On the evening of the 8th of July, 2015, while staying at the Takutu Hotel in Lethem, I met a white guy from California, USA. He told me he was a volunteer teacher at a secondary school in Bartica.
We exchanged a bit of chit chat and when he told me that he was also a web developer, I invited him to have a look at my website, which I had constructed mostly by myself. He seemed really impressed. “It looks solid” he remarked – which was basically his way of expressing that the site looked really good.
As he scrolled up and down, exploring the contents of the site, he tried to offer me whatever little advice he could on improving the site. He suggested that I put big headings of the top of the site of my most popular articles. Then he made a remark that, for me, was a light bulb idea that would make my marketing efforts hundreds of times easier and thousands of times more profitable. He said “people don’t like to think”.
I wasn’t sure of what I was hearing, so I prompted him to repeat himself. “That’s right”, he chuckled “people don’t like to think”.
It hit me like a lightning bolt at the back of my head.
This simple statement is a universal truth which had been dormant in my subconscious mind ever since.
People don’t like to think: they like to swallow happily what you spoon-feed them. It is this simple principle that advertisers use to promote so many useless and even harmful products to the masses for wild profits.
The sad truth is, many people think advertising doesn’t work “on them”. And that’s what makes advertisements so much more powerful. In fact, as I explained in my article, “the power of advertising”, advertising may very well be a marketer’s most powerful tool, or weapon.
When Facebook was just launched as a financial entity, many people criticized the concept, citing “anything that relies solely on advertising for profits won’t stay alive”.
If these people knew how wrong they were. Facebook turned out to be the web’s most popular website, hands down. In fact, the saying now goes “the internet is Facebook”. And Facebook relies 100% on advertising for its revenues.
Knowing this universal truth “people don’t like to think” will accelerate my success in marketing tremendously, perhaps even infinitely.
The fact: people spend more money on coco cola than nutritious drinks. Have you ever wondered how some noises get passed off as top of the charts music?
Now that I have this knowledge, I also have a tremendous responsibility: spoon-feed the masses things that are really good for them. Because the fact: they will swallow any thing you put in their mouths, just as long as it tastes a little good.
