Time: 60 minutes
1: Customers are skeptical of too good to be true.
Mental model: Our monkey brain is always on high alert. It doesn’t want to be fooled. What is a claim that our competitors are making that we can disprove? See weaknesses and opportunities.
“We have become so accustomed to hearing everyone claim that (their)!(( product is the best in the world or the cheapest, that we take all such statements with a grain of salt.” – Robert Collier
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2: They find expertise sexy.
Mental model: The world is highly specialized and we’re looking to depend on uber experts to make our life easier. What is an insight that will help you incorporate this? Most people (including me) will ask you to make the customer the hero of the story. That’s true, but before you can do that you have to prove you are worthy of their undivided attention. What do we need to do to get that going? 9&0
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3: Customers root for people who beat the odds.
Mental model: The ‘labour illusion’ means consumers perceive good products more favourably when they’re aware of the effort put in – but it also makes bad products look worse. What do you need to do to demonstrate high effort? This can (and ideally should) be both external and internal.
Additional reading:
Consumers think better of a product when they see the work that goes in
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4: Customers are fascinated by surprising details.
Mental model: When you teach people something they don’t know, it will a: create a halo effect where they look at you as the expert on the subject; b: make them feel good knowing they have gained knowledge for free; c: create a burst of excitement that you can channel to get them for one stage of the user journey to the other.
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5: Customers are visual animals.
Mental model: Human beings are designed to absorb visual input. In fact, more than 50% of the cortex—the surface of the brain—is devoted to processing visual information. What is a mental image that we can invoke?