The human brain is an extraordinarily complex “multiple-brain” system including the brainstem, the limbic system, the cerebellum, and the cerebrum—all handling different functions. But for the purpose of this discussion, we will focus on the two that matter to you most as an owner of a dental practice.

These two brains go by a few different names. One brain is called your Amygdala, sometimes referred to as your “reptile brain.” It’s part of the section of your brain called the limbic system. It’s one of the most primitive parts of the brain. Our amygdala is made up of components that existed between 200 million and 500 million years ago.

This reptile brain is the non-reasoning, self-preservation, and preconscious part of our brain. Simply put, it’s your survival instinct. It’s what’s kept you from getting eaten by larger predators millions of years ago. And it’s still responsible for your self-preservation today.

Indeed, that survival instinct has a much broader context. Today, it’s what detects threats and opportunities, things that will make our lives better, and what responds at a visceral level.

It does this by forming and storing memories associated with emotional events. The reptile brain is responsible for driving any response. Put another way, our responses derive from a self-preservation instinct.

The other part of the brain in this system is called your cerebrum or your cerebral cortex—also known as the rational brain.

The cerebral cortex is the large, hemispherical mass that surrounds your reptile brain. It is where your conscious thought and creative functions happen. And where things like language and problem-solving abilities are stored.

The “rational brain” does all the necessary processing work, from visual to logical. It’s what reasons, thinks, creates … But it only processes a tiny fraction of the information that your sensory organs feed to your reptile brain.

This is important to understand in relation to how it works in your larger “brain system.” Because as vastly developed as it is, the rational brain is still secondary to your reptile brain.

Your Brain has its Very Own “Security Checkpoint”

As our brains have evolved, the limbic system—or reptile brain—took on a modified role. It became the brain that receives all the data that’s fed to us by all our sense receptors and then assesses what to do with it.

It’s a preconscious process. It determines what gets passed to your rational, or conscious brain. In essence, it’s become the “security checkpoint” for the rest of your brain, determining what gets in and what doesn’t.

Anything considered safe will come on in. If not, it’s told to wait outside.

How to Avoid a Negative Reaction to Your Dental Marketing

Have you ever heard this before …

“People buy based on their desires and justify their decision with the facts.”

This is really important to consider when thinking about how you create your marketing message. If something doesn’t spark a real desire in your reptile brain, it won’t get passed through to your rational brain.

The security checkpoint isn’t impressed with facts, figures, data, or airtight logic. That means your marketing message has to get past the security checkpoint in your prospect’s brain first. If it doesn’t do that successfully, all the reasoning, features, and benefits won’t help you.

Imagine you’re sitting in the coffee shop and suddenly you hear a car screeching outside…

Your reptile brain picks up the sudden interruption in the pattern of sounds it’s been processing and rushes this input to your cerebral cortex.

Your cerebral cortex then takes this input and matches it against a series of memories until it comes up with the association of “an out of control car.” It then assesses the situation to see if the danger is immediate. Since you’re safely in the coffee shop, no more action is required.

In the meantime, the rest of the information, the millions of bits of data that gets fed to the amygdala gets disregarded. Completely ignored. That’s a “self-preservation” response.

And it does all this in a fraction of a second.

Your brain does this for everything that gets fed into it. And the security checkpoint of your brain is having to constantly deal with billions of “people” who are trying to get in. This includes the thousands of marketing messages that we’re exposed to each and every day.

Now it’s probably impossible to create a marketing message that will elicit the response of a screeching car. You simply can’t arouse that kind of immediate physical response from your marketing.

But the bottom line is that all our decisions are self-preservation in nature, whether it’s running from a street gang at night, or paying for a dental procedure that we think will enhance our physical appearance.

The key point is—unless your dental marketing message is designed to get past that reptile brain, or “the security checkpoint” of your prospect in the first place, you have absolutely ZERO chance. All the logic and rationalising in the world won’t do a bit of good because unless the security checkpoint relays your message to your prospects logical brain, it will never get seen. Their rational brain will never talk their reptile brain into letting them take action.