Have you ever seen a movie where you found yourself rooting so hard for a character that you felt as if you were personally invested in their success? What about a commercial?
If so, you experienced mirroring firsthand.
Mirroring is all around us. As children, we learn by mirroring the behavior of the adults around us. As adults, we start mirroring the behavior, gestures, or words of our peers and life partners.
The psychology of mirroring
Mirroring also goes by another (fancier) name, isopraxism. It essentially refers to when you unconsciously mirror someone else’s behavior:
- When someone smiles at you, you tend to smile back
- We often say laughter is contagious
- You adopt the expressions of your friends and people you respect (consciously or subconsciously)
- Siblings share a lot of gestures, idiosyncrasies, and even facial expressions, most likely borrowed from their parents.
More importantly, mirroring is a social lubricant. We mirror the behavior of those around us so we can fit in:
- It takes but one person at a concert (or, heavens forbid, during an airplane landing) to start clapping for everyone else to do the same.
- The members of the same social group tend to dress similarly and even order the same drinks at the bar. If everyone’s getting a stout beer, very few people will want to stand out and order a strawberry daiquiri.
- Couples often walk in sync, as a sign of trust and easiness of relying on each other.
Mirroring runs so deep that the heartbeats of a mother and foetus synchronize.
Why do our brains love mimicry so much? Mirror neurons are the answer. They respond to the actions we observe in others and, fascinatingly, fire the same way when we recreate that behavior ourselves.
It’s almost as if our brains reward us for mirroring others. Unsurprising, since mirroring others and fitting in with the group are two fundamental reasons why the human species endured.
It’s also unsurprising, then, that mirroring is a marketing and advertising staple.
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Hold up the clock to a mirror. It’s time for reflection.
These pesky mirror neurons breed empathy. When your audience can see their own reflection in your content, they are more likely to respond to it.
When you use the same words your audience does, they understand your message better. Clarity breeds action.
A brilliant example comes from Roomba:
iRobot knows that people use “Roomba” for any brand of autonomous vacuum cleaners. While it’s flattering to hold the industry flag, they also need to make sure that buyers don’t just simply add a cheap knock-off to cart and call it a Roomba (although most of them do so knowingly).
So they launched this campaign to show that they know how their audience speaks AND to nudge them in the right direction. This is mirroring done right: you don’t proliferate your audience’s misconceptions, you steer them on the right path when needed.
Let’s see how you can do that:
How to use mirroring in your messaging
Marketing mirrors are useless if you don’t know where to point them. Learn before you mirror:
Interview your clients to learn about their pain points AND the words they use to describe them
My agency has done a lot of work with startups (especially in the SaaS space) and I noticed a common proclivity: every startup wants to have their own name for otherwise common features or products — everyone wants to sell the next Roomba.
If a CRM SaaS calls email addresses “contacts”, the next one will call them “leads”, and the newest CRM to launch will come up with a wacky term like “BFFs”.
The real question to answer here is: “what name does your audience use?” Figure it out, then use exactly that — stop confusing people. Confused people don’t buy.
If you’re Salesforce aka the home of a huge ecosystem, then you can afford to do what iRobot does and come up with your own names. Before you reach that level, you don’t need to add confusion to your marketing mix.
Say you have a gym and you need more clients. To attract them, you have to promise an outcome.
But what kind of outcome?
Does your audience want to be fit, shredded, healthy, skinny, glowing, or something else? Different buyer personas respond to different outcomes of virtually the same service.
To know what they respond to best, you need to start with their pain point (why do they want/need to exercise?) and then move on to the language choices.
Analyze reviews, testimonials, and other types of social proof
The best starting point for identifying both pain points and the language your audience uses is their own content. You’ll find it in social proof.
Review the testimonials and reviews you’ve received so far:
- What adjectives do your clients use to describe you?
- Which benefits of working with you do they emphasize most often? Hint: it may be something completely different than what you consider your USP.
- Do they use the same terms you use to describe your products? If not, your lingo may be too complex or unclear.
Need more data? Look beyond your own social proof. Analyze your competitors’ reviews and testimonials and as the same questions as above.
For instance, our fictional gym owner may think their clients appreciate the brand-new sophisticated machines. The reviews may tell a different story:
- A lot of gym goers appreciate cleanliness.
- An easy-to-reach location is also a top priority when choosing your gym.
- Friendly and helpful instructors matter more than revolutionary machines that may intimidate users.
- Proprietary programs (Fit in 30 days) are highly appreciated.
*Source: my agency’s research into gym-goers’ behavior for a former client.
The key places to plagiarize your audience and use their exact words
Since your clients will inherently produce less content about your brand and your topics than you do, you can’t rely on their words alone — nor should you, as we’ve seen above.
But there are some key areas where it’s important to hold a very clean and clear mirror:
- At the beginning of your content, as a way to show your audience that you’re talking about them VERY QUICKLY.
- In the CTAs. Our gym owner could use the reviews in the CTA: “Come to your friendly neighborhood gym”. “Get fit in 30 days or get your money back”.
- Shameless copy-paste/screenshot throughout your copy/content. Quote testimonials or screenshot them and add them throughout your content as proof of your claim. Did you mention that the instructors at your gym are super friendly and dedicated? Add a screenshot of a client testimonial that says exactly that. (This approach fits into my “Accelerated Funnel” content framework like a glove).
Tell your story but share the spotlight with your audience
Mirror neurons are also responsible for the incredible effect storytelling has on us. When you hear/read a compelling story, you mirror the emotions of the characters or the narrator. If they feel sad, you feel a pang of sadness too. If they’re succeeding, you experience a release of oxytocin too.
For that to happen, though, your story has to be relatable above all else. Think about fundraising stories: you may feel sad if you hear someone’s dealing with a rare disease no matter who they are. But you’ll be more likely to donate to help them find a cure if you can relate to them — if they have the same gender, age, or race as you do or a similar backstory.
So whenever you tell a story about yourself, make sure there’s at least one element your audience can relate to. Go beyond age, race, and gender and think about the struggles you faced — is your audience in a similar situation? Will they be rooting for you as you explain how you solved a complex problem for yourself?
Two tools to help you get into the minds of your audience
Answer The Public is a pretty straightforward tool: type 1-2 words into the search box and you’ll get a huge wheel of questions people ask online about your topic. Start answering them in your content, ideally by repeating the same words in the questions (great for SEO, too!).
SparkToro is the real gem, though. You need to know ONE thing about your audience:
Choose the ONE thing you already know about your audience from the dropdown, click on search, and you’ll learn:
- The top words in their social media bios
- The hashtags they use
- Frequently used phrases
- What people they follow
- What blogs they read
- Top websites, press, YouTube channels, podcasts, subreddits they read/engage with
How cool is that? Nearly everything you need to know about your audience. And you have 50 free searches to go wild!
(Thank you to my brilliant friend Alison, who reminded me of SparkToro. I’ve been obsessed with it ever since!)
The trouble with mirroring or why you should think twice before you use it
The end goal is to have your audience mirror you, not the other way around, as Roomba did. This is why you should strike a healthy balance between your own language and personality and theirs. Don’t go overboard with mimicking your audience — it’s very easy to slip into mockery. And even easier to fail at being taken seriously if you have nothing original to show.
The second issue with mirroring is a bit thornier because it involves ethics. Not all audiences are bias- and prejudice-free, which begs the question: should you be a mirror or a mould?
This decision is not easy to make: mirrors are more profitable in the short run and that’s very tempting for most business owners. Moulds are usually met with some degree of resistance, but, if done right, they are more profitable in the long run. Plus, they’re the ethical thing to do, in case you were wondering what my preference is.
Gender stereotyping, for instance, is still very frequent. If your audience is still big on it, it will be more profitable to sell pots and pans with ads depicting women in the kitchen. They are easier for your audience to identify with.
OR you can choose the middle ground: run ads that depict a wife AND a husband using your pans and looking super happy. At least until you feel confident enough to run an ad for cooking stuff featuring only men who are NOT professional chefs. Can you imagine? A home kitchen with no woman in sight — who would have thunk?
Joke aside, research supports the fact that brands that are perceived as ethical do better in the long run.
This kind of mould is subtler and thus has a better chance of NOT falling on deaf ears. Whatever you do, though, please refrain from encouraging gender or racial stereotypes (or any kind of harmful bias). Yes, it may be profitable in the short run. But it’s always better to take the long view — for you and for us all.
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Adriana’s Picks
- Europecore is the latest trend in American fashion: dress like Europeans for the ultimate summer escapism.
- Ouch! Twitter is now worth a third of what Musk paid for it. Poor Elon can’t catch a break!
- To whom it may concern: “If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” — Mickey Mantle
That’s it from me today! See you next week in your inbox!
Here to make you think,
Adriana
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