How to Get Someone to Buy from You by Understanding the Memory Process?
The other day on one of my stories, I was talking about the memory process and why it takes time for us to remember something new.
I knew from past experience and from other sources that there was a reason why marketing was the way it was but found this research pretty interesting.
For instance, you surely know that repetition is one of the most common ways we learn something new but do you know why?
I talk a bit about all this in my software demo too (register for free at agudemo.com)
Well, knowing why certainly helped me to understand how to get someone to buy from me.
What makes someone buy from you?
You probably already know about the whole know, like & trust process that all marketing gurus talk about.
This process is 100% tied to how our memory works and how repetition causes us to remember something.
As you know, gurus tell you to create content, engage on other people’s posts and be helpful in groups.
These activities cause others to see you in their feeds, groups posts and notifications.
Each time, they see you, your memory takes over.
What are the types of memory?
According to my google searches, there are 2 types of memory – short term and long term.
Short term memory lasts a few seconds to a few minutes and long term memory can last a lifetime.
Anything that goes to long term memory first must go through short memory.
What’s really interesting is how you can, as a marketer, help your prospects remember you more by causing their long term memory to retain you.
But first, let’s talk about short term memory…
How does short term memory help them to buy from you?
You might be thinking it’s crazy that short term memory lasts often less than a minute, so how can that possibly be used to get them to buy from you?
Well, one thing about memory is that repetition is one of the things that move items from short term to long term memory.
There are other things, like emotional reactions or traumas that will make a memory immediately go to long term storage but repetition is the simplest method.
This is why leaders and gurus talk about being consistent so much.
Going from short term to long term memory
As you surely have guessed, marketing uses the repetition approach which is one of the most guaranteed ways to get people to store a memory to long term storage.
Of course, there’s other things that affect this as mentioned before such as emotions.
This is why urgency works so well in marketing too because it causes two things to happen: first they may buy right away so it doesn’t even need to go to memory and second the emotion of fear of loss causes it to go to long term memory.
But, the simplest thing is repetition. The more times someone sees an ad or your post, your profile picture or your name, the more likely they will store that in their long term memory.
Why don’t they buy from you now?
A common complaint is that it takes too long to do all this crazy posting and repetition.
Typically, the frustration comes from not understanding how our memory works and how that impacts when someone will buy from you.
I often hear people suggest they will post 20 times a day and send messages to 20 people a day, every day to increase the exposures so they grow in knowing and liking you faster!
Forgetting that Facebook and other social platforms will most likely temporarily block you, or worst delete your account, this process just doesn’t work.
You will only annoy people, which will put you in their long term memory (because of emotion) as a negative view of you, so definitely don’t do that!
There’s no way around the long term process.
What makes them forget you?
Another very important thing to know if that people will forget you in certain circumstances.
Understand what those circumstances are can help you to avoid them.
There really is just 1 thing that will make them forget you and that’s not seeing you anymore.
Sure, if you’ve been online for a long long time (like years) and they have committed you to long term memory, they may remember you when you show up again months or years later but they will most likely have bought from someone else by then.
This why I teach to be consistent and not create a schedule for yourself that you can’t respect.
Of course, like gets in the way but knowing how memory works can help when coming back.
What does it really take for them to buy from you?
The real secret if for them to remember you as someone who can solve their problems.
Since repetition is the best way to get into their long term memory and emotions are best way to retrieve those long term memories, this is why gurus teach what they teach.
By engaging on their content every few days you are being seen which causes them to remember you.
So, when they continually see you engage on their posts, they will automatically go up that know, like & trust ladder and become ready to buy from you.
Just as important is posting regularly as well.
Without your posts, they may learn to trust you but if they do not know what you can help them with, it won’t be possible for them to buy anything from you.
Conclusion
The human is quite a wonderous machine and understanding how memory works is a really huge benefit to any online marketer.
Just knowing that you can’t just bombard people in a day and it takes time for them to “file you away in good memory” helps a lot with understanding the daily process you must do.
I teach this process and because it’s such a tedious activity for me, I decided to create a software to help me manage it.
I do a demo of this software every Monday at 8pm eastern – register for free at agudemo.com
Also, check out the video as I talk more in depth about how memory works.
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