Why You Might be Confusing Your Customers

According to Albert Einstein 'everything should be made as
simple as possible but not one bit simpler.'

If you think about the fact that each of your customers is
being bombarded with 2 million bits of information per
second you'll realize that they don't have time to work out
what you are trying to say.

So the most important step in communication and marketing
is figuring out what your key messages are.

Our capacity to deal with information depends on many
factors and varies between people.

However, in the book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
estimated that the average human mind is able to handle
about 126 bits of information every second.

He based this on an earlier research paper by psychologist
George Miller called The Magical Number Seven.

According to Miller, we can consciously handle between five
and nine pieces of information at any one time (seven plus
or minus two).

(The numbers are different because our minds work so fast
that we can process several sets of 7 bits every second.)

The exact meaning of a 'bit' varies depending on the
circumstances but it could be something like numbers,
colors or facts.

Clearly, it's much easier to remember a six digit telephone
number than it is to remember a ten digit one, for example.

(In his paper, he also comments on the significance of the
number seven throughout our society including the wonders
of the world, ages of man, deadly sins, days of the week,
colors of the rainbow and many more.)

As often happens with this type of scientific research,
Miller's work has been widely misrepresented to prove a lot
of different points.

Miller himself commented that there is nothing in his work
that made it necessary for Moses to drop any of the 10
commandments!

However, it proves to be a relevant and valuable guideline
in planning communication and marketing.

If you want to get a message across to someone, it's useful
to consider that they will probably be unable to deal with
more than seven bits of information.

Since they probably have in their mind a number of
different things, your big challenge is to get them to pay
attention to anything you want to say.

So you have to keep your message clear, simple and limited
to a few key points.

If you want people to take action, it's probably best to
focus them on one specific action which you want them to
take rather than offer too many different options.

So, in any communication, it's important to be clear about
what single action you want them to take or what one key
point you want them to remember.

If you are planning a presentation, can you limit it to
around 5 - 7 key points?

If you are sending out an email, what single action do you
want people to take?

Keeping your message simple will make it much more
effective.

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Robert Greenshields is a marketing success coach who helps
entrepreneurs and independent professionals develop the
success mindset and marketing strategies for a better
lifestyle. For more info visit
http://www.mindpowermarketing.com