Have you ever wondered how some marketing experts seem to have the magic bullet to drive many sales while you can barely get a single prospect to click any of your buttons?
They naturally appear to have the knack for convincing prospects to buy what they are selling and at whatever price.
It’s like they have a solution for every need the customer has, which causes people to flock to their businesses, whether offline or online.
How do these successful marketers do it, and what can you learn from it? Well, it’s nothing profound; extraordinary marketers have learned how to incorporate psychology into their marketing campaigns.
They know exactly how to get into the mind of their target customer. As a result, they create content and offer solutions their customers can’t resist.
Yap, psychology has a great role to play in marketing. And according to Maryville University, there’s a growing demand for workers with a background in psychology in fields such as market research ($62,560 per annum), surveying ($54,470) and human resources ($59,180) among other career choices.
In today’s post, I highlight a couple of ways you can use psychology to drive your marketing efforts forward. Read on to learn how you can appeal to the emotional and psychological needs of your prospects, and leave them craving for your products.
Relate To Your Prospect
As human beings, we love forming packs or groups. We also tend to view and treat kindred spirits more favorably, a phenomenon known as in-group favoritism.
In marketing, you can use this phenomenon in your favor. It all begins with segmenting your audience in smaller and more focused groups. After that, create relevant content and appeals that are specific to each group.
It is one of the reasons testimonials are a popular part of marketing material. They show the prospect other users like them found a solution in your products and services.
On top of that, have you noticed how marketers are fond of displaying social proof at any given opportunity? Also known as social herding, showing social proof makes the prospect feel like they are part of your community.
Users are more likely to engage with your brand and products if they see others (who are like them) doing it. Take dancing for instance. At the beginning of the dance, everybody is hesitant to take to the floor. But as soon as the first few people start dancing, everybody else wants to join.
It is psychology in action, and you can leverage this technique in your marketing campaigns by trying your best to relate with a prospect at a personal level.
See how almost every mobile app has an “Invite Friends” button? Many web apps and social media sites thrive on this “join your friends” mentality.
It goes something like, “if your friends are doing it, then it must be good.” So, you figure out that “if my friends are buying this product, then it must be good.”
Foot-in-the-Door Technique
Psychological studies show that people are more willing to agree to larger requests, if they previously agreed to a smaller request.
If you’re in doubt, you can try this psychological trick on your friends. Say you want to borrow $500 bucks from your friend, asking for $500 bucks in whole outrightly will face some resistance.
But by borrowing $100 bucks first, and then after a couple of days asking for $400 bucks, you’ll realize better results. Try it and come back with results, guaranteed.
This is common especially with email marketers. It’s easier for a user to provide an email address as opposed to buying your products.
Now, instead of throwing products at the prospect’s face and hope something will stick, the smart marketer starts small by asking for the email address.
Afterwards, you can send targeted emails to the user to provide context. Later on, you can introduce the user to your sales funnel.
If a prospect takes time to subscribe, they are more likely to engage with your brand and products later on.
The opposite of this technique is often known as the door-in-the-face technique. Instead of starting small, you start with a large and outlandish request that the user, obviously, turns down.
After that, you make a smaller request that the user “magically” accepts. But this is not a magic show, it is psychology at work. So, start big or small but make your second offer the exact opposite.
Appeal to Emotions
Along with getting personal comes appealing to emotions. If you can trigger the right kind of emotions in your prospects, you can get them to do whatever you desire.
At every stage of your marketing campaign, seek to appeal to your customers’ emotions. So, instead of listing your product’s features, outline the benefits the prospects will enjoy from the said product.
If you had no idea, highlighting the benefits of your product appeals to emotions as opposed to listing the features. By all means, the “features section” is important, but add a “benefits section” as well.
Make the benefits prominent across your marketing collateral. This shows the user you understand their needs, and have just the solutions they need.
And since we are talking about emotions, another psychological trick to use in marketing involves introducing fear, uncertainty and despair. Oh yes, evoking these kinds of emotions in your prospects is legitimate, and a popular tool that many politicians use to great success.
You can show your prospect how opting for an alternative product will cause mayhem in their life. By any means, you want the user to take your product as the best option.
Fear is a powerful emotion and if you can harness it to turn your prospects against the competition, you’re golden.
Appealing to emotions can, in fact, help you to reposition your competition in your prospect’s mind.
Use Amazing Multimedia Content
Using multimedia content helps you to appeal to the customer’s senses. Whether you like it or not, people will judge your business depending on the quality of the marketing materials you use.
In practice, get in the habit of using plenty of high-quality visuals on your website, blog posts, email, social media, ads and brochures among others.
Don’t bore your prospects to death with a ton of text! Combine images, videos and infographics among other multimedia content to jazz things up.
If you use audio content, strive to create a catchy story or jingle that prospects associate with your business. Many brands do this, and a good example is McDonalds.
The McDonalds’ “ba da ba ba ba” jingle was originally sang by Justin Timberlake, but it has grown more popular than Timberlake’s actual songs.
Don’t hold back and never skimp on your content. Go all out and create multimedia content that appeals to your customer’s senses. Your content (whether online or offline) must have that wow factor or your marketing campaign is doomed.
Reward Your Customers
There is a reason the opposite of generosity is stinginess, and nobody gyrates or gravitate to the latter. Generosity is a virtue, and stinginess is a vice you should let go off. Remember, there is a big difference between being frugal and stingy, but I digress.
Rewarding your customers needn’t be challenging or expensive. For instance, you can create cheap gifts for your customers. You know, I’m talking about something like an order of t-shirts and key-holders for your customers. Or cookies, mint and anything else you can think about.
All because, let us admit is, we all love free stuff. This psychological need is the reason giveaways are incredibly powerful as marketing tools.
If you had no idea, you can use a single giveaway to grow your social media presence, boost engagement on your site, increase email subscriptions and drive relevant traffic to your products among other things.
Use generosity in your favor by rewarding your customers at all stages of the conversion funnel. For instance, mobile games are fond of this technique.
By rewarding users at the end of each mission, mobile developers boost engagement and brand growth. You can reward your users for completing a particular action on your site.
Conclusion
Psychology and marketing go hand in hand in the offline or online worlds. By getting into the mind of your target audience, you can craft content and solutions they can’t pass up.
Going forward, strive to incorporate psychology into your marketing campaigns, from market research and product creation to promotion and beyond.
We hope this post points you in the right direction as far as using psychology in your marketing goes. Still, this is not an exhaustive list, which means we gratefully welcome your contribution because there is more to learn.
Which are your favorite psychological techniques in marketing? Let us know in the comments.