What is Marketing Psychology
All basic human decisions are made on emotions, some may argue that some decisions are made using logic rather than emotions, however making a logically decision based on price, strategy, or an actual need, happens after an emotional need or desire to attain a certain product.
Humans are emotional beings and any decision that we make, makes us feel a certain way before and after the decision is made, everything in the end is determined by an emotional need or desire. Emotions leads you to a desired outcome and logic determines how you achieve that outcome.
Here is an example: John sees a Porsche 911 sports car, at this point he is filled with multiple emotions such as happiness, excitement etc., this instills a desire brought on by an emotion. Now let’s talk logic which kicks in after an emotional desire, John wants to buy this car, so he goes in and speaks to the salesman who then tells him the price, he now starts going through his thought process, do I really need it? Can I afford it? If I buy something cheaper, I could still have enough to take my wife on that trip to Paris, although these thoughts are brought on by logic, there is an emotion attached to each of his thoughts, if John buys the car, he may feel guilty afterwards as he may not be able to take his wife to Paris.
So, what happened here? First an emotional desire was brought on, then logic kicked in which based on different emotions that he would feel after making the logically decision led to his final decision.
Our job as marketers is to not only trigger an emotion in our target audiences but also determine and plan a strategy that will allow them to continue feeling that emotion even after their logic kicks in, the salesmen could have told John that he can come up with a payment plan, he could have dropped the interest rate or even the deposit and if none of that worked he can take down Johns details or have him join their mailing list which he send to John every week with new deals that constantly ignites that emotional desire for John to own that car.
Excitement, a dangerous principle in Marketing Psychology:
We all want our clients to be excited about the products and services that we are selling, with every campaign put out the main objective other than making the sale, is to get people excited and talking about your product or service. So why is excitement dangerous? Well excitement can be dangerous if are able to instill the emotion into your buyer but not deliver on your product or service, which means you could promise someone the world and only deliver a grain on sand, you need to be weary of this as this could lead to people speaking bad about your brand your company ultimately gaining a bad name in your industry.
Excitement is also very powerful in Marketing Psychology if you are able to deliver on what you are selling, when excitement happens the body releases dopamine which leads to having an adrenalin rush, its really difficult for a person a make logically decisions during an adrenalin rush, hence the reason why its easier to make a sale when someone is excited rather when their not.
A.I.D.A
A.I.D.A is a 4 step sales process which can be used in your advertising and can be extremely effective.
A: Attention – this consist of headlines, tag lines, catch phrases
I: Interest – explain to your target audience what problem you can solve for them
D: Desire – using images or visually appealing items that allow the user to recognize the benefits that they will gain by using your product or service.
A: Action – always have a link to a contact form or a call now button for the user to get InTouch with you.
Social Proof
By now everyone knows what social proof is, researching a business online, reading reviews etc. to see if they are what they say they are. Why? Why do users do this? Well let’s go back to the one of the basic human needs, Safety! Before the digital age and online shopping, you had to physically go into a store to make your purchases, which meant if anything had gone wrong after your purchase you could just walk back in and have it fixed. That provided a basic safety need to the client, in which they knew who you were, where you were and could walk in at any time.
With online shopping and services, the client is not able to do any of this if you don’t have a physical store, this brings about doubt which leads to the client wanting to first be convinced that they are not going to have any trouble when buying from you, hence social proof. Our job as marketers is to make the client feel safe and always ensure them that any issues that they may face with our products or services will be dealt with promptly. Online clients need constant assurance that they are going to be taken care of.
Important of Design and Priming in Marketing Psychology:
Priming is the ability to expose one stimulus to attract another stimulus. What does this mean? If I showed you a green board and asked you to say the first thing that comes to come mind, you would probably say grass or trees or anything that is associated to that color. So, what does this have to do with marketing? Well, everything, this goes back to aligning your brand with your marketing and having users not only identify your brand but remember it.
Marketing is distracting and with so many ads been served to users every day we must make sure that our ads are remembered. So how would you use priming in your marketing? As mentioned above priming is exposing one stimulus to attract another stimulus, the use of color is one way to do this. Color pays a major part in marketing and each color instills a certain emotion, red for example could mean danger or adventure, purple is usually associated with royalty and so on. If you are selling security services for example, you would use blue as this color stimulates safety.
In Marketing you do A/B testing to determine which landing page or ad performs best by changing images or taglines and colors, all your doing here is instilling a different emotion in the user to find out which stimulates and resonates best with them.
Discounts
By now everyone should know that the black Friday sales aren’t sales. If there’s one thing people love, it’s a good deal, want to know what they love more than a good deal? Bragging to their friends and family about the good deal that they got. People love to feel special and unique, getting discounts on items gives them the ability to feel this way. To take advantage of this is simple, put up a product for sale with the high price struck off showing a discounted price of 50% or a percentage of your choosing. Discounts are one of the easiest ways to make sales without even trying, why? Because it instills the emotion of excitement and with excitement comes the lack of logical thinking, knowing that you may be the only one who gets the deal from all your friends and family, gives you the excitement of being unique and feeling special.
Using psychology in marketing is vital but should be done with caution as you don’t want to come across as being manipulative. If you have an amazing product and can stand by what you put out, you should go all in and try different psychological techniques as some may work better for you in your industry than others.
