Sometimes my marketing life and my personal life seem to intersect in my continued journey to understand people. As I get older, I am starting to realize that the best way to understand people is to understand the purpose behind people’s their life’s actions.
It’s difficult sometimes to recognize this “purpose” cause most people are guarded. They usually mainly just state their facts and what they have done instead why they have done it.
Also our minds get really cloudy when people state facts, because we then start drawing random conclusions from these facts that aren’t based on anything except our past life experience. I tend to believe that this weird labeling in our brain forces us to overlook the real purpose behind people’s actions.
An example of this is a close friend of mine from high school who secretly donates a portion of his salary to charity. If he were to tell my other friends that he donates to charity, it could be perceived that he is self promoting himself mainly because our minds are conditioned to automatically make assumptions on people’s actions. The reason being is we see people all the time promoting their charitable giving.
The reason my friend donates a portion of his salary to charity in his own words is cause “its self-satisfying”. In essence, donating to charity makes him feel whole and he does it for his own well being first and foremost.
Why do our minds usually pull apart facts and focus on building a “label” without understanding the purpose behind a particular action?
I think “connecting” is magnificent, its one of the true treasures that god gave us, when it comes to interpersonal communication. In a sense it’s quite magical because for a split second labels don’t exist, your mind stops speculating and for that same split second you and the person you are communicating with become “one”. ” You connect through a deep understanding of the purpose behind a specific action.
The other day, I met a women at Starbucks. She had this amazing energy to her. We are in line waiting for our liquid gas called “coffee” and we automatically struck up small talk.
She told me that she travels to South America to unwind and reboot. Immediately I understand the purpose behind her actions and felt like I could in a weird way understand her as a person. I understood that the purpose behind that action is to disconnect from chaos which she later admitted. I also interpreted that she put a high value mark on living a balanced life and investing her time into herself.
Not many people, I know do this but I came away spot on. We connected because she shared with me the purpose behind her actions.
In online marketing, I try to understand the purpose behind an action on a mass level. An example of this is when I was marketing a ” women’s cardigans” and “women’s leggings” through paid Facebook Ads.
I got really curious about what the real purpose behind the action of making a purchase is. When a woman buys a cardigan from one of my Facebook Ads, what exact feelings does she feel? Are they excited about being able to wear these new clothes and maybe show it off to all their friends and family? Maybe new clothes increase their self-confidence? I also started thinking about what shopping means to these mysterious women, is it a form of relaxation from a hectic life? If I had this information, this could help me create even more compelling ad copy because I am targeting it around the “feeling” derived from an action.
Overall my definition of “Connecting” is having this really deep understanding of the purpose behind the life actions of your counterpart. Your counterpart could be one person or a group of people. Once you fully understand the feeling or purpose that is derived from an action, you feel this amazing connection.
