#4 - Selling Emotion - The Triggers Marketers Use (and Abuse)

Behind every marketing campaign is a psychological lever. Fear, pride, trust, guilt, envy—these emotional triggers influence the way people think, click, and buy. But where’s the line between persuasion and manipulation?

In this episode of Over The Bull, host Ken Carroll breaks down the emotional triggers that drive modern marketing. From classic examples like Edward Bernays’ “Torches of Freedom” campaign to everyday brand tactics used by tech, fitness, and nonprofits, this episode pulls back the curtain on how emotions are engineered into strategy.

We talk about:

    •    The most common emotional triggers used in digital marketing

    •    How brands use (and abuse) trust, fear, guilt, envy, and altruism

    •    Where these tactics cross the line—and how to use them responsibly

    •    What business owners need to know to avoid getting played

If you’ve ever wondered why a campaign “just works” or felt uneasy about how something made you click, this one’s for you.

Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.

Transcript

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You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.

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Marketing is all around us, isn't it? I mean, we are bombarded with marketing all the time. I was watching the ballgame the other day, and I was watching the pharmaceutical commercials. And, you know, they would talk about subtly like their medication helping prevent cardiovascular disease or heart attacks or all these scary things that drive and motivate people. This is an example of an emotional trigger. And today on Over the Bull, we're going to talk about emotional triggers. But there's more to it than just the triggers themselves. Now, these triggers have been around with man since the beginning of recorded history. We're all motivated by these triggers. Now, the question becomes, at what point are we crossing some ethical boundaries when using these triggers? And how do we properly utilize them? Now, if you remember in the last podcast talking to Brendan about graphic design, you see the waters get very muddy very quick. You know, it becomes an issue of how you do it. How do you do it optimally? Well, when it comes to ethics and emotional triggers, there's also a similar type issue. So the question is, is what emotional triggers do you use? How does it fit with your philosophy in business? And what do you do to help it grow your business? Now, I'm going to give a little bit of a comment before I talk about emotional triggers. Well, because emotional triggers trigger people emotionally. And I want to talk about some things today that may trigger your emotions. But it's not meant to create a political or a divide of any kind. What it's mainly meant to do is to illustrate the potential for how these things are used in positive and negative ways. And so keep in mind that any statement that I make, they're particularly designed as examples and not making a worldview assessment. So yes, essentially, emotional triggers trigger people emotionally. Well, let's get diving right in here. All right, the first emotional trigger, and one of the most popular, is fear. Now, fear is a very, very powerful driving mechanism in marketing. Pharmaceutical companies use fear very well, and they also use it very subtly. Like, for example, what they'll do is tell you that, you know, basically if you don't take their medication, you could die from this, die from that, have these kind of complications that no one wants to have. And so survival at its core is something that they're triggering very subtly but very strongly. The other thing that they do is they typically show events of where people seem happy. And they seem like they're living a fulfilled, happy life and doing what they want to, which is also what we want as human beings. And so it makes sense that they're using this to build both sides of this. One, you don't take the medication. You can die. You can have kidney disease. You could lose a limb. You could whatever. On the other side, if you take our medication... You're going to experience this freedom and this happiness, which is why they show people baking cookies or going for a walk or going to the park. There are things that we want to do and want to enjoy, and we can usually enjoy those better if we're in peak physical condition. There's also another marketing tactic that's used in the pharmaceutical commercials, and that is the side effect. Now, we think that they're showing the side effects because they have to show the side effect. But there are studies that show that when they show side effects, it gives people more confidence that it's likely to fix their ailment because they have a little give and take in the equation. And so actually that's part of the whole marketing strategy too. So how does this apply to you and your business? Should you use fear? I mean, fear tactics do work very well. Or should you not? Now, these are ethical questions. From a marketing perspective, We just simply want to sell products if we look at it agnostically. But the idea is the people that you hire, the tactics that they use, the recommendations that they make could cross some ethical boundaries, although they're extremely effective. Now let's move on to number two. Number two is greed. Greed is extremely effective. What you do is you create special offers or exclusive benefits that that makes someone want to take advantage of it because they want to take advantage of those deals. Now, it could be that they're frugal, which is true, but it's also playing on the idea that they want a little more than they can normally get. And so this is something that could work, and the ethical dilemma in greed is, well, it's questionable. So, for example, if you're going to give them something more than you normally would through a special offer or exclusive event, then essentially you are doing nothing more than giving them something for nothing, which in all essence, I don't see a lot wrong with that. Although you are feeding the concept of the person's innate desire to be greedy. What I mean by that is, do we want to fuel that fire within the individual or not? So between the two, obviously fear is a little more predator-like in the way that it approaches things. Number three on the list is belonging. Believe it or not, many companies use this in an extremely negative capacity and some use it in a very positive capacity. Now the problem is, as marketers, we understand creating a sense of belonging is something that people want innately. And so if it's used in a malicious way, people could take a cause. They could take an event, and then they try to bring you into it. And so this concept of belonging is strong. And so if you see someone who's trying to appeal to you because you have certain attributes in your life, if you love cars, if you have a certain religious belief, if you have a certain non-religious belief. Creating that sense of belonging is something that is very strong and can pull you into donating, giving your time, giving your money or energy to those causes because they're trying to create that sense. Now, if it's an honest attempt at really trying to bring like-minded people together for a good cause, then from a marketing perspective, that's extremely ethical. However, if it's used in a way that is trying to manipulate someone, obviously it's unethical. A few years ago, there was a commercial and it was for laundry detergent. And the laundry detergent advertisement, it had nothing to do with laundry. It had to do with acceptance of a certain group of people. And the statement was one that sounded like, hey, we're part of this group and being part of that group What it made you think or tried to make you think, if you didn't have your marketing lens on, was that particular laundry detergent company was all about trying to create quality within a certain group of people. Now, this particular laundry detergent company could also give money to the cause. They could also do other things that would help support it. Now, the question becomes, are they donating money and are they creating these commercials? because they're truly altruistic about that particular cause? Or is it because what they're trying to do is manipulate a certain group of people and maybe fringe people around that particular cause to think that this company cares more than they do and therefore they should buy their product? Now, if it's big corporations, 99% of the time you can bank that they've done some demographic studies or they have an agenda. And they're trying to do it to sell more product by creating this sense of community. Now, this is manipulative in its core. Now, if it's a different situation where people are trying to go in and build like-minded people together, then, of course, that's a little bit different because then it's an honest effort. And so, as you can see, the problem with stuff like this... Let me jump over here for one second. The problem with situations like this is that people are becoming less trusting because they see that they're being manipulated. Now, a lot of people don't realize that they kind of just go under the radar and they hear about a cause or something that they're close to and they don't put two and two together, that the laundry detergent company is just trying to sell product. But the problem is, is when you mix that kind of deceptive way with an ethical way, then everything kind of gets put into one group. And the ethical use of trying to create a sense of community versus the unethical way to do it, it becomes so blurred that now this is a little bit trickier to navigate. And it requires more credibility factor to show that you're not trying just to manipulate people. And so as you can see, although it's strong and powerful, if it's used in a way that's dishonest, then it'll have a very limited life to begin with. Like, for example, if you look at the detergent commercial, you can tell it was a campaign that they were doing to see how well it would affect sales because it quickly died. You didn't hear about the company talking about this particular cause months later or years later. It was a very specific run. Now, other companies who absolutely, and organizations, non-profits, who do have an allegiance to a cause or community or group of like-minded people, often there's a longer track record of them doing this. And so just a quick tip from Over the Bull, if you see those kind of commercials but you don't see them sticking to it, you're being manipulated into thinking you're part of something that they're really not a part of. The next one up is trust. Trust is a very honorable term. emotional trigger, especially when you're using it, well, truthfully. So the thing is, is that how can you build trust within a group of people? Number one is how long you've been in business. Number two would be your partnerships or different things that you're associated with that helps build your credibility and trust. For example, at Integris Design, we spend a lot of our time, effort, and energy to keep our partnerships. Because we think that if we have partnerships and we're certified with those partnerships, then that's going to build a sense of trust. Now, we don't do that just to do it because our skill set doesn't change, but it's something that we're doing to help instill trust. And so in your case, what you could do is go through and create those partnerships or create that credibility standard or also let people know about the credibility that you already have to help build that trust. For example... If you've been in business for two decades and you don't tell anybody about it, then they don't know that, and they're not going to look for those things. And that could actually be a fairly strong call to action in certain markets, your longevity. The other thing is maybe doing background checks. Things like that could also be ways in which you could build trust. Now, of course, trust can be manipulated as well. Now, used unethically, trust can still work. For example, if a brand slaps trusted by 10,000 customers on a landing page with no data, it could manipulate people into making a purchase. Say an ad promotes a free trial, but users are locked into subscriptions and hidden fees. Well, this is also a way to manipulate trust. People see free trial, but then they're manipulated on the back end. And so another one would be agencies who have said that they've been able to get ranking on the top page of Google within 24 hours. So these things sell. And honestly, there becomes an ethical boundary on a lot of these as well because from a marketing perspective, we want to sell product. And so to put something on a website that's disingenuous is very tempted by marketing companies because marketing companies, they want to be able to send more business to people. And at the end of the day, if they're not guided by a conscience, then they're going to use deceptive practices in order to increase self. So from a business standpoint, again, you're at this emotional crossroads where you go, is it worth it? Should I do that? Should I sell my business soul in order to sell more product or should I be more ethical? Oh, and the next one's up. It's one of the seven deadly sins also, right? It's envy. Of course, we want to be able to push envy in marketing. And so envy is a very tricky one. So you can imagine right out of the gate, this is a very questionable ethical approach, especially with some philosophical background. But the idea is to make people feel envious of what other people have. Now, tech companies eat, breathe, and sleep off envy. You know, just imagine those commercials where they imply, look at what they have. Don't you want to be like them? Don't you want to be one of the cool kids in the room? You know, we're all conditioned this from very young to want to have the best things. We see designer clothes, designer whatever. We see the best tech or the best backpacks or whatever. And then we see people associated with them and we go, wow, I want to be like that. I want to have that. And so luxury brands or fitness apps or products, you know, you'll get this great body in 90 days. Or you may see a social media growth tool. You know, your competitor gained 10K followers. Look at what they did to do that. You see, it's appealing to this envy of what other people have that you want to have. And so the idea is, do you want to play upon that? Do you want to use that to your advantage? And if so, how do we use that where it's an ethical practice versus something that's not ethical or trying to pull those triggers for people? And if you want to know classic examples of how this is being used in the world today, you really need to look no further than marketing. I mean, people, because they're so deluded into thinking that the internet is like this magic way that you can spin gold out of nothing, that oftentimes when they get approached by email or a phone call or a certain sales pitch, they will use the idea of how effective it is for other businesses like them. And they don't have any gold. The emperor has no clothes. Real marketing takes work, time, effort, trial, error, all those things that don't sell very well in a sales pitch. But that's the reality of it. What they're doing is using these stories, these things where they're trying to push you into a product by making you envious of what other people have. So how many times have you bought into one of these deals where they've told you that they're going to be able to produce something, string you along for, 90 days, 120 days, something like that before you realize it. What's really funny is a lot of these companies even realize how long you'll be with them once you sign up. And their goal is to just keep you for as long as they can do it and then rinse, lather, and repeat. They pay no attention to the wake of people that are left behind, the businesses that are disillusioned, the businesses that fail because of what they've done. But they don't care. They're trying to just sell a product through making you envious. and having that sense of scarcity to push you into something. So for your own business, what do you do? Do you try to push on envy? Do you try to use that as a tactic, or do you not? Is there even an ethical way to use envy as an approach to sell something to someone? Or do we take the big tech route, and do we show other people who are dancing in the streets, listening to music, or taking those pictures, or doing those things that make you feel like you're special? Now, here's the weird thing about this. This has actually been around way before the tech company. The automotive industry really used this historically. What they would do is they would prey upon people who were maybe going through a midlife crisis. So they would show the guy driving around the car with the young girl in the passenger side of the vehicle. And then he wasn't really associating the vehicle with... having a nice vehicle, per se. What he's doing is associating with a lifestyle, like an expectation. It's preying upon his desire to have a certain thing, maybe recapture that little bit of youth that he wants to recapture. You know, preying upon immaturity versus the next chapter in his life. And so by doing that, they're able to sell cars. Well, that's why you buy the latest and greatest mobile phone. You're doing it because... They're telling you to do it because they want you to think that if you don't have it, you're not going to have the greatest widgets in the world and you're not going to be one of the cool kids. You're going to pull your phone up in a public place and people are going to laugh at you because it's so old. I can tell you I run several generations back on my phone. I don't care. It doesn't matter. It's not a status thing for me. But you can see from a business standpoint how you could use something like this to further your business. Oh, and then we have guilt. Guilt is a very powerful motivator in marketing. And yes, it can be used in ethical ways, and it can be used in unethical ways. So let's explore maybe a few examples of how guilt is used in marketing today. For just a dollar a day, you can save a child's life. Wow, who wouldn't want to save a kid's life for a dollar a day? Seems like something everyone would want to do. Fitness and health products. You've let yourself go. Isn't it time you start caring about your health? You see, this is a guilt tactic to prey upon your knowing that you're probably not eating or working out or doing things that you need to do. And so fitness apps or other kind of things, they'll use this little sense of guilt in order to trigger you. How about this one? Every plastic bottle you throw away hurts the planet. Boy, don't that make you feel guilty. You see, so someone who has a hypersensitive tendency toward guilt can be easily manipulated using some of these practices. And oftentimes, it does work. Now, the question is, is it used ethically or is it used unethically? Because sometimes people, it's a good motivator, you know, if it's legitimate. But if we're using it to just further our motivations and not really the guilt, oriented target, then I think we've got some issues there. So here's one that'll, let's talk about emotional triggers. Let's see where you fall on this one. Let's take COVID. You know, when it came out, you know, they would tell you to wear a mask because you want to protect your grandma, right? You want to protect your neighbor. You want to be the good guy. And by wearing a mask, you're one of the good guys. Now, I'm not making a judgment call. I'm just trying to get your emotion up. And as you can see, you probably felt a visceral response, maybe one way or another, toward the idea of wearing masks to protect other people and to try to guilt you in to wearing those masks. So where you fall on the spectrum with that particular call to action really depends on a lot of factors unrelated to masks. It relates to where you are, who you trust, who you believe. Do you think that that's true? Not true. And the other thing that usually ties in with guilt is recurring, which actually recurring marketing, remarketing, or retargeting, depends on the context of it, is very powerful with a lot of these tools. You know, for example, in the Nazi Party, the National Socialist Party of World War II, one of the things that was quoted is, if you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. So the idea is to keep pressuring people with guilt, make them feel bad, make them feel that they're destroying the planet, make them feel certain things, make them feel that they're being a little bit selfish by not putting on that mask. Those are things that are actually tactics. Now, again, we have the ethical, unethical dilemma, right? Was it ethical? Was it not ethical? Was it truthful? Was it Maybe a manipulative tactic, but the good for the people. Well, that's for the individuals to decide based upon the actual data that's out there. And the next emotional trigger up to bat is pride. So pride is very powerful as well. You know, if you look at some credit card companies, you may see a slogan that says, you've earned this. You belong here. You see, we're trying to pull out that sense that somebody's earned something. And because they've earned it, now they're ready for our product. Or maybe you take some of the tech products. Think different. Think better. Be better. Be better than that last generation. You know, think our way. Be our way. And this makes people have a sense of pride that somehow they're more superior than previous generations or previous groups because they think a certain way. They have a different definition of open-mindedness. And so this also triggers people. Extremely effective. Extremely effective in marketing. Electric vehicles. You've worked hard. You deserve more than the average person. Now, they're not going to say it exactly like that, but that's essentially what they're saying. They're preying on your pride, your ability to buy something, your ability to stand out among the group. You know, as I'm reading this, it's like I'm almost reading the deadly sin. You know, it's like, golly, man, it gets bad pretty quick. And that's why a lot of people don't like marketing. You know, just a quick side note before we continue. People don't like it because it feels manipulative and disingenuous. And for us, what we try to do is we try to do it in the most ethical way possible, where we're not pulling upon those triggers. And it's a challenge in today's world, because in a world where everybody promises everything, it's making people more skeptical. And even the honest ethical approach to using some of these tactics is not working as effectively as it should. It's almost like the further we get in this big experiment of being bombarded with all these approaches, that people are so desensitized that you've got to up the game. You've got to make it more sensationalistic. And there's always something else to kind of push that. For example, today, artificial intelligence. People look at artificial intelligence and they think, wow, that's really something that's going to propel me to the next level. I've got to use AI. Because, of course, it's smarter than a sentient human. I mean, you get all this propaganda about... what it does and how it thinks and all these things. But here's the thing. It's a really good tool, but it's a good tool within the context of sentiency. And it's also a good tool if it's not skewed toward a certain worldview, which some of the AI tools, really, they're just there to propel certain agendas, especially when you talk to them and you see what they come up with. You can tell that it's not really an unbiased set of data. It's more of a way to try to manipulate you into thinking a certain worldview. And so you got to be careful with how you use these things in your business because, well, it depends. Are you going to be the unethical guy who pushes it just to sell more product? Are you going to be the ethical company? Now, what's great about using emotional triggers in an unethical way is they can also bite the people who are using them unethically. Of course, they're going to get a bad reputation, but they can go for years and years on that. There are marketing companies who offer sensationalism and they're still functioning today, being just as unethical today as they were. I mean, I remember several years ago, probably about eight or nine years ago now, there's a very large company that specializes in local marketing optimization. You know, your Google business profile and stuff like that. And They came to us as an agency and said, hey, we can do all this for you and optimize those listings, blah, blah, blah, do all that stuff, you know. And so we tested it for six months. And what we found out was that it didn't work at all. I mean, it was insane how bad this tool worked. And this tool is still around today. And it's used by a lot of agencies because they can resell it and market up significantly. So they actually hide it behind the scenes. Now, even though the average business owner may not know this, especially new businesses, and they may not know that agencies are using it, they're becoming aware that the results are not what is touted to be. And so it is creating an undercurrent of distrust, especially among reputable agencies. Now, of course, there are unethical agencies that will still push the product because it makes them money. And now let's get back to the last major emotional trigger. And that is altruism. Now, of course, altruism is a belief and a practice of disinterest or selfless concern for the well-being of others. I'm reading the definition of it. And so if you look at examples of altruism, you may have something like this. For every pair of shoes you buy, we give a pair to a child in need. That's pretty altruistic. You're not just buying a product. You're supporting a cause. See altruism. We feel like we're doing something. Share this message to raise awareness. How many times have you gotten those social media posts and they say share this with 10 people and to bring awareness to a certain subject? And man, that still works, I think, today. But it's silly. It's just a way to gain momentum in social media. It has nothing to do and oftentimes with the actual cause itself. You know, of course, it could be used ethically. But a lot of companies use these tactics in order just to increase their outreach and, again, kind of bring certain people together who believe they're doing certain things. So, as you can see, there's a lot of emotional triggers and a lot of polarization in terms of ethics. And also, the amount that you manipulate people can make or break your company, too. You see? And depending upon the... the disposition of the person that owns a business, they may use this more or less. Some people will say, I don't care. I just want to sell more product. I don't care what the difference is. I don't care if it's ethical or unethical. We'll deal with that down the road. And they somehow segment their personal ethics with their business ethics, which I struggle with. I have a hard time breaking those things up. So you have to make some decisions. Now, here's the weird thing. If you notice that a lot of times when you're given these examples, they overlap, like altruism or a sense of community. You know, they seem like they use these in conjunction with each other. Now, it could be unintentional and it could be intentional. So let me give you an idea. If you meet somebody new, it's commonly known that if you take that person through a series of emotions in a short period of time, you can manipulate that person. into believing that they know you better than they do. For example, if you make someone feel sad or happy or relate to their situation in the past and give them a sense of empathy, you can actually manipulate that person into trusting you and feeling that they have a sense of knowing you for a lot longer than they have. It's like that sense of trust. And it's an extremely manipulative tactic that is used today. And so the idea is that to bring people through a range of emotions makes them feel like they know you, they trust you. So as you can see, marketing is very, very manipulative. So let's go in and explore one of the classic old examples real quick. As I mentioned in previous podcasts, one of the founders of modern day marketing, his name was Edward Bernays. Now, Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. And years and years ago, one of the things he was challenged with by the cigarette companies was to increase smoking in women. So they wanted to expand people who are smoking from men to women. And they were trying to come up with a way to encourage that. So they hired Edward Bernays. And Edward Bernays went back and he came up with a concept called Torches of Freedom. And so what he did was he goes, look, these are not cigarettes. These are torches of equality. And when a woman smokes a cigarette, she's saying that she wants to be equal. And so what happened was cigarettes, they just started to increase in sales. He strategically placed women in certain places that looked and act a certain way. And cigarette sales went through the roof. It was a success. But you see, it wasn't about cigarettes. It was a manipulative tactic to make people think, women specifically, that if they smoked, somehow they were standing up for their rights by smoking. Didn't worry about their physical health or anything like that. So you see, it was an extremely, arguably unethical way to market cigarettes to a group that was susceptible to a cause and not to smoking in itself. So for you to think about your business and what you're going to do, you're going to have to make some of these decisions. And these decisions aren't always the most fun of decisions. Now, we prefer to work with companies that are more ethical. We want to work with people that really have a strategic advantage in the market and want to push their strategic advantage. Now, the thing about emotion, the thing about these emotional triggers is is they do have to be used. They do have to be harnessed, you know, like a gun or a knife or whatever. Wield it in the right way, it's a great tool. Wield it in the wrong way, it's a horrible tool. You know, it can cause damage. It can cause ripples for generations and generations trying to recover from the damages that some of these things cause. Well, if used in the right way, it could save lives. You see... These type of tools that are used in marketing are the exact same way. Do you care if you're causing damage to other people? Or do you just want to sell product? See, these are very, very tough decisions. But why it has to be crossed is in marketing, we know that if you don't distinguish yourself from your competitors, it will default to price. And if things default to price, the guy selling it the cheapest is going to win. But it's not that easy because some people will sell something and go out of business basically doing it. Or they're trying to use it more in terms of a lead loss, meaning gain market share. So they may have some big funding and they can be negative for a long period of time. If you go back to some of Microsoft when they were trying to break into the video game industry, they would run negatively for some time because they were trying to take market share from more popular gaming systems at the time. They could do it because they could afford to do it. Now, most of you probably can't do that. Most of you probably don't have this massive lead loss program where you're trying to gain market share. Some of you may, some of you may not. The strategies are a lot different if you're going to do that. But the idea is you have to come to terms with who you are as a business. Are you going to operate ethically or unethically? And if so, what are those ethical approaches? What are those ethical triggers that you can pull that you believe in? You know, if it's something that involves community, can you support the idea that you really believe in that community and that you've been involved in that community for some time? Or are you going to be the detergent company that tries to use it in a manipulative way to try to gain a little bit of market share, dip your toes in it to see if it works? And if it does, then continue to do it. When you look at your website, If you look at anything, you've got to create a call to action, some reason to motivate someone in order to get them to engage with your company. And creating that ethical, unethical boundary is tricky. But we all know sign up for our newsletter does not work for email marketing. We all know that not pushing people in certain ways to feel emotion is not going to work for you. you're going to need to draw from emotion. And those emotional triggers are going to be the difference between someone engaging with your company and not engaging with your company. Furthermore, those emotional triggers will change as the market changes. I mean, I can remember years ago, I mean, the internet market is so corrupt and it's always been, marketing services has always been just extremely corrupt. And I remember years ago, one of our approaches was, they would come to us and we would tell them about what we had as far as certifications and backgrounds and everything. And I remember one guy told me one time, he's like, I just want to know if you're going to do the work or not. I mean, we would have this flurry of people who would come in. They would have paid a deposit to a web designer, one of these firms, and they would never get any work. The person just ghosted them. They went off the radar. And so they would come to us years ago saying, we just want to know if you're actually going to do anything or not. And you had to convince them that basically you were going to perform basic work, right? And later it got to where you wanted to show more of your capabilities and your skill set and your background. So it evolved over a period of time. And now it's kind of somewhere in between it because right now it's like so many people have been sold unethically. And they've been sold through whatever means, but they were told that this internet thing is going to produce these fabulous results. Or it was perpetuated by this myth of the internet that somehow if you spend a few dollars, it's going to be enough to grow your company. A lot of people don't talk about that about 60% of your success or failure is based on the creative of your marketing. But the creative is fueled by the call to action. So like some positive ways. You know, if we're talking about maybe let's go with the greed element for a minute. I have seen it where a particular soap company that I like to use, they'll often sell you these introductory kits. And these introductory kits, they don't have any kind of like hidden calls behind them as far as I can see. And that's the Dr. Squatch soap. It's an amazing. I love their marketing. I think it's really good. But they'll sell these kits. And a lot of times they'll sell them at a discounted rate. And honestly, I believe it's because they believe in their product. There's no tricks, no nothing. And we got the products and now my kids use it and they love the product. And so it's a really good product and they use it in an ethical way. So it can be used ethically, but it needs to be strategically used ethically. And so the idea is to come up with what makes you different and better and what can you do? So because the world is so jaded and most people are so discerning or questioning everything because they've been bombarded with so many marketing tactics and approaches that they're often distrusting. And so ethical marketing can also establish your position in ways that the unethical guy can't do it. And sometimes calling out the elephant in the room is a great approach. For example, before someone even tells me that they've been jaded by marketing, I'll talk to them honestly and openly about some of the challenges in marketing today. What the reality is. Like, for example, if you get 100 clicks, you're lucky to get four to six meaningful conversions in the early phases. So if you're spending... you know, a dollar a click, you spend$100, you get four to six phone calls. And if you blow those four to six phone calls, then you're at zero. You see, putting something in perspective like that to a jaded business and addressing it up front is something that helps a business understand that that's not what you're trying to do, is to manipulate them into some type of emotional, you know, grandiosity, that's even a word, to make them think that somehow you're going to have the next magic. Now, what's great for us when we sell reality and grounded services is that we don't have to chase the ghost. We don't have to chase this marketing enigma that's just beyond the horizon and make people think that certain things are going to happen. If you remember in the first episode, we talked about one of the reasons that we had problems with a client was because he believed in these fairy tales. He kept chasing these fairy tales. And he was so emotionally triggered that it was really sad, honestly. I couldn't imagine. This guy's blood pressure just must be through the roof. So the idea is to use it ethically. The best thing to do is to go get you a piece of paper and sit down and write your strategic advantages. Now, if your strategic advantages are cost, you're barking up the wrong tree. Now, once you write those strategic advantages down, you also want to understand who those strategic advantages are for. We often call this demographics. Demographics mean who's more likely to want your products based upon your strategic advantages. So for example, if you take some of the cheaper hamburger joints that have been around for generations and generations, they prey upon a sense of nostalgia. The food may trigger events of when they were kids or maybe happy moments of when they got that kid's meal or something like that. While other people have a mature palate, some people want to really worry about what they're putting into their system. And so they're willing to pay five times as much for that same size sandwich. But because it has other value to it, meaning nutrition, then they're more prone to go and buy that more expensive burger. So your marketing approach to group number one is significantly different to your marketing approach for group number two. If you sell expensive, high-quality food, you're not going to compete with the guy who's selling burgers at a very low rate and doesn't care about the nutritional value as much. Now, of course, the person selling the cheap burger is going to blur the waters by making people question whether or not their burger is nutritious or not. And that's kind of where the game comes into play. People with a learned mind when it comes to nutrition will see through it, while those that don't, won't. And that's pretty much true with everything. I mean, everything in the world today is all about education, which may take us to the next consideration. And I want to go back to the pharmaceutical deal for a second, because it's just such a great example of this. Have you ever noticed that a lot of times when people are trying to sell you something, health-wise, they use people in white coats? And the idea is that a lot of people, most people probably, at least in the Western culture, believe that medical doctors know everything about everything. And by default, a lot of times people wearing white coats will manipulate you because your mind will see the white coat and automatically think that that person knows more than they really do. So there's a little bit of a manipulative tactic with that. Now, I know that, like, for example, in my background, I can tell you that I was a type 2 diabetic and I was also a person on the fringe of real high cholesterol and high blood pressure. And within a very short period of time, I was able to reverse that. And I didn't use what the white coach told me to do. Now, I had the numbers to prove that my strategy worked. And it was not taking a pill. Matter of fact, I don't take pills for any of this stuff right now. What I did was through prayer, through research, through diet, through exercise. Through a lot of these strategies, I was able to completely come off everything while the white coats were telling me to take the pill and shut up. Now, if you look at life today, there's a lot of this where it goes on, where people are trying to instill trust where they really shouldn't instill trust. But ethically, if you have the white coat and you know what you're doing, then you can do that. You can use the white coat. But think about it. How many times do you watch these commercials and it's got a guy wearing a white coat? If you look really tiny in the bottom corner, it says it's an actor. Why is he wearing a white coat? He's trying to convey a message to you. While on the other hand, there are people that are very experienced and they have a white coat on and they kind of earn the white coat. And so as you can see, this ethical manipulative thing is something that your business is going to have to navigate. And this is true of every single business and every business is different. Just because you're an electrician does not mean you need to go sign up with a company that just works with electricians. That's a false statement. They're trying to manipulate you into that. The reality is every business is different and every demographic is different. We all understand this as owners of businesses. There's not a cookie-cutter template. There's not a cookie-cutter marketing strategy that would work for all electricians. Everybody's value proposition is different. And it's based on those emotional triggers. So your challenge, as we wrap things up for today, is what are those emotional triggers and how are you going to use them? Is the marketing person you're working with, do they have your same philosophical disposition about ethics? And if so, are they putting your company in a position where the emotion is felt and it feels genuine? Or are they putting stuff out there that makes it look like you're sensationalistic? Maybe you're garnering long-term distrust for short-term gain. Where do you want to position yourself? How do you want to position it? And what are those emotional triggers you're willing and able to put out there that's going to help people be motivated to consider your product or services? This is the challenge. Until next time, this is Over the Bull. Thanks so much for listening.

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