Improve Your Marketing by Appealing to the 5 Core Human Drives

If you have a basic understanding of what people want, you can craft your marketing messages to appeal to them.  

I first heard about the 5 core human drives from Adam Erhart, but I think that he got the info from Josh Kaufman, who I think got it from someone else… The point is, I cannot give proper credit because I don’t know where this originated.

Apparently, we all have 5 core human drives that strongly influence our actions and the decisions that we make.  Here they are in no specific order -

1. The Drive to Learn 
   1. We have a desire to satisfy our curiosities, to learn, and to grow
2. The Drive to Acquire
   1. This is the desire to collect material things (like houses, cars, boats, etc.) and also immaterial things like respect, power, and influence
3. The Drive to Feel
   1. The desire for emotional experiences (i.e. excitement, pleasure, anticipation, entertainment, etc.)
4. The Drive to Bond
   1. This is the desire to form relationships with others (romantic or platonic)
5. The Drive to Defend
   1. The desire to protect ourselves, those that we care about, our property, and our identity

Whenever enough people have unmet needs in one or more of these areas, a market will form to satisfy those needs.  If you can identify those markets and align your products and services with them, you can be successful.

Put all of your marketing messaging through the human drives filter - if it doesn’t align with at least one of the drives on this list, how effective can it really be?  Why swim against the tide?