A smart marketer must comprehend how (and why) people behave and think. It’s considerably more difficult to produce captivating material if you don’t understand why your audience will find it so.
The goal of psychology is to explain how people think and behave, which is precisely what you should do before diving into the specifics of marketing strategy. Your marketing might go from good to extraordinary when you comprehend certain important psychological principles because the proper audience will be reading it and relating to it (and most likely converting as a result).
You can draw in, persuade, and convert more customers by incorporating psychology into your marketing.
Marketing and Psychology: 10 Key Psychological Principles You Should Apply.
1) Primetime
Do you recall playing a game in which one person would speak, and the other would quickly answer?
The process of priming is comparable. Your reaction to one stimulus influences how you react to another. People have a semantic relationship between fruit and their hue. Therefore, a group that reads “yellow” followed by either “sky” or “banana” will be better able to identify the word “banana” than a group that reads “yellow-sky.”
What is this situation’s relationship to marketing? They are numerous. Using deceptive priming techniques, you can affect the purchasing decisions of visitors to your website.
As an illustration of two products in the same category, a Toyota and a Lexus were contrasted. According to Psychology Today, visitors who have been primed on money spend more time looking at price information than visitors who have been primed on safety. Consumers who are more interested in comfort than in money spend more time looking at comfort-related information.
When you use priming in your marketing, pay attention to the little things. If you ignore them, it could mean the difference between someone purchasing your most expensive goods and leaving your website.
2) Mutuality
If someone does something for you, you will inevitably want to return the favor.
If you’ve ever received a mint along with your restaurant bill, you’ve encountered reciprocity.
There are numerous ways to use reciprocity in your marketing. Giving something out doesn’t have to cost a fortune; it can be anything from a branded hoodie to an exclusive ebook to a cost-free desktop wallpaper to your knowledge of a challenging subject. Establishing reciprocity can be accomplished with even something as straightforward as a handwritten message. Before requesting something in exchange, make sure you are giving them free stuff.
3) Social Evidence
It is also called the “me too” effect. Think of it like a tense middle school dance where nobody wants to be the first to hit the floor, but as soon as a few people do, everyone wants to join in. On your blog, you can utilize social proof in a simple way. Use social sharing and follow buttons that show the number of followers you have on social media or the number of shares a piece of content has if you haven’t already. Individuals who subsequently come across your post will be much more likely to share it if those figures are prominently displayed and you already have a few people sharing it.
4) Pricing Model Effect
This effect is frequently observed in pricing models when one price point is purposefully given to persuade you to select the most expensive option.
Look at the example below-
Online access fee: Rs.5000.
Rs. 7500 for a print subscription.
Subscription for online and print: Rs.7500
Imaginary, huh? Both the print-only and the print-and-online subscriptions are available for the same cost. They offer that, but why?
So one of my friends made the decision to conduct his own research with 100 MIT students. He presented them with the various price packages and enquired as to which they would choose to purchase. When presented with all three alternatives, students opted for the combo subscription because it offered the best value, right? The students, however, favored the least expensive choice once he removed the Rs. 7500 “useless” option (the print subscription).
It turns out that the middle option wasn’t entirely useless after all; by providing students with a benchmark for the “goodness” of the combination bargain, it encouraged them to pay more for it.
Therefore, you might wish to add a third choice to a landing page with two alternatives if you want to enhance conversions. It might boost the conversion rate for the final option you want visitors to choose.
5) Scarcity
Have you ever purchased plane tickets and noticed the phrase “Only 3 seats left at this price!”? Yes, that is a trick. This psychological tenet stems from the basic law of supply and demand: the more uncommon the opportunity, content, or good, the higher its value.
One of my friends, my coworker, placed 10 cookies in one jar, and in another, two of the same cookies. Despite the fact that the cookies in both jars were identical, the two-cookie jar garnered ratings that were twice as high as the 10-cookie jar. ”
However, you must be careful with your wording if you wish to use this theory correctly. People will be exceptionally open if you approach the scarcity concept as though there used to be a tonne of a product or service, but owing to great demand there are only a few left. The idea won’t work as well, though, if you approach it from the perspective that there aren’t many products in total and you should get it right now. To learn more about the significance of that distinction, read this post by Nir and Far.
6) Anchoring
Ever wondered why it’s so difficult to ignore a discount at your preferred clothing and apparel retailer?
People frequently make decisions based on the first piece of information they are given, which is referred to as anchoring. You’ll be thrilled if you find jeans at your favorite store that usually sell for Rs. 2500 and are now on sale for Rs. 2000. You’ll think,it seems to be a crazy deal on these jeans. You might even purchase them. But your friend won’t be nearly as thrilled as you are if he usually buys Rs. 1500 jeans.
Knowing about anchoring is crucial for marketers, especially if you ever conduct a promotion. The anchor should be set by explicitly stating the product’s original price and then showing the reduced price next to it. You might even mention the percentage off that your customers will receive when they make a purchase.
7) The Baader-Meinhof Affair
Ever see a product that you turn to after hearing about it? The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon deserves praise. When you first come across something, it starts to happen, and then you start to see it pop up in regular life. All of a sudden, the product is advertised on TV all the time. And you just so happen to go down the grocery store aisle and see it. And every single one of your buddies has the item.
We know it’s strange. Here’s why this new gadget is suddenly appearing everywhere.
This effect, often known as “the frequency illusion,” is based on two factors. The first sort of attention, selective attention, is triggered by a new word, object, or thought and makes you automatically keep an eye out for it. As a result, you pay more attention to it. The other factor is “confirmation bias” This process reassures you that each sighting is additional evidence that the object has suddenly become omnipresent.
This fact is the reason nurturing is so crucial for marketers. You should make yourself “everywhere” whenever someone starts to notice your brand (i.e., starts browsing your website). You might improve their chances of converting by sending them personalized nurturing emails and retargeting advertising depending on their behavior.
8) Verbatim Effect
In a study by Poppenk, Joanisse, Danckert, and Köhler, it was found that people are more likely to recall the general idea of something rather than the specifics. Consequently, when you attend a seminar on how to blog for your business, you’ll probably recall specifics like “Have someone else review your work, or “Send a Google Doc to a peer three business days in advance so they may review your work.” Use Track Changes to keep track of the changes you missed. ”
The “verbatim effect” is what they call it. And it may have a significant impact on how well your article does.
Very little time is being spent online reading genuine content. According to research from Chartbeat, more than half of your visitors will only stay on your site for less than 15 seconds. What should a marketer do if visitors aren’t reading your material and aren’t likely to retain key details?
I’d advise devoting even more time to crafting the perfect headline. It should appropriately summarise what is in your content and be both search- and sharing-friendly. In this way, people will remember that one helpful article they read a while ago and Google the topic to discover it again when they need additional information on a specific subject. If you put in the effort, you ought to show up in the search results.
9) Grouping
People only have so much room in their short-term memory. In actuality, the average person can only recall seven items of knowledge at once, plus or minus two in any given circumstance.
Most people group information that is similar together in order to cope. For instance, most individuals would tend to mentally organize products into certain categories (dairy, grain, meat, etc.) if they had a long grocery list of arbitrary items so they could better recall what was on it.
Consequently, keep clustering in mind while you create content. How can you structure your information so that more of it is retained in the mind? One The simplest method to achieve this is to group related themes together, either using various header widths or numbered bullet points. Your work will be much simpler to retain and recollect in the future, making it especially helpful if you’re producing lengthy lists of content.
10) Aversion to Loss
When someone has something, they really don’t like to lose it, which is essentially what loss aversion entails.
In a group study on this idea, participants were given either mugs, chocolate, or nothing at all. They were then given two options when asked to make a decision: if they had been given an object, they could swap it for another object, or if they had received nothing, they could select between the two options. The outcome? About half of the participants who began with no things chose mugs, whereas 86% of those who were given mugs initially stayed with them.
The lesson learnt ? People dislike losing what they’ve already accomplished.
Although this can provide some shaky opportunities for some types of marketers, loss aversion may play a big role in the rise of freemium products and higher rates of product uptake. For instance, you may temporarily unlock a feature from the paid version of your product. If you don’t upgrade to become a paying subscriber before that time period expires, that feature can be withdrawn. Loss aversion is a crucial idea for every marketer to understand, yet you must be careful how you exploit this psychological need.