7 marketing psychology tips to boost your next campaign
July 29, 2021
As marketers, it’s great to be able to connect with customers. And by using marketing psychology, you’ll be able to make the most of these connections. This guide walks you through different helpful hints to utilize psychology both effectively and ethically.
What is marketing psychology?
Marketing psychology is a process that uses behavioral patterns to better understand customers. It is a way for marketers to maximize the efficacy of campaigns through the use of psychological principles. Marketing psychology ultimately reduces roadblocks that prevent customers from purchasing a product or service.
7 marketing psychology methods
1. Use colors to your advantage
In our daily lives, we experience many different colors. We’ve come to accept that certain things, especially if they’re manmade, are generally colored the same. For example, Stopsigns are red, which is meant to be bold and urgent. Green is used for environmental signs, and blue is meant to elicit trust.
Accordingly, the psychology of colors is a great way to connect with your customers in a deeper way. This doesn’t mean you have to undergo a full rebranding, changing your logo to a different hue just to capture a wider audience. But, it does give you some opportunities to get the right point across when doing things like campaigns, building content, picking pictures for the website, etc. Think about what the colors you’re using will make customers feel when they see them, and determine if that’s the feeling you’re trying to elicit.
2. Set the tone with anchoring
Often used as a negotiation tactic, anchoring occurs when one party begins negotiation at an extremely high price, expecting the opponent to counter with a price that stays relatively close to this price. It’s something that even knowledgable consumers are susceptible to.
Of course, anchoring doesn’t have to be some shady, deceptive tactic. You can use anchoring without being dishonest. For example, instead of pretending a product is on sale, showing a crossed out price and a new, lower price, you could use anchoring when a product legitimately has been reduced in price. Make sure you show the original price in the advertisement to get the full effect of anchoring.
3. Boost trustworthiness using authority
For anyone familiar with either version of the television program ‘Cosmos’, either the 1980 or 2014, they will be familiar with the concept of authority. Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson are hosts of these universe-exploration shows, and what do they both have in common? They’re both major authorities on the topic. If the hosts weren’t credible, it would be a much harder sell.
Using authority works similarly in marketing. Customers don’t mind committing to a product or service as much if they know that an authority figure recommends it or uses it as well. As a marketer, you can get creative to find different sources to present as authorities for your brand. Behavioral data analysis further confirms the presence of authority in successful customer campaigns.
4. Rely on social proof
Amazon shoppers make purchasing decisions based on many different factors, but one that is very prevalant is the ratings system. Seeing what other people say about a product drives or destroys sales.
Of course, this is just one example of social proof. It’s not just a metric to determine product quality, as reviews on Amazon do. It also drives people to act based on what their peers are doing, or the popularity of something. As a marketer, look for ways to use this social proof to your benefit. Creating content that allows for comments and can be easily linked elsewhere shows readers that your projects are seen by many.
5. Help customers picture the possibilities
Have you noticed that TV commercials, no matter the product, like to advertise a lifestyle instead of the actual product or service they sell? A Pepsi commercial shows smiling people at parties, with friends, with family.
When marketers have a product or service they want a customer to purchase, they need to go beyond showing off the features. Their campaigns should help the customer visualize what buying that product will change in their lives, and where it might take them. Help your customer think bigger and the product or service becomes much more.
6. Be transparent about scarcity
With the increase in online shopping, consumers are noticing that almost every website they shop on claims that an item is one of only a few left. That pair of winter gloves you’re looking at is the last pair in inventory. Act fast!
It’s become used so often in these industries that consumers are likely filtering it out a bit better. And we as marketers don’t want to be dishonest, so we should redefine how scarcity is used. We shouldn’t label every single item ‘scarce’ – it’s just dishonest. Instead, use the power of scarcity only when it’s true. If you have a product with high demand and low supply, let the customers know.
7. Reduce customer’s paradox of choice
Netflix, the popular streaming giant, recently adding a feature called ‘play something’, where it turns on a show or movie at random. The reason they added it? Popular demand. Customers were asking for it to be implemented, because they found themselves searching endlessly through the catalog and never being able to pick something. This is an example of the paradox of choice in action.
Netflix’s decision to implement this feature is actually a great example of how to manage the paradox of choice dilemma. Now, this will be highly situational, but look into your campaigns and see if they’re possibly being hampered by too many choices offered. Try to limit the options to make the options easier to select from and more appealing overall. Plus, if you’re using predictive behavior modeling, you’ll understand which choices your customers will prefer anyway.
In your next marketing campaign, make sure to use all the tools you have at your disposal. The psychology of marketing can make a big impact on your customers, giving them what they need and making the process easier for them as well.
