Marketing Psychology

Using Psychology to Increase Your Marketing Return

Psychology plays a big part in the everyday decision-making businesses and marketers go through. It encapsulates your target market’s desires, fears, wants and concerns, explaining their behaviour and how they view your business. Ultimately, it’s a signpost towards serving your customers as efficiently and effectively as possible.

But how exactly can we use it to drive greater results? How do we actually use psychology to impact our bottom line?

The good news is, you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to incorporate basic psychological principles into your business strategy. Even a basic understanding of psychology can empower you with robust ideas for future testing and optimisation.

Here are a few tactics you can use to increase the effectiveness of your business today:

The Halo Effect

In 1920, a study was conducted in which commanding officers evaluated soldiers based on their physical, mental and emotional qualities. The study was conducted by Edward Thorndike, and his findings have since been dubbed “The Halo Effect”.

In summary, the study revealed that if a soldier had a highly rated quality, the other qualities were perceived to be high as well. If a soldier was particularly punctual, for example, he would have received a higher mark for his physique than he would have otherwise.

This is immediately applicable to business, branding and marketing. Showcase your strongest quality and go all-in on it, and your market will subconsciously view you in a more positive light across the board.

Freebies

An oldie but a goodie – give people free stuff!

The principle of reciprocation was covered in Robert Cialdini’s classic book on marketing psychology: “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”. Essentially, if you offer somebody something of value for free, they take on a subconscious urge to repay the favour.

As long as it’s legitimately valuable, the freebie doesn’t have to be expensive or grand. Just a small, unexpected gift. Many brands use eBooks, video guides and other such things to build brand equity and trigger the reciprocal itch.

Scarcity

Fear of missing out (or FOMO) is real, and it’s powerful.

When a company communicates that an offer is only on “for a limited time”, or that stocks won’t last, they are using this psychological principle to drive engagement.

People see things that are scarce as having more inherent value, so find clever ways to make yourself appear less available.

Social Proof

Social proof is a classic psychological principle that brands use all the time to great effect. You’re probably using it already, but are you using it to its full potential?

Endorsements from trusted figures, reviews from real consumers, social media shares, word of mouth, it’s all social proof. Human beings are wired to live successfully in tribes, and social proof is a psychological relic from older times that still has a huge degree of influence over our behaviour.

If we see the tribe doing something, we’re more inclined to join in. Create the sense that everybody is using your product, and you’ll be unstoppable.

Use psychology in your business today!

We hope we gave you some fresh ideas when it comes to using psychology to increase the effectiveness of your marketing and business strategies.

Of course, if you’d rather just hire the experts to put these principles (and many more) into action for you, contact us here.

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