+JMJ+
It’s DAY 8 of The Marketing Trad’s 2023 Advent Calendar.
It hasn’t started snowing …
But the list is growing …
And you’re here for knowing …
How to sell more stuff online by writing better emails.
Now, for all the TMT newbs …
I don’t talk about secret writing templates, AI writing prompts, or new-age Jedi mind tricks.
If you want to make more sales, whether it’s online or with any of your other marketing, it pays to know something about human nature.
In that sense, it helps if you’re good at reading people. It also helps if you enjoy reading in general.
Right now, I’m slowly making my way through a book titled “The Laws of Human Nature” by Robert Greene, the same guy who’s famous for writing “The 48 Laws of Power.
“The Laws of Human Nature” is kind of the same schtick as that other one, but it’s advertised as being more of a “definitive book on decoding the behaviour of the people around you.”
Now, I’m the kind of guy who loves reading multiple books at the same time, and when I find one I really enjoy, it’s hard for me to put down …
But this isn’t one of them.
Some of the content is useful for writing better emails if you frame it in the right context for business …
Like the part on influence where Greene suggests using “their language” (i.e. the “language of your customer”), or where he talks about putting people’s fears to rest.
Not only are these good ways to help improve your standing with the people around you, these are pretty much general marketing techniques, so it should underline how important these points actually are.
I get a bit lost, though, when Greene goes on about “mastering your emotional self.”
“Know yourself thoroughly,” he says, and “examine your emotions to their roots.”
Yeah, that’s all “good,” but it reeks of relativism.
That’s the problem with a lot of these “modern philosopher/author guru” types …
They have “good” and “helpful” stuff to say, BUT …
It’s like they’re taking all the gold material from the Catholic Church and stripping it of everything having to do with God.
Instead of “examining your emotions” in some dry, secular sense of the idea, Catholics have the Examination of Conscience.
As human beings, we’re body AND soul, so Greene’s level of analysis comes up short.
In terms of human nature, there have also been many great Saints who have written about the topic and how it relates to God.
Take St. Thomas Aquinas, for example.
If the Bible is God’s love letter to the human race, the “Summa Theologica” is the operations manual.
The Summa not only covers the natural order God wove into the universe, it goes Mariana Trench-deep into what makes people tick, which is also a Marketing 101 lesson for anyone who sells anything at all.
Take the section in the Summa where it talks about pain.
As Fr. Ripperger might say:
“St. Thomas says, ‘Just as two things are requisite for pleasure; namely, conjunction with good and perception of this conjunction; so also two things are requisite for pain: namely, conjunction with some evil (which is in so far evil as it deprives one of some good), and perception of this conjunction.’”
I can’t put it any better than Aquinas OR Fr. Ripperger for that matter.
On the topic of fear, St. Thomas writes:
“Among the other passions of the soul, after sorrow, fear chiefly has the character of passion. For as we have stated above, the notion of passion implies first of all a movement of a passive power—i.e. of a power whose object is compared to it as its active principle: since passion is the effect of an agent. … Wherefore it has most properly the character of passion; less, however, than sorrow, which regards the present evil: because fear regards future evil, which is not so strong a motive as present evil.”
So, why look at what the Saints have to say about human nature to help with your marketing?
Because the basics of human nature are key factors that shape people’s behaviour … and even their shopping habits.
The marketing gurus out there will tell you people are more likely to make a purchase, for example, in order to avoid a pain instead of obtaining a good, which almost doesn’t make sense …
Until you see how this is part of every human being after The Fall.
It’s how we’re hardwired because of Original Sin.
The Church and Her Saints do a great job of exploring and explaining these topics, and so do a lot of marketing experts …
I just think it’s a shame that they don’t give credit where it’s due.
Does that mean you can’t analyze and apply what you can learn from modern marketers?
No, you can learn from these guys, but you should recognize the soulless modernism for what it is, and it helps to stay grounded in the Catholic Faith while you’re at it – even when you’re working at levelling up your marketing.
Stay holy my friends and God bless.
Vic
The Marketing Trad
P.S. Time is almost up on the 24% off deal for January 2024 consultations. At the end of the week, the discount is gone and prices go back up. If you’re interested in booking a meeting, email me before Saturday at midnight: [email protected].
P.P.S. It’s the Second Week of The Marketing Trad’s 2023 Advent Calendar, and we’re going through quotes from “Immortale Dei,” the Encyclical Letter from Pope Leo XIII on The Christian Constitution of States:
“The right to rule is not necessarily, however, bound up with any special mode of government. It may take this or that form, provided only that it be of a nature of the government, rulers must ever bear in mind that God is the paramount ruler of the world, and must set Him before themselves as their exemplar and law in the administration of the State. For, in things visible God has fashioned secondary causes, in which His divine action can in some wise be discerned, leading up to the end to which the course of the world is ever tending. In like manner, in civil society, God has always willed that there should be a ruling authority, and that they who are invested with it should reflect the divine power and providence in some measure over the human race.”