. And today, I'm really delighted to be joined, uh, by Simon Hawk. So, Simon Hawk is a neuroscience, uh, in marketing expert. Uh, and, uh, welcome to the, to the show. Simon.

Hi, Darren. Thanks very much for having me. Great to be here.

Yeah, it's great to have you with us. And, um, look, there's so much to talk about, um, your, uh, a recently published bestselling author. Uh, you've got an online course, um, coming out as well. But I think before we get into, uh, any of that, we might just start with the sort of classic elevator pitch. Why don't you give us the 32nd spiel on, on who you are, what you do, and why it matters?

Sure. Okay. Well, thanks Darren. Well, for me, it's just a case of bringing everything back to the brain, um, as in all of life, but in marketing as well. See, all of us and our customers, everything we do essentially is driven by the workings of the brain. And, and we've evolved over millions of years to react in certain ways to certain types of external stimuli. And fundamentally, there are actually rules on how the brain works. So, understand the rules of how the brain works, and that by understanding that that would allow you to choose the best marketing strategies to engage, persuade, and influence your customer. And off the back of that, I've created something called the decision expedition, which is, you know, the name of my book. Um, it's links into the course that we've done. And what that really is, it's a, a journey, right? That's why it's called the Decision exhibition, A journey to understand how your customers actually make decisions based on what are the real rules of marketing as I'm calling them. You know, it's not necessarily in what I would say are the marketing tech textbooks, but in the worlds of, of science, you know, neuroscience, sociology, psychology, and economics, you know, and probably more specifically economics.

Yeah, brilliant. And you know, that, I mean, that's such an important topic. I mean, anyone that's really spending any kind of money on advertising, whether it be a small business, micro business, right up to a massive corporate neuroscience and understanding how the brain works, and therefore maximizing the efficiency of that AED spend is critical. Maybe just for people that are still struggling with the whole neuroscience concept, uh, maybe just deconstruct that for a minute. You know, just sort of break that down. What exactly is neuroscience per se?

So, so neuroscience is fundamentally the study of how the brain works. Mm-hmm. now, now the, so we've framed it under the, of the, the name of neuroscience, but it's certainly, I wouldn't rule out So as well as neurosciences, definitely sociology. It's definitely psychology. Things like pricing, psychology. It's definitely your behavior economics and understanding how the way we make decisions. And it's, and it's linking into all of the reasons and influences behind how humans actually make decisions. So, you know, what, what are the, the key rules when it comes to that? And can you understand that? And therefore, can you give yourself a framework that, you know, and you mentioned there, you know, all those different from corporates to small businesses, essentially, it's, it's even into, into one-to-one interactions. You know, give yourself a framework that can be applicable for anything that you are actually doing.

Because anything you're doing, you know, marketers and all of us are very keen and, and do a lot of it where we, we like to segment people, right? We say, you know, that there's certain demographic, um, income, whatever it might be. But, but what I'm like, like to do with this is essentially take a step back and go, actually, let's say, look, there's actually a stage where we are pretty much the same. The way I say it is the brain. We've all got a brain that's the same. Yeah. And there are rules. So, take a step back from the segmentation and go, right, understand that you're talking to a customer's brain. And if you think of it like that, that's a slightly different way of thinking about your marketing.

So, it's a different lens. And I, I, I think, you know, your central hypothesis, if, if I can put it that way, seem to be that most marketers, most business owners, most, um, people are out there sort of selling or marketing product or services, are essentially going about this stuff the wrong way in, in, in many regards. And, and they're not, you know, they're not using that lens. If we can use that sort of, you know, analogy of how the brain works. Is that right? That that's really your guiding, guiding, uh, hypothesis there?

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I have worked, my, my background is 15 years in marketing for the likes of, um, Etihad Airways running campaigns, the likes of Hugo Boss and Qantas and Merit and others. Um, and, and that is something I, I, the way I look at marketing, essentially, there are two sides to it. And so side one is finding your audience mm-hmm. , and, you know, they're out there somewhere that, and you find them through a particular type of platform, you know, whether that be Facebook or Google or YouTube or papers or out of home or TV or whatever. And, and what that is, is essentially you are buying a platform and spending your money and you reach that demographic through that platform. And, you know, fundamentally that's actually a financial decision. You know, you're having to pay a certain amount money to reach the audience, but the second side of marketing that is when you've actually found them, they're in front of you, whether that be looking at your ads face to face in your shop, wherever that on your website, whatever that might be.

Mm-hmm. , you've got them in front of you and you have that opportunity to engage with them and therefore their brain. So, on the first side, there's so much tech, there's so much framework that it's so clear that you have to do for any marketer about when you're going out there, right. How am we gonna find the audience? There's, there's a whole infrastructure of, of, of a world out there that's doing that. But on the second side, there's, I've found that those discussions that I had certainly were very much more general. You know, you'd, you'd try and be, make intelligent theories on what would be the best image or the best copy or, or the best way of going about things or framing things. But I certainly never had any absolutely clear framework based on science, based on rules of how the brain works, based on how we all know that people are influenced and then basing any decision on that. So, I mean, or, or the actual, the ways that people do things, it's not, it's not a secret. Big businesses out there are, are using lots of these techniques, but in a way that's, I never found there was a clear framework of spelling it out, going this is what you need to do and why.

Yeah. And you know, you, you've obviously had lots of experience in, in really big corporations and, and you've seen these techniques used at scale. You've seen the effect that they have. Uh, you know, it goes, you know, straight to the bottom line. It's a, it's a huge profit driver. And is this why you've, you've, you've gone out and you've written this book and you're bringing these principles to, to smaller businesses. Is it because it, it, is it in some sense to redress an unfair advantage that these big corporations have?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's what I, one of the things I definitely thought. So, you know, you look at, I mean, people know about, you know, just anecdotally about how supermarkets spend millions to, to structure the way that their supermarket is, is organizing, you know, it got the milk at the back to make sure people walk past things that the cereals and in, not in alphabetical order to make sure people dwell a bit more, those sorts of concepts. Um, but those sorts of major corporations, they do have knowhow and they do have resource and marketing teams and, and people and decades of research as well in this specific subject about how to make sure they place the product in the right place, those sorts of things. You know, you can go to McDonald's and, and say the way that they, they make their food more, more ensure that user smells, those sorts of things. There's thinking and their science, and there's, there's, um, the absolutely trying to do as much as they can to influence someone to purchase from them essentially, and purchase continually. Um, it's the same on, you know, if you go onto big online, uh, comparison websites, you know, you can see they've got some really thoughtful thinking behind how are they pushing people in the right direction? How's their choice architecture structured? How's their price and psychology used? That's all these things.

Oh, that, that's nerdy. Simon, you've, you've awakened the nerd bot

.

Okay. So, we've got a nerd bot here, and, um, she's, uh, she'd been browsed from her slumber, and you used a term there called choice architecture, which is a choice term. Uh, you might just like to break that down for our listeners.

Yeah, sure. Well, choice architecture is all about, um, diving into the concept that's, while you might think that it's best to give the customer, you know, a million choices as much as possible, that gives yourself the best chance, that's not the case. You know, we have a brain that is fundamentally lazy. There's something called the lazy conscious, and which has developed from the fact that, you know, it's a survival mechanism originally because, um, our brain takes that summit energy, right? It's 3% of our, our mass, that 20% of our energy. So, on a survival level, which was not really that effective if you didn't want to get eaten by say, the tooth tiger back in the day. Yep. So, what we've evolved is to try and make things as easy as possible. And so, we, we allocate a lot of our decision making to it on a non-conscious level, Right? So, so when it comes to things like, if there's too much choice in front of you, one of our reactions is often we just get choice overload, and we are, we are not interested. And so, the first thing is understanding that. And the second thing is, you can actually structure the way you create choice architecture that pushes people to make a particular choice that you want them to.

Yeah. Right. So, this is fascinating stuff. So, you know, I do a lot of digital marketing for, for clients and so on, and what you're saying is really ringing a lot of bells with me. I mean, we've, we've seen in, you know, many of our campaigns or, or, uh, landing pages that if you put too many options on the page, what happens is people don't take any action at all. They, they, so they, they often, they become over overloaded or bewildered, and rather than take an action, it's, they just don't do anything because they, it's just, it's, it's too hard. So that goes to exactly what you're talking about, right? Like that is that, is that the lazy conscious sort of kicking in there? Or, or what, what, what response is that?

Yeah, and that's exactly it. I mean, it, it does come back to the lazy conscious. We, we want things to be as easy as possible. We don't want to be expanding too much energy on things. And for example, you know, it, on those landing pages you talk about, I mean, that comes down to the way, essentially, you know, the concept of framing potentially, how, how are you setting up that offer in front of your customer's eyes that is going to, because so on when you, the way you frame things, and I think many people will know what framing is, but essentially it's, it's how you position something. You know, it's, is it 25% fat free or 75% full of fat? Well, those sorts of things, you know, you make sure, is it, you know, we are going to increase taxes or improve your tools? It, it's, it's saying the same thing, but making it positive.

Right? So, the way you frame something to your customer will reframing is effortful. So largely what we will take what we're given. Yeah. Because it's, it's just too much effort on our brain. We'll, we'll say, oh, you did that. Right. That sounds good. So, so absolutely. There's, there's a lot of, um, you can get some fundamentally different results based on how you go about these sorts of techniques. And, you know, one of those absolutely. Is put a ton of choices onto a landing page. It's very likely you're going to scale them off. They won't choose anything.

Yeah. Yeah. And one of the, um, one of the little kind of marketing laws that I like, which I'm sure that you'd be aware of, but maybe a lot of our listeners might not have heard of this before, is called the, the law of 100. Um, which goes to what you are talking about with the framing thing, right? And basically the, the, the premise of this law is that in, uh, promotions or discounts, if the value of the discount from a dollar perspective is greater than 100, you should present it as a dollar saving. If the value of the discount is less than 100, you should present it as a percentage saving. Have you had, what, what do you make of that one?

Well, actually I say that's, that would jump nicely into the whole world of the pricing psychology piece. And there's so many of those sorts of things, you know, and absolutely, I would agree with that one. There. There's, you know, there's a lot of those actually, um, from things like if you, if you say you are, if you pick picking a price and you say that it's, and you go for a high round number, you know, say that's five grand, please. Yep. People in their, their automatic reaction is to, because it's such a round number, to assume that that is artificially high and made up. Yeah. Like, that doesn't make, that doesn't resonate with me. But if you, it's two parts on that. If you are more precise with the numbering, so you say, actually it's 4,725, that people assume that there's a reason behind how you've priced that and are actually much more likely to go through it. And, and also that even fits into, you know, really getting into the, the way that people take in the numbers that if you've got a number with smaller numbers in it, you know, like instead of 4, 9, 9, you've got 4, 2, 7 4 or something mm-hmm. that appears much smaller initially to the, to the consumer. So, so there are these sorts of tricks within, within the world of how you price and how you present a price that’s definitely worth using because they can make a difference.

Wow. Wow. So, and this is obviously all in your book and in your amazing new course, which we're going to talk about in a bit of detail later. So, um, yeah, for, for listeners out there who, who want to get some of this really powerful, unique content, there are two ways you can get it. You can, you can get by Simon's book called The Decision Expedition. And, uh, he's also launched a fabulous new course on nerds of business. Wow. What a, what a coincidence. Uh, and that's called Neuroscience You're Marketing about. We'll get onto that in a little minute. So, Simon, um, I guess something that I'm, I'm interested in is, uh, your experience with, with big corporates, you did touch on this, uh, a minute ago. You've worked for some, so in, in, in the airline industry, travel industry, you've, you know, done work with some really big, um, global brands. Maybe just, uh, give us a few examples or tell us a few stories. You don't have to mention the particular brand, like, but how you actually saw these techniques make a difference, you know, like what was the outcome?

Yeah. Well, I mean, so if I was going to pick one from a few years ago, um, well, I suppose the first thing I, first thing I would saying that is that a big part of the reason that I've gone on this, this journey to create the decision expedition, but write the book, create the course is linked into the fact that I found that a lot of the time we weren't using these things. Okay.

As I've researched into it, I, there are lots of the techniques that that would, would link in occasionally and, uh, you know, so, you know, for example, how, how people are associating themselves with other parts of society and positioning themselves relative to others. I, I, there were lots of things that were done, but, but the interesting thing I found is that it was all based on nothing particularly solid. I suppose that's fundamental to why I've gone on this journey. Really. You know, why, why, why are we, why were they not? So, it was these, because I was, I mean, there will be people that I've mentioned them before in big neuroscience research agencies and for p and g over the last decades, you know, research into why a certain smell attracts the bio more, or whatever it is. I was working, as we mentioned, you know, for these major companies on campaigns with big spends and trying to engage whole lots of people. And even within that context, I didn't find that we were using these techniques.

Yep.

We were just, it was more to, based on having, having a conversation where you go, well, I reckon that would be a good picture. I reckon that should be the right copy. Why don't we try that? Et cetera. Mm-hmm. You know, it wasn't based on, on, on what I would say should be some hard and fast rules about what works and what doesn't.

Yeah. Right. Well, that's, um, uh, if, if that's the case, I mean, if there, if, if most companies out there, even the big ones with, you know, huge resources aren't really leveraging these techniques and, you know, these scientific methods and, and principles, then that's a massive opportunity for those business who, who do. So obviously that's a big part of your mission. That's what you are, you're educating people on and you're, you're bringing to market. So, let's, yeah.

Cause I think, just to add in there, I think the, the key thing that I would say is that that, I'm trying to say, use this as a framework. Whatever you are doing on whatever platform, whatever, spend, whatever type of marketing, whether you're face to face or whether you're trying to do a big out of home campaign or you're on Facebook or whatever, yep. There's value in understanding these core rules because they obviously link into, you can, you can be link into the same rule across social media as you can across the digital channel and across, across out of home. But it's like, why am I doing that? What's the fundamental reason when it really gets into my customers eye line? What, what is the, the interaction and the engagement I'm trying to do? Because, you know, I, lots of people go, you need a social media strategy, or you need to be on Google search mm-hmm. . And I'm not saying you don't, because you probably do, but it's just, why do you, and what are you trying to do? So, and that's my thesis and the premise, really take it a step back and understand why you need to be on it and what you're trying to do.

Yep. Great. And so, you know, let's focus for a minute on that sort of, you know, typical small business owner or maybe a marketing manager in a, in a SME um, medium size business. You know, how can they execute some of these neuroscience techniques and principles into their marketing? So, you know, I know the quick answer is, are your book take the course? Of course, that's, that's a solution. But let's just say for a minute, people aren't quite ready to do that. Um, what, what, what are maybe a handful of quick things that they could do to, to start down this path?

Yeah, sure. So, so the way I've pulled it together, almost, uh, the two areas of it, there's the build it side of it, build the brain, and then engage the brain. Yeah. And so, on the build it side, this is how the books framed actually. So, on the build It side, it's all about, uh, links strongly into the world of perception. Yeah. So, the first thing is understanding and, and lots of people will know about perception and, and anecdotally will know lots that it's very important. But it, it really is fundamentally about understanding that perception is the reality of, of how you are seen, you know, the, the way that we view the world is very personal. You know, we, we, each of us in our brains have what we have an experience.

It's, it's a subjective experience. So, yeah. So, I get what you're saying, like, the way people experience it isn't the same as the objective reality.

Yes. Yeah. Because there's, we have the experiencing self and the remembering self, all of us, and we all know that the experience self is not exactly the same as the remembering self. You know, you can't exactly remember everything you did. So, so what that means is that when we are doing anything, we are, we are basically basing our, we, we are going through life, forming these impressions of the world in a way that's unique to us. And then what that means is that these expect, we create expectations about what the world around us is going to be like. So, and these expectations, amazingly, they actually feed into how we experience something. So, there was a good example, which many people have heard around wine tasters who were told a particular wine was the most expensive. And they said, therefore said that was the best one. It wasn't, it was a trick.

You know, the reason it, and the funny thing is they didn't, it's not just that they got it wrong because they were told that their body would actually have experienced that that was tasted better. You know, so much of our experience is actually based on expectations. So, so first of framing it like, okay, right, it’s not just about having a good quality product. Yep. You need that Absolutely. Fundamentally, whatever its product or service, what is that and what are you doing? Make sure that's good. But you need to understand that if you are only focusing on the quality, quality of the product, you're sort of playing the wrong game. You need to first go. Right? Fundamentally, I also need to be making sure and developing the right perception around what my product is. So, what people can do is they can make sure that they are developing the right perception across the key areas of, of what they're trying to do.

And to do that, there are two basic areas that they can focus on and study, which obviously, I mean, you know, that's part of what, what is in the course in the book, but, but the power of associations and, and that's, that opens up a whole world, you know, jumps into the world of sociology, you know, and how all of us live in a, in a society that we've grown up in. And, and that feeds into everything that we understand. We don't look at anything in isolation. You see, we, we have, we, you know, we've grown up with diff historic events, with certain celebrities, with rules and culture and mainstream culture, all those things that, that feed up. So, whenever we see something, it's related to something else. Right? And that's the same for you. So, what are you related to? What are you trying to relate yourself to?

And, and, and, and making you sure that you create the right associations. And on the memory side, there actually are rules about how people, what, how people remember things better, and understanding how to create those memories and how to make yourself more memorable. And a lot of those link into actually the power of emotion. Yep. And lots of people will know about how, you know, again, often said about you need to create an emotional connection with your customer. Um, that's really quiet a core marketing premise. But, but one of the reasons is, and, and I think it's important to know why is, is around how emotion is one of the key ways that humans do form memories and help make decisions. Because in a complex world that we live in, it's not always quite easy to have totally rational thoughts and to make things. So, so what the emotion emotions have developed over millions of years, that we use that as a way of making complex social decisions, obviously. And it actually, uh, demonstrates itself often in your gap. Feel, you know, so you, that's why you can trust your gut feel. We have these things toward somatic markers that they're almost like little memory banks and emotion. Yeah. . So

Schematic markers, was that in

Grammatic markers? Yeah. Sorry. That's fine nerd. But they, they are, they're like little, um, pockets of, of memory emotion, so that if you go to somewhere, you had a car crash, you have this bad feeling in your stomach. Ah, yes. Bad memory. And if you go somewhere, you had a nice childhood experience, you often have that nice feeling that's kind of, that's playing out, right? So, so that's the, that's basically the, the, by understanding those sorts of things, you, you, bottom line is you are helping yourself to build a, a big and the right perception. And then on the other side, you've got the engage it, which is really all about, you know, that is understanding across the body and the environments, how are you engaging your customer because they are physically there, what are the rules? And, and there are all kinds of things from everything like hormones, for example, you know, that lots of people will know about dopamine.

Yep.

And, and how dopamine is a really strong, it's a neurotransmitter that's makes us feel good when we after a certain activity, but how do you drive? That's a real driver of behavior, right? Yeah. And, and, and lots of companies out with Facebook, you know, the light button is a little one that drives to do me. But understanding a bit about that and how to drive that through things like reward modeling in the right way, how you are incentivizing people, how you're rewarding them after they do something you want to do. Do you even have reward modeling in place? Are you incentivizing your customer to do what you want 'em to do? And then are you rewarding them in the right way? Because there's a certain way that rewards, big rewards at the end of the year are much less effective than a small reward given immediately, for example.

So, understanding those sorts of concepts and how, you know, and gamification, those are the, there, there are all these different rules you can, you can use and diving, going further into engage it. You, I could talk about, you know, there's all sorts of things when you're building your customer journey. It's understanding concepts like process I fluency where, and this lifts a little bit to the lazy conscious, you know, making things as easy to process as possible in our, in our mind. Mm-hmm. , there are certain ways to do that. Links into even things like color psychology, certain colors, um, mean different things to us and will, will drive us to different behaviors, um, to the concepts of novelty and familiarity. There's essentially the two stimuli that exist in the world. Something's either new or it's familiar, and there's obviously a balance between that. Um, and then understanding those two extremes and knowing that you're living within those two extremes can be quite helpful because novelty is what grabs our attention and gets to be able to come in mm-hmm. . Um, but too much novelty scares people away. Familiarity is where we feel comfortable. So, you want to be finding the right balance.

There's a lot of big concepts there. Um, and which is great, you know, I mean, it's demonstrating to people that, you know, how important this stuff is, but also the, the, the layers and the, and, and the depths to which you can go, um, to, to really, uh, execute this stuff into your marketing. And I guess, you know, that's a reasonably nice segue into my next question. So, let's say, you know, marketing manager, small business owner, entrepreneur decides to really, you know, go for this and put, put this into their, into their marketing, into their business. What are the benefits? What are the payoffs? You know, so, you know, let's say they, they make a reasonable amount of, um, time investment, uh, maybe invest a little bit of money, um, in, into putting this into the business. What does it look like sort of three months, six months down the track?

Yeah, sure. Well, the first thing to understand on these is that a lot of the, a lot of the techniques that are involved in this kind of thing can be implemented for free. You know, you don't necessarily need, once you understand how choice architecture works, for example, or price and psychology, you can then use them forever. Yeah. You know, so there's, there's a base level of knowledge that you can then give yourselves, um, that can be applicable over, over time. Trying to get efficiency on advertising budget is obviously one of the most important things that anyone has. And, and this is what this is going to try and feed into. So you are, you know, it's one of the, one of the real issues I found talking to, you know, small business owners are that you sort of send out your money into the ethos and you don't know what it's doing. And you don't really, you, because small business owners generally right? They're experts in their particular field, but they're not necessarily marketers, but they need to be marketers because that's part of growing the business. So, so it's this whole new world of things and, and essentially, you're coming to where we need to be an expert, but you're not

Yep.

Necessarily to the degree anyway. Um, and so what I find is very frustrating for a lot of them is that it's not just that they're spending money and, and it's not going anywhere. It's that there's no real understanding of why it's not going anywhere or it's just the concept that marketing is necessary. I know that, but I don't really know which things are effective. And, and it's all a bit of gumph, you know, what is the actual hardcore thing I'm trying to do? I don't know. Mm. Yeah. And what, what this is trying to do is go, look, this is what you're trying to do. This is, let's make it tangible to understand the real reasons that you are doing anything. Yes. You know, click, take it back. You know, to go right, you have to spend some marketing. Okay. Right. What, what does that mean I'm doing, I'm not just, doesn't mean I am social media campaign.

Cause that doesn't really mean anything. What, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to talk to the brain and my customer, my type customers and, and how am I trying to do that? And what is the picture I'm trying to build? And so therefore, you've, everything you're doing, you can make decisions based on, on knowing these things, on, on understanding why you're trying to do it, and that that allows you first to make decisions that go in the right direction. And two, to adapt and, and, and pivot and, and try other things and understand why something hasn't worked as opposed to sort of going out there blind me going, right. Trying to do social media strategy and Facebook ads so it doesn't work, and I don’t know why, you know, so that's what it is. It's, it's, it's hopefully giving you the, the, the framework and the tools that can help you across anything you're doing in the marketing space.

So, you No, thanks for that. I mean, that's a really good insight, um, into like what people can expect. But if I might just add to that or sort of, you know, put my, my take on that, I, I, for me, this stuff can add a lot of value in the different parts of the marketing funnel, if I can put it that way. So, you know, you can apply this, these neuroscience principles to your product development. So that's actually the design of the product, uh, or the servers that's, that's right at the start there. You can then apply it into all your marketing collateral and your campaigns, you know, what your ads look like, what messaging you're using, even, you know, what channel you're going to choose to sort of, um, interact with, um, your audience through and, and then write down into the sales funnel.

So let you know you've got them through the marketing funnel, they're now on your database, they're interested, um, you're starting to engage them in the sales process so you can then use these, these neuroscience techniques, uh, in the actual sales funnel as well. So, I see it as, um, you know, hopefully you agree with that, but I, I, I see it as, um, it is very broad. This is the thing. Like, it's, it's in, in one respect. It's, it's maybe a little bit difficult for people to grasp how significant this is because you can apply it to everything in that, in that sort of customer journey marketing funnel. But for me it's, it's like the way you apply it in the product design is different to the way you might apply it to in the marketing funnel and then in the sales funnel. Would you, would you agree with that?

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's very, that's the case. I mean, mean it extends even to, you know, face to face sales. You know, sales face to face is essentially marketing one to one, right? And, and there are rules around, you know, things like rapport and, and engaging someone face to face. Those sorts of things. Hugely important when it really comes down to it, you know, building relationships with people. Um, but yes, absolutely, there'll be different parts from, you know, creating the product might be around the world of process I fluency and, and colors. Um, and, and right down to the, the sales funnel, conversion area where it might be around using the sales copy, framing, uh, you know, deciding things like the rule of one, you know, don't all lots of different things where you, you're trying to, there's definitely different rules for different parts of the funnel, but you can really apply these things in all sorts of different places depending on what your business is.

Yeah. And, um, you've taken us through some, frankly, very nerdy concepts already, which I'm, I'm really excited by. So, we've heard about the lazy conscious, we've heard about, you've talked about association. I've got a couple that, you know, I'd just like to get a little bit more clarity on. So, what, what exactly is associative memory? So, is, is that where people, you know? Yes. I think you might have touched on this before, if they've had a car crash in a certain place, every time they drive past that place, they feel bad. Is that what that is?

Yeah. So, so I suppose that, yeah, it does link into the point somewhere around the association essentially, that that is about everything that you remember, Hasso you, if you see a particular company or a thing or a place, you have a, a memories of what that associates with. Yep. You know, so, so it's essentially that it is the concept I was talking about before. You know, what, when you remember something, what do you remember and what does that link to outside and inside your brain?

Yeah. And specifically, how does it make you feel?

Yes. Yes. So absolutely. So, it, it's really about that that is associative memory really is one of the most fundamental things to address for any marketer. You know, what, how, how is someone associating you with something else? Yeah. You know, because they will have, everyone has existing there, there are some, everyone has existing associations in their minds, you know, from growing up. Some of them we all share, you know, Michelin star restaurants, you know, we all sort of have known that that associated with great restaurants. But you know, the Backstreet Boys, you know, some people love them, some people not so much. You know, there's different, there's, there's, so everyone has these different associations in your mind. So, so you need to be working out what are the associations you are creating Yep. That, that are going to tell the story that you want to tell. And that can be, you know, like I say, there are certain associations that will be universal to, to promote your quality, but there will also be some specific associations that will be more powerful for you for a particular audience.

Got it. Got it. And what about, um, one final kind of technical term breakdown, if I can put it that way? Uh, neuroplasticity, now I, I, I know what that is, but I think, uh, a lot of our listeners might not, and I think they'd be quite interested to learn, you know, um, from an expert like you, what that, what that means.

Yeah. So, neuroplasticity is essentially the concept that we are continually building our brain based on what we do and what we experience. So, it's quite an inspiring concept really. That's to understand that our brain is on a constant journey to, to build itself, but it doesn't have any predetermined vision for the future of what that's going to look like for any of us. Yeah. So, what we do, so when it comes to learning or when you're thinking what, what, you know, how you're going to build your life, you do have the ability to take your brain in any number of different directions. And it's based on fundamentally, you know, types of practice, repetition really, you know, so you learn, you learn things. So, and, and that is, that is really comes out the learning process. So, so neuroplasticity is really saying that everything we are doing as a marketer, you know, you can always be building more impressions and you can always be improving your, your, um, interaction with someone and your reputation, but also the other way. You got to understand that these things aren't forever, effort forever. You can also decrease it and get worse. So

Isn't it on a, on a, um, an actual sort of, uh, scientific level or, or, um, isn't it building new neural pathways in the brain? Is that what it is? That what it means like with neuro place, it is actually about

Builds Yes.

Building those new pathways and, and, and often yes. Forming different views, thinking in different ways. Um, yeah, so,

So, if you are doing anything, you do, so if you do something, you form a neural pathway, then the more you do it that strengthens it. Yes. So, so by continuing to do particular things, you strengthen those neural pathways and that links into things like habits, for example, the things we do daily. And, and, and those are some of the most powerful decision drivers that we have. Because once, once something has become, you know, say when you're, you know, when you're a little toddler, even work walking is very difficult, right? Cause your brain hasn't developed the, the capacity and the neuro pathways to, to make those signals and, and facilitate that action. But, you know, by the time you're older, you don't even think about it. And that's really the concept across any of these things.

Yes, absolutely. And I guess, you know, another question I've got here for you, um, is, is about your course. So, you, you, you and I have collaborated on this, um, your new course with nerd of business. It's called, uh, Neuroscience You’re Marketing. Um, uh, it's a fabulous course and it really does go into quite a lot of detail, but in a very accessible way for business owners and marketing managers. Any, anyone that's really running any kind of business or any sales, um, activity can leverage these techniques and principles. So, I guess, you know, what do you think what, what type of business businesses can benefit most from, from this core Simon?

Yeah, So, so as you say, it is meant to be absolutely, completely accessible to anyone, anyone. This is, this is not meant to be learning about brain parts or, you know, going into too much detail at any of that. That's absolutely not what it's all about. It's really just about taking the, the most core concepts of, of how people make decisions and therefore how you can influence those decisions and, and trying to spell those out in a, in accessible way. So, this is really for anyone who, who is trying to, anyone who has a customer who has a brain, and that's really

Customer with a brain. Okay. You

Know, so that's quiet, that's most of them. Yeah. And so, you know, you are saying anyone, you're trying to engage with anything you're trying to sell, whether that's, you know, you're a one product company or a one, you're just small on a website or yes. Whether you're a larger, this is, this doesn't really, because everyone has to be engaging and selling and they have customers, right? Yes. And, and so these rules are fundamental to all of that. So really, it's trying to be universal. It's trying to be accessible and not overly complicated. And really just laying out a framework that you can use on for, for your business, for your marketing, and for your wide business. You know, this is, this isn't meant to be about, um, uh, things on the, like small trials on the side to give a promo or something. This is many rights? On the coal face, making sales where it really makes a difference. That's, that's the really fundamental thing.

Yeah. Yeah. So absolutely. I mean, I think it's, it's, um, it's particularly important for people who, who are spending money on advertising. So, any businesses out there that are investing in Facebook, Google, Instagram, whatever it might be, and that's, that's lots and lots of businesses, uh, they're going to get value out of this course because, um, it really will help to make the ad spend more efficient. Uh, it will, so it'll decrease your cost per acquisition, uh, increase your sales, but it also has further applications. I see it into sales teams and, um, you know, yes. How, how you sell conversations that you have and so on. So no, well done on, on the course. It's, uh, it's a huge, um, achievement and um, you know, we are very excited to, to have it on nerds of business.