NLP And The Deep Structure of Marketing

NLP And The Deep Structure of Magical Marketing – Tom Hoobyar

This is an outline for a new kind of NLP training I’m designing, and I wanted to run it by you. Consider this a “peek under Tom Hoobyar’s tent”.

I’ve noticed for fifteen years that some very accomplished NLP Practitioners have had trouble when it comes to building their private practices, or using their NLP knowledge to make other types of businesses more successful.

I began the serious study of both NLP and Direct Response marketing in 1994. The two subjects have changed my life, made me a good living, and given me tools to accomplish about anything I would want to do.

And I noticed an amazing thing – they’re pretty much dealing with the same subject!

It just takes some tweaking of mind-sets and some refining of sequential behavioral processes to make one subject supercharge the other. And it doesn’t even matter which end you start with!

So here’s my quick essay on the blending of these two skill-sets. Beginning in the New Year, I’m going to offer an online course to those who would like to put their NLP to work to make money. It will consist of weekly emails, a web site forum, and perhaps a teleconference MasterMind group.

More on this later – or you can check my web site at www.tomhoobyar.com

Direct Response Marketing works because it fits into basic human psychology. Trouble is, it’s mostly not taught that way. Instead, most Direct Marketing principles are taught with an emphasis on how it works. That’s fine as far as it goes. But sometimes people don’t get it, or they forget the basic truths on which it is grounded.

When you know WHY something works, it’s easy to understand HOW

So we’re going to explore WHY it works – the RULES. Basic human psychology starts from a few assumptions about human nature. The interesting thing is that, while these assumptions have been brought together under the umbrella of NLP, they are actually drawn from sources as different as General Semantics, Gestalt Psychology, and behavioral observations. They apply directly to good response-driven marketing.

And now these assumptions are being validated by modern brain research. I’ve matched these NLP assumptions about human nature with the elements of Direct Response Marketing they explain.

Direct Response Marketing is about you and the market. We’ll start in order of importance. However, all of the principles noted under “Market” apply to you, and all the principles noted under “you” apply to your customers also.

These principles apply to all humans. I just clustered them where they would make the strongest points about marketing.

I. The Market

This is where successful Direct Response Marketing begins. With the market.

NOT the product, and NOT your needs or interests. Those priorities are where old-fashioned, force-feeding, foot-in-the-door hit-you-over-the-head advertising starts. And why it largely fails.

Instead, we start with the market. What do they want? How do they want to be addressed? You will succeed to the exact degree that you match them. The customer is the source of your success. YOU cause your failure, not the customer. How? The way to fail is to ignore what the customer wants!

It’s been said that successful advertising begins when you enter the conversation going on in your prospect’s head. So, how do you do that?

You must understand how people work. How they think. And that’s where we begin. I’ve adapted the NLP Presuppositions I learned from Robert McDonald to help explain the marketing process.

1. People are like map makers

This means that all humans – including you and me — make “maps” of our world. These maps are a representation of the world as it appears to us. And each of us has a slightly different map. The trouble comes when you think that everyone’s map is the same as yours.

The way to succeed is to fit yourself and your offer into the customer’s maps. That means knowing their world as well as you know your own. The Internet provides some wonderful tools to take the guesswork out of how you should design your offer to increase your chances of success.

2. People respond to their maps of reality, not to reality itself

All thought — memories, recall, imaginings, daydreams, fantasies; all of these can be called maps. Therefore, your communications must be addressed to your market’s maps. Not your own.

3. People’s maps are made up of pictures, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes

These are “languages of the senses” that our brains use to record our experiences.

When you communicate in these languages your message has power. Your message may shimmer before their eyes, it may whisper into their dreams, it may warm or chill them, shock or thrill them.

But it will be physical and sensory. NOT intellectual. Verbs and nouns. Not adjectives and adverbs.

4. Some maps are out of awareness

We are unaware of some of the maps that we have made, and much of effective communication is aimed at the unconscious. Sound manipulative? Maybe. This is psychological reality, not philosophy.

5. If you change someone’s map, his or her emotional state will change

To an individual, their map IS their experience. Maps are the source of emotion and belief. When you communicate effectively to your reader they will relate to you emotionally. THAT’S how to succeed.

6. Behind every behavior is a positive intention

When you seek the “goal behind the behavior”, you will find a universally shared need, like love, safety, self-respect, etc. By linking your appeal to these universal emotions/needs/values you will be irresistible to your audience.

7. People work perfectly to produce the results they are getting

Again, your success or failure is determined by you — and your results are perfect for what you attempted. People are perfect – all you need to do is to discover what they want and offer it to them.

8. Choice is better than no choice

No choice means slavery. Two choices is digital, either-or, black-white, robotic behavior. Having three or more choices in any context gives an individual the freedom to change and grow; “More clicks on the dial” is a good thing. So, offer more attractive choices.


And remember, there are always more choices available than your offer, more messages demanding the attention of our audience. That’s good. More opportunity for you to study what succeeds. Then you can imitate the successful parts of those messages, while you draw a contrast between their offers and your own.

9. People always make the best choices, based upon the information available to themAt that moment — but they would often be happier and more effective if they had more choices. It’s your job to offer them a better choice than what they see now, and show them why it’s so.

10. Behavior is high quality information — It’s been said that Direct Marketing is Psychology plus arithmetic. Opinions don’t count – behavior does.

II. You

Okay, now we’re at the point of real interest to you, which is you. What’s your place in the scheme of things? What do you have to do – or think – to become a success juggernaut?

Hint: it’s all about the maps in your head. Maps about you, and the world, and success.

11. The map is not the territory

Our maps determined by the focus of our attention in the moment. So, when you think about marketing, what comes up for you? Work? Risk? Prosperity? Service? Discovery? Freedom?

What’s YOUR map?

What do you want?

What would it be like if you get what you want?

How will you know when you get it? What will you see, hear, and feel?

What keeps you from getting it now? What are you afraid of?

12. Anyone can do anything that anyone else can do

Since all human nervous systems are similar, we can model and learn each other’s skills and attitudes. “Monkey see, monkey do”. Therefore, you can learn to be a successful marketer, on behalf of anything you want to promote. You just need to decide.

13. The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our communications

Internal and External. How we communicate with ourselves influences our experience; how we communicate with others determines the way we are treated throughout our lives.

In the context of Direct Response Marketing, communication means the discipline and art of Copywriting. Writing to inform and persuade.

It’s the most easily judged and highest paid writing there is. If it succeeds you know it almost immediately, and you can earn immense sums of money when you master this art.

I’m a child of the sixties, and learned to hate “the man” and almost all commercial enterprise. But the truth is that there IS a marketplace of ideas, and we all take part in it whether we like it or not. We swim in an ocean of information and we are constantly making choices. It’s not a crime to urge your choices case as effectively as you can learn how to do so.


14. A system’s most flexible element has the most influence

True freedom lies in this presupposition. When you have more ways to respond to a situation you have more influence — more ways to get your desired outcome. People who get mad and go home, or who get discouraged and quit, are NOT the most flexible or influential.

To win you must allow No excuses, no B.S. Only endless variations of your behavior until you get your desired outcome. It may even lead you to change your original idea of what you wanted.

15. The meaning of any communication is the response it gets

“But that’s not what I meant”, you say when you’re misunderstood. Tough noogies. When you’re communicating, it doesn’t matter what you intend – all that matters is what others think of it.

Communication is not a solo act. It takes place somewhere between the communicator and the receiver. And the receiver gets to decide what the meaning is.

This is the key to successful Direct Response Marketing. Did you get a response? Good.

Was it what you wanted? Yes? Then go to the bank and celebrate. No? Then you should change your approach until you DO get what you want. Direct Response Marketing is much more like engineering than it is like art.

16. There is no such thing as failure; there is only feedback

You are always producing a result; if it’s not what you want, use the unwanted result as feedback to guide you to trying other choices. Again, the key to Direct Response Marketing is this concept.

Like NLP, successful communications depends on PAYING ATTENTION TO YOUR LISTENER/READER.

17. If what you are doing isn’t working, try anything else

If you keep at it you aren’t certain to succeed, but you sure stack the odds.

The only way to fail is to quit trying!

This is the key to success in any field.

Firm commitment. Extreme flexibility. Firm commitment AND extreme flexibility.

It’s a “Zen blend”.

Seeya,

Tom Hoobyar

www.tomhoobyar.com

tom@tomhoobyar.com

0 thoughts on “NLP And The Deep Structure of Marketing”

  1. Pingback: » NLP And The Deep Structure of Marketing NLP Hypnosis: NLP hypnosis

  2. For gosh sake, Mr. Hoobyar, the idea that NLP presuppositions and the therapeutic applications of NLP give you license to apply them to any communication, as if “do anything, get what you want” approaches find rectitude in how well Milton Erickson sat across from some person in need, is disproven. Ethically, morally, arguments about manipulation and reality are in reality just more manipulation. You know it.

    What about testing a salesperson by their integrity? Slick comfortable sales are bad for the world in which the purchased products circulate. What are you selling?

    So much of sales nowadays is the equivalent of selling candy to overweight children, you’d think a field that started in therapy would have guidelines for what constitutes healthful consumption, but no, no, it’s all about consumerism and making money. Just be an individual, count on your actions being too diluted to matter, and make out like a bandit with NLP to help.

    $$ in the bank == NLP Philosophy? Is that your program?

    -Noah

  3. Noah,
    Electricity can fry an egg for a mans breakfast or fry the man. The article gives insight to tools to be used by the reader. Whether the tools are accepted, rejected or neglected is the readers choice. It is the responsibility of the individual user we are speaking of here. Now that is choice.

    To Your Success, Brian

  4. Hi, Tom Hoobyar here,

    Noah completely missed the point, as was the case for several who commented on my “Twelve Truths”.

    Brian got it in one, and I can’t do any better than his pithy, to-the-point comments.

    I’ve learned in a long life that over-moralizing has probably led to more missed opportunities than under-moralizing.

    Seeya,

    Tom

  5. Sorry if my comments felt insulting, otherwise I’m glad I made them, as opposed to others I could have made. However, I’d have done best to post nothing. I could care less what your morals are, since our paths seldom cross, and I’m sure Mr. Dotz or whoever runs nlpco would disapprove of my trolling here. Anyway, it’s definitely not worth it.

    Sorry, and best wishes for your business. As I remember, sales has been your specialty area for quite some time. I bet you’re really good. Maybe even really moral. 😉

    –Noah

  6. Thanks for this post. I for certain agree with what you are saying. I have been talking about this subject a lot lately with my father so possibly will this will get him to see my point of view. Fingers crossed!

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