Marketing and psychology go hand-in-hand. To become a great marketer, you need to get inside the head of the consumer. To be a great psychologist, you need to get inside the head of your subject. The best marketers use psychology in everything they do. Here’s how you can use psychology in marketing.
Relate to your customer
The first (and most important) tip is to relate to your customer. In everything you do. It doesn’t matter if you’re sending out an email or writing a post on Facebook, you need to consider how your customer will read it. To be able to do this, you need to truly understand your customer. And this can’t be based on assumptions either. You need to talk to them, analyze customer surveys, and test what works. Great marketing starts with customer research.
Frame your sales pitches in an appealing way
Whenever you’re creating a sales pitch, it needs to appeal to the customer’s wants and needs. You shouldn’t just rely on explaining what your product does. You need to explain why it’s going to benefit that specific customer. If you can nail this approach, you will see conversions go through the roof.
Appeal to your customers’ senses
Humans have five senses – touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Everyone uses these senses to interact with the world. So, as a marketer, you should appeal to these senses. Get your customer excited about how the product is going to feel. If you’re selling a pair of headphones, talk about how the enhanced bass response and crystal-clear highs will make their favorite song sound better than ever before. If you’re selling food, talk about how it’s going to taste when it lands on their tongue.
Capture your audience’s attention
You don’t need a psychology degree to work out that you need to capture your audience’s attention. Sure, you will be better placed with a Master’s in Organizational Psychology, but the basic concepts are pretty simple. To capture your audience’s attention, you need to do something different. Surprise them with a hidden advert. Shock them with a bold statement. Tell them a story. Do something to stand out.
Be a friend
It can be pretty hard to stand out in today’s world. When consumers have so many adverts and products shoved down their throats, you need to find a way of surprising them. One way to do this is to act like their friend instead of a brand. Talk to them like you know them. Help them out. Create a friendship.
Throw your customers an anchor
The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias that can be used to great effect in marketing. It works by influencing the customer’s decision based on a reference point (or anchor).
For example, in your marketing message, you could tell the customer that a product used to cost $1,000 but now you’re selling it for $600. The customer automatically uses the original price of $1,000 as the anchor point for the value of the item. So, they feel like they are getting an amazing deal.
