By Jerry Teplitz, an author, attorney and renowned business speaker. 

Have you ever wondered why some marketing and public relations pieces are more effective than others? Why some ads get thrown in the trash, while others convince customers to buy? Or why Internet surfers skip some Webpages, but stop to read others? One explanation is the energy these materials create. If energy created by the piece is positive, it wins more attention and more business. If the energy is negative, however, the piece ultimately fails.

Although this “energy stuff” may seem like nonsense, it actually works. It stems from more than 20 years of studies and applications in behavioral kinesiology, or “muscle checking,” and you can use it to create more effective marketing pieces for your business.

What kind of results can you expect?
Jack Canfield, co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, has publicly said he will not release a Chicken Soup book until it’s been through this kinesiology process.  They have now sold more than 90 million copies of their books.

What is Kinesiology?
Your brain constantly sends electronic messages through your nervous system, creating an energy field around your entire body. When one of those electronic impulses is interrupted by another energy field, it can be measured by a physical, muscular reaction. Behavioral kinesiology is the measurement tool that taps into your body’s natural energy fields and determines how everything around you affects you.

Essentially, your thoughts elicit a physical reaction. And positive thoughts send physically different energy signals than negative thoughts. So when you see something, maybe an advertisement for a product or a company Web site, your brain sends either a positive or negative response to the visual signal. When you look at a marketing piece, you are subconsciously intercepting the energy of this piece as positive or negative.

Every advertisement you see has an energy attached to it that can either encourage you to read the copy or throw the piece in the garbage. Therefore, all of the marketing and public relations pieces you create in your business will have an actual physical effect on the people who see them. This includes everything from Web copy, to visual graphics, to text, to colors. So when you create marketing pieces with a positive energy, they elicit a positive response and make people feel good about your company.

How Does Kinesiology Work?
To perform the kinesiology test, you will need a partner for all of the exercises. For starters, have your partner face you with one arm at their side and the other arm extended at a ninety-degree angle from the body as if a bird were extending it’s wings. The thumb on the extended arm should point toward the floor. Now place one of your hands just above the wrist on your partner’s extended arm, and your other hand on their opposite shoulder. To test their natural resistance, ask your partner to resist against your pressure on their extended arm, and then gently try to push down on their arm. Don’t attempt to force it down; all you have to do is push firmly for a few seconds then release.

To demonstrate the physical effects of mental thoughts, ask your partner to think of a positive experience while keeping their arm extended. Allow them to focus on their positive thought for a few seconds, and then push on their arm as you did before. Their arm should remain firm and strong. Now allow them to focus on a negative thought, then push on their arm again. Most likely, their arm moved down much easier, despite their efforts to keep it extended.

By doing this exercise, you’ve experienced the way thoughts affect your energy system. And you can use this same technique to check your web sites and other promotional materials. Ask your partner to look at an advertisement in a magazine, or a page on a web site, and push down on their arm. If their arm moves down, that means the promotional piece has a negative effect. But if their arm stays strong, then the piece is having a positive effect. You can use this technique to test the way your company’s marketing pieces affect the people who see them.

How Can You Create High-Energy Marketing Pieces?
Start testing your company’s marketing and public relations pieces by choosing a single piece and gauging your partner’s reaction to it using the muscle testing exercise from the previous section. If your partner’s arm stays strong, then the piece has a positive energy and is more likely to be an effective marketing tool for your organization. But if your partner’s arm falls, then the piece has a negative energy and is more likely to be ineffective. But this doesn’t mean that you should trash the whole piece. The negative energy may be originating in a single element of the piece, such as a graphic, a line of text, or a logo. In this case, you need to test the different elements of the piece further.

Using the same kinesiology techniques, cover everything but a single graphic on your negative marketing piece, and test your partner’s reaction to the graphic elements. Did their arm weaken, or did it remain strong? If it remained strong, you’ll need to leave another element uncovered and check again.  

By using the process of elimination, you can check all the parts of your promotional pieces and web pages your company uses in its pr campaigns and identify the ones that may be most effective, and the ones that may have a negative effect on potential clients.

See the Benefits in Your Business
This approach will allow you to begin working at the concept-design phase. When you identify and eliminate the negative elements, your pieces and Web sites will get a more positive response from the people who see them. Instead of passing your ad in a magazine, your product on the shelf or your page on the Web, the public will be more likely to stop and notice.

Dr. Jerry Teplitz is the author of Managing Your Stress In Difficult Times: Succeeding In Times of Change, , Switched-On Living and Brain Gym For Business. He speaks and consults on management, leadership, sales and personal development issues. For more information, click here. Register for Jerry’s free monthly e-zine here.