Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

To win over sophisticated, high tech buyers, we’re told we need to appeal to their rational side, using logic and value to sell, but while this strategy may appear to work in the general sense, there’s some interesting neural research that might make you re-think your marketing approach, especially when marketing to prospects that are stressed out.

Maslow, it seems, may have been wrong about our hierarchy of needs, specifically about our need to belong. While Maslow ranked esteem (which includes respect by others) behind physical needs such as food and shelter, current research suggests that we humans equate social needs to survival.

In a strategy+business magazine article entitled: “Managing with the Brain in Mind,” author David Rock describes how UCLA social neuroscience researcher Naomi Eisenberger used a computer game to measure the human brain’s reaction to rejection.

People in the study believed they were playing a ball-tossing game over the Internet with two other people, when in reality they were the only real person in the game. The game started with all three players (one human player, two simulated players represented by avatars) taking turns tossing a virtual ball. About midway through, the human player stopped getting the ball, leaving the study participant to watch while the two avatars continued to play.

What Eisenberg found is that the study participants’ brains reacted as if they were feeling physical pain when they were excluded from the game. Even after they realized they were playing with a computer rigged to exclude them, participants still spoke of feeling angry, snubbed, or judged, as if the avatars excluded them because they didn’t like something about them.

Complementary studies further suggest that social situations (e.g. the fear of being shunned) and physical threats (e.g. encounters with a bear or rabid dog) invoke a threat response in the brain that impairs our analytic thinking, creative insight, and problem solving abilities.

Perhaps it’s this link between survival and social acceptance that’s driving the popularity of social networking sites, and it may be one reason why prospects that are fearful of the economy don’t buy into rational arguments. When we’re worried about losing our jobs, we’re not interested in “rocking the boat,” even if that boat clearly cuts operational costs or improves efficiency!

When we market a product that could be perceived as a potential threat –- e.g. goes against what’s generally accepted, is complicated or risky to implement, etc. -– we can grease the sales process by recognizing our prospects’ unspoken need for social acceptance.

The “Managing with the Brain in Mind” article lists five qualities that managers can use to minimize the threat response. Two qualities jumped out at me as potential strategies marketers can leverage when selling high tech. In my next blog, I’ll discuss the two qualities (hence marketing strategies) in detail.

In the meantime, folks who want to read the entire strategy+business article can do so online by following this link, but you’ll need to register in order to gain access to the article.

Sue Anderson-Lenz
Marketing Lure, Inc.