Train the Brain with these 3 Copywriting Tips

How the mind learns is vital for every marketer and copywriter to understand. In my column at Target Marketing magazine, I’ve taken a deeper dive into three approaches that sync together copywriting approaches with brain function. Use these, and you can transform how your prospects absorb your copywriting and content messaging. These three pathways play on our brain’s hardwiring, mirroring neurons, and chunking.

1. Repetition hardwires new learning

It’s difficult for people to learn a new behavior. That’s how we’re hardwired. Create new grooves in the mind and solidify new learning, use repetition. If you’ve written or evaluated a direct mail package, most likely you’ll observe the use repetition within a letter or across various components such as a brochure, lift note, buck slip or order form. How many times have your heard feedback about copy along the lines of “it keeps saying the same thing over and over.” When you repeat a thought (you might call it a golden thread), you shift the conscious absorption of information to the unconscious. Soon the brain is imprinted with new learning. Repetition can hardwire the brain for new learning.

2. Create a metaphorical mirror

One of the best ways to learn is by hearing a story or watching others. When we watch a video of a demonstration, our brain is activated in the same region as the person who we’re watching. It’s the same with hearing a story. It’s a mirror neuron. Our basic survival depends on understanding the actions, intentions, and emotions of others. We do it by feeling, not by thinking. 

3. Chunking

It’s said the way to digest overwhelming data is to break it into chunks. That’s why, for example, this column is three approaches to leverage how the mind works through training. You can do it, too, in your messaging. Numbers, bullets, whatever structure you can use to chunk information for your prospects and customers will help them absorb it faster and more accurately.

Leveraging these three processes, and using them in copywriting, can train the brain and transform how you convey your message, and convert prospects into paying customers.