It’s common knowledge that we shouldn’t go to the supermarket when we are hungry. We always end up buying too much and buying things we don’t really need. We buy too much because everything we see, we want to eat now… Because we’re hungry, that’s obvious.
But business owners do the same at slow seasons or when business is not running like it used to be, right? But the more interesting question is, why do we go to the supermarket when we are not hungry? Which begs the question, why should business owners advertise when business is going well?
Our ancestors of the Paleolithic era live in times when resources were either scarce or hard to come by. Imagine if every time we felt hungry, we had to go hunting for a few hours… Whit no guarantee that we’d catch anything. Odds are our species would not survive very well with a system like that, neither would a business. This is why it’s important to have a marketing plan and marketing budget in place. This is crucial for any organization to survive.
More businesses fail in their media buying efforts because of that simple reason, they buy from the media sales person based on their reasons and not themselves, that’s why you will hear from business owners “I tried it and it didn’t work for me” and then you hear their competitors in the same media Channel doing very well, why? Because the decision was made when they were starving for results and instant gratification. They were hungry.
If we now know, what not to do, what we should do for business marketing? Give some dopamine!
Long before agriculture or supermarkets, humans spent a good portion of their time in search for the next meal. If we couldn’t stay focused on completing basic tasks, like hunting and gathering, we wouldn’t last very long. So Mother Nature designed a clever way to help us stay focused on the task at hand. One way to get dopamine is from eating, which is one of the reasons we enjoy it. And so we try to repeat the behavior that gets us food.
It is dopamine that make us goal oriented species with bias for progress. When we are given a task to complete, a metric to reach, as long we can see it or clearly imagine it in our mind’s eye, we will get a little burst of dopamine to get us on our way.
Back in the Paleolithic era, if someone saw a tree filled with fruit, for example, dopamine was released to incentivize them to stay focused on the task and go and get the fruit. As they made progress toward that fruit tree, they would see it getting slightly bigger, an indication that they were getting closer. With each sign of progress, they would get another little hit of dopamine to keep them on their way. Until they reach their goal.
If we use this example in any organization, I would definitely say that dopamine means marketing, with a constant and well-designed business marketing plan, we will bring those calls and clients “food” that our business needs to stay on track. No dopamine no motivation. Get your business marketing in place!