In information flow promotion, how can you let users quickly understand your product? Just 2 steps!

When users are unable to fully understand the product itself, subsequent actions cannot be carried out.

Product awareness is the first step. If users have no awareness of the product, no matter how much exposure it receives, it will often have no effect.

At this time, the most common practice is often to use things that users already understand to explain unknown things.

For example, when Jobs first introduced the first generation iPhone, he did not directly mention the unknown concept “smartphone”, but first said “a large-screen iPod, a mobile phone, and an Internet browser ”.

In fact, almost all the secrets of “explaining things in a simple and easy-to-understand way” are: making use of the other party’s existing cognitive schema.

How to do it? First, let’s look at some questions:

You may often need to explain a very complex concept to others in a very short time, and the other party lacks the background knowledge to understand this concept. for example:

Scenario 1: You go home for the Chinese New Year and introduce "what is a product manager " to Aunt Wu, and introduce " marketing " as your university major to Uncle Zhang;

Scenario 2: A new movie is released, and the producer lets the public and the news media know what kind of movie it is;

Scenario 3: An entrepreneur meets an investor and explains his business model in one minute in the elevator;

Scenario 4: At a company briefing, HR explained to a fresh graduate who asked a question, "Our project assistant position is not actually a secretary, but XX";

Scenario 5: You recommend a brand new smart hardware product to your friend, or a fruit he has never eaten.

This is a difficult task for everyone:

Explaining a complex concept to someone with zero knowledge in a short period of time means you need to pack more into fairly simple information.

But the expressive power of text itself is always limited. How can you fit so much content into it in a short period of time?

In fact, this can be done. The method is to make use of the other party's existing schema.

Suppose you need to introduce a kind of dried fruit to a friend that he has never seen before.

The first introduction method is:

This is a fruit that grows on trees, is about 5 cm long and 2 cm wide, and has a thick green skin on the outside. The outer skin is not edible. After peeling it off, there is another layer of brown skin, which is dry and not very thick. After peeling off the skin, you will find the edible kernel. The nuts taste very crispy and fragrant, and contain a lot of oil...

The second introduction method:

This is a fruit similar to a walnut, and is similar in size and taste to a walnut. The difference is that it is more slender in shape, and its shell is thinner, making it easier to peel. It tastes crisper than walnuts and has no bitter taste.

When introducing pecans, which of the two ways above is easier for people to understand instantly? Obviously the second one.

Because the second explanation is connected to the other party's known concept (walnut).

We know that the other party has established a series of impressions about the concept of "walnut" (for example, walnuts grow on trees, walnut kernels are crispy, etc.). This series of impressions is called a "schema". (First proposed by Swiss psychologist Piaget)

It is very difficult for a person to establish a completely new schema - it means a lot of unknown information, so when we were young, we spent a lot of effort to understand what a "table" is.

But it is very easy to modify an existing model because it only means a small amount of new information.

The second explanation above is to let the other party make modifications to the existing master model "Walnut" to avoid the difficulty of creating a new master model.

Creating a new template is like creating a complete article from scratch, while modifying an existing template is as simple as changing a few words in a document.

Why do humans need such a "schema" to classify and organize information instead of directly storing this information like a computer?

Because the human brain capacity and computing power are simply too small for the complex world, we have to rely on basic models to simplify information.

If the information is not compressed and organized efficiently, an XX.avi action movie may be enough to completely fill up your brain space.

But we can still remember a considerable amount of knowledge and countless memories because our brains have powerful data compression and organization capabilities.

Take memory photos as an example. A computer needs 1,000 times the storage capacity to store 1,000 facial photos, but the human brain is actually only storing one facial photo (base model). Then, when seeing a new face, it only needs to make corresponding changes to that base model - such as making the nose higher.

It is precisely because of the existence of various archetypes that we can understand complex information more conveniently and without much brainpower.

Therefore, if you want others to quickly understand a completely new concept, you must make use of their existing schemas - see what similarities there are with this concept in their past memories.

So how do we use “schemas” to convey complex ideas in short language? You only need 2 steps :

1. Avoid bias: Avoid unnecessary stereotypes

2. Apply existing templates

Look at this most common example. When you go home for Chinese New Year, you may be asked by your relatives:

Xiao Zhang, it’s been a year since you graduated. What job do you do?

Yes, Auntie, I graduated last year and now I work as a product manager in an Internet company.

It’s so awesome that he became a manager just one year after graduation. Let me tell you, all the children I have held in my arms since childhood will have a bright future! Tell me, how many people do you manage now?

Auntie, you are wrong. A product manager is not someone who manages people, but someone who manages products. And it is not a senior position in our company.

So what does a product manager do?

You feel you are really at a loss for words, so you turn to the almighty Baidu Encyclopedia for help, and then read to her: "A product manager is a position in a company that specializes in product management. The product manager is responsible for investigating and determining what products to develop based on user needs, and choosing what technology and business model to develop, and promoting the corresponding products..."

Hey, Xiao Zhang, how about having dinner at my place tonight and I cook you some mutton dumplings? ——It seems that Auntie has given up too.

Why is it so difficult for Xiao Zhang to change his aunt's prejudice against product managers? No matter how hard Xiao Zhang tries to explain, his aunt still thinks that "product managers are executive-level positions and are responsible for managing many people"?

Because the aunt had formed the archetype of "manager" in the past, when Xiao Zhang said the title "product manager", she automatically activated all her memories about "manager" - senior position, managing many people, done by experienced people, etc.

Therefore, when this aunt heard the word "product manager", she automatically applied the "manager" template to help her understand the new concept of "product manager".

However, this understanding conflicts with Xiao Zhang's concept.

So for Xiao Zhang, her aunt’s past stereotype has made her form a prejudice against product managers, and it is difficult for her to correct this point of view. So what should we do?

One way is to tell the aunt directly: "Aunt, you just automatically applied the 'manager' archetype in your brain, which distorted your understanding of the concept of 'product manager'." (Well, the premise is that the aunt has studied cognitive psychology)

Since most aunts don't have a Ph.D. in psychology, you often need to use the second approach: avoiding unnecessary templates.

Suppose you want to introduce the position of "product manager" to your aunt, then the "manager" archetype will be of little help to your aunt's understanding of your job, and will instead cause her to have unnecessary prejudices.

You’d be much better off if you avoided the potentially biased archetype by not mentioning “manager” in the first place, like this:

Xiao Zhang, what do you do for a living?

Working in product field in an Internet company, I mainly do some XXXXX...

So that's how it is. Then what is the specific name of this job?

Auntie, based on my description just now, what name do you think is suitable?

Let me see, 'Product Planner'? Auntie asked doubtfully.

Actually, its name is "product manager", but as you have just seen, it has nothing to do with traditional managers.

So, when you introduce an unfamiliar concept to others, first avoid schemas that can easily lead to misunderstandings.

How to make others understand "Pecan"? You can take the definition of "walnut" and then modify it based on the walnut - for example, the skin is thinner.

How to introduce the Spring Festival to Americans? You can say "Chinese Christmas ".

How to introduce the first iPhone? What Jobs said was "a big-screen iPod, a mobile phone, and an Internet device."

Therefore, for a person who has no background knowledge at all, a large amount of descriptive language will be completely confusing. However, it is much easier to use things that the other person already understands (schema) and then make some modifications to it.

In short, don’t tell the sheep farmer “1+1=2”, but say “one sheep + one sheep = two sheep”.

As for which specific "schema" to apply, it needs to be chosen carefully, because different "schemas" will lead to completely different understandings and perceptions.

For example, there is a news item like this: "The United States' aid to Africa is only 1 billion US dollars a year." After reading this, an ordinary person might wonder, "One billion US dollars is a lot. The Americans are really rich. This is not enough!"

At this time, the "schema" he used in his subconscious mind was "money". He had formed a basic impression of money in the past (that is, the schema). In his schema, "100 yuan" might be a small amount of money, "10,000 yuan" is a lot of money, and 1 billion US dollars is an absolute huge sum of money.

Therefore, if we use "money" as a template to activate other people's past memories of "money", others will naturally not feel that $1 billion in aid is not enough.

But if "the United States spends only about the cost of one B-2 bomber each year on aid to Africa, that is, a mere $1 billion."

At this time everyone will feel, "Oh my God! The United States is so inhumane!" This is because when everyone understands the event of "African aid" at this time, they use the "price of bombers" model.

This technique is also often used in litigation. For example, if someone is scalded by KFC water and the lawsuit demands several million dollars in compensation, the jury will definitely think it is too much and unreasonable.

But if you say, "For such an unscrupulous company, we ask it to compensate consumers with one thousandth of its sales that day. This is an absolutely reasonable request!" This sounds more reasonable, even if the amount is the same.

So if you want to introduce your product manager's job content and want to pretend to be awesome, instead of using the "Hunan restaurant at the entrance of the community" as a basic analogy, it is better to say:

Auntie, I notice that you often pay attention to military content. Yesterday you told me about America’s latest electromagnetic railgun!

Did you know that when U.S. military-industrial enterprises were developing railguns, they needed someone to coordinate the entire process, including communicating with the government military to investigate potential war needs, communicating with R&D engineers to design railguns based on war needs, and coordinating product delivery times, etc.

He doesn't care about people, he cares about the railgun product. The work I do in an Internet company is similar to this, coordinating the entire process of our APP.

In short, using "schema" can speed up other people's understanding. At this time, you need to find something that the other person has already understood and make some modifications based on it.

This article was compiled and published by @李叫兽(Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, information flow advertising, advertising platform