As a rule, marketers usually aren’t psychologists – and that’s unfortunate for many of today’s advertisers. Psychology tells us why people do the things they do, and getting consumers to behave in a certain way is precisely the whole point of business. Here are some effective ways to combine marketing and psychology.
Emphasize Emotions
Most people care about benefits more than they care about features. For example, in recent years, some companies have begun creating coats that have special pockets designed to hold and protect electronic devices (without them overheating if they’re actually being used). For these products, the tagline “It has eight pockets” isn’t nearly as effective as something like “It can hold everything while you’re on the go.”
To target emotions properly, start by creating a customer avatar, then asking how someone represented by that avatar would actually react to a given piece of marketing. If there’s no emotional appeal, the idea should be scrapped and replaced with something that actually does speak to them.
Leverage The Power Of Color
If you’ve never stopped to ask yourself why your advertisements are colored in a certain way, it’s time to revisit those choices. Color psychology can have an incredible impact on sales, and there are many different ways to integrate it into your marketing campaigns. It may seem a little odd at first, but the better the colors of something match the idea being presented, the more convincing the presentation will become.
Use Anchoring
Most consumers make their decisions based on the first piece of information they acquire. For example, let’s say that you want to put up a sign about a coat that’s on sale for $20 (and you’ve got a lot of those coats you need to sell, hence the sign). That price alone doesn’t mean a lot to customers. On the other hand, if the sign explains that the sale price is $20 and the regular price is $60, they suddenly have a frame of reference that helps them understand how good the deal is. They’ve been “anchored” to that piece of information.
Of course, most people shopping for coats (or any other products) aren’t buying them for the first time. There’s a good chance they’re already anchored to their idea of what a normal price for any given product is – and you can use this to your advantage by finding out the average anchor price among customers and structuring your prices around that. If customers don’t feel like they’re getting a good deal from you, they’re probably not going to buy.
Use Scarcity
Consumers also have a preference for ‘rare’ things, and will often pick up a certain product right away rather than risk not having it at some point in the future. This is known as scarcity, and it’s part of the greater business loans ideas known as “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt”. Simply put, the idea is to highlight a problem to your customer (maybe one they didn’t even know they had), then immediately offer a practical and straightforward solution. By removing their fears, you’ll transform from a company trying to sell a product to a company that’s actively helping them resolve a problem. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it works.
Psychology is everything in marketing. When used properly, principles like these can help you get closer to your customers, appeal to the things they truly care about, and ultimately improve your bottom line.
About Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai
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