Marketing Dopamine • July 26, 2026
Anticipation Is the Real Product
Have you ever noticed a delivery truck on your street and immediately wondered if it was coming to your house? Maybe you glance out the window. Maybe you check the tracking one more time. Maybe the truck stops in front of your neighbor’s house first. Suddenly, a package you were not thinking about five minutes ago has your full attention.
A package often gets more attention on its way to your door than it does once it is sitting on your kitchen counter. That small, familiar moment tells us something important about anticipation.
Dopamine is often called the reward chemical, but it also plays an important role in motivation, expectation, and the pursuit of something we want. It helps keep us looking, checking, waiting, and wondering what is coming next.
The package matters, but much of the excitement happens before it arrives.
The sale is not always the emotional peak. Sometimes the lead up is.
The same thing happens when you are planning an event, a vacation, or even a wedding. The excitement does not suddenly appear on the big day. It builds through every decision, every RSVP, every reservation, and every conversation about what is coming.
By the time the day arrives, you have already experienced dozens of moments connected to it. The anticipation did not distract from the experience. It became part of it.
I am living this lesson right now. The interactive version of The Marketing Dopamine Companion has been published, and I could not be happier with how it turned out. The paperback is still making its way through the KDP process, so one part of the vision is available while another part is still on its way.
Normally, I might focus on what is not ready yet. This time, I am trying to notice what is happening in the space between finished and fully launched. I am thinking about someone opening the interactive workbook for the first time. I am imagining the paperback arriving at my door. I am wondering what readers will notice and where the workbook might lead them.
That anticipation is not separate from the experience of creating the product. It is part of the story I will remember.
Good marketing understands this. It gives people small moments to look forward to before the final offer arrives. A first look. A behind-the-scenes update. A meaningful countdown. A preview of what is coming. A story about why the product was created.
The goal is not to manufacture suspense or drag out the process. It is to invite people into the journey early enough that they begin to care about the outcome.
A single announcement asks people to care immediately. A thoughtfully built launch gives them a reason to care before the sale ever begins.
When the anticipation is honest, the final offer feels less like an interruption and more like the next step in a story people have already chosen to follow.
Build the anticipation honestly, and the reward barely needs to sell itself.
The package still matters. So does the event, the vacation, the wedding, and the product you worked so hard to create. But the experience begins before any of them arrive. Good marketing understands that the waiting is not empty space. It is part of the product.
Lisa Carmichael is the creator of Marketing Dopamine and author of The Marketing Dopamine Companion, an interactive workbook designed to help entrepreneurs recognize the distractions, patterns, and habits that may be pulling their marketing off course. She is currently writing Marketing Dopamine: What Your Brain Is Really Doing When You Think You’re Building a Business. Learn more at marketingdopamine.com.
Sounds like where my brain goes at times. I’ve learned to describe the process as that – a process or a story – for me, it seems to never have a beginning or an end. I’m always in the middle which works for me. I’ve learned to not get too attached to any specific outcome like the publishing of a book because there’s always a letdown when you finish something. I always try to have something else coming so that there’s always something next to look forward to ….
Interesting point that there’s always a letdown when you finish something. I’m going to challenge people to think differently. Instead of a letdown, perhaps that was the key that opened the next door to something more beauitful and amazing.
Lisa, how interesting! I had to re-read some of your sentences twice. Would you share an example or 2 of how this works? Thanks!
Thanks for asking! What I mean is that anticipation becomes part of the experience. Think about an author announcing a new book months before it’s released. You might follow the updates, preorder a copy, or even attend the book launch party. By the time you finally hold the book in your hands, the experience has already begun. That’s what fascinates me about dopamine. We don’t just enjoy the reward. We enjoy looking forward to it. I believe the best marketing creates that same feeling through trust, consistency, and curiosity rather than urgency.
That is an interesting insight.
I can recall some of the words to a song that say “is that all there is?”
I often think that the amount of pain and disappointment is directly proportional to the size of the difference between expectation and reality.
Following your topic of a wedding, writing a book is exciting and in the end the work begins.
In the case of a book, it is the marketing that is where the real work is done.
Blog on!
so true. thanks your comment and encouragement!