When marketing your business, you are looking to sell your product or service to people. What better way to improve at marketing than to understand how those people work? As our friends over at HubSpot know, a bit of knowledge of psychological ideas can greatly benefit you. Tying these marketing psychology principles into your strategy will help you to convert leads into sales.
The Most Important Marketing Psychology Principles
1) Priming
Priming refers to the way that one stimulus affects the way someone responds to another. For example, if someone reads the word “yellow” followed by “banana,” they’ll recognize it faster than they would recognize the word “sky.” This happens because people establish a semantic association with “banana” and “yellow” since, of course, bananas are yellow. If visitors are primed with words that make them think about purchasing things, they’ll be easier to convert into customers. Priming leads and then leaving them with a call-to-action could help you convert them into sales more easily.
2) Action Paralysis
Action paralysis is another principle that could be utilized by a simple call-to-action. The theory of action paralysis suggests that people tend to over-analyze their thoughts and second guess themselves. By including a call-to-action that tells people why they should act on it, you could interrupt them in the process of second-guessing. Insist that your product or service is effective and will make a difference so they’ll have a reason to follow through with it and not second-guess.
3) Reciprocity
Reciprocity refers to the idea that if someone does something for you, you feel obligated to do something for them in return. In 1974, a sociologist named Phillip Kunz mailed out handwritten Christmas cards with a picture of him and his family to 600 strangers. He received about 200 replies, even though the recipients had no idea who he was. Why? The principle of reciprocity was at work. Now imagine if you gave away some branded merchandise to a bunch of people. They’d definitely feel more obligated to give you their business than they would if you hadn’t given them anything.
4) Social Proof
Social proof suggests that people will tend to take on similar beliefs to those they can relate to and trust. There are a bunch of ways to utilize social proof in your marketing strategy. For example, including testimonials from satisfied customers will show potential customers that your business is a good one and encourage them to try it out for themselves. Another example lies in influencer marketing. An influencer is someone that has a large social media following and a trusted opinion. If an influencer endorses your product, many of their followers will look into it as well.
5) Scarcity
The principle of scarcity indicates that people are more likely to see a rare opportunity, event or product as valuable. When people think that something that was once abundant has become scarce, they’ll be more likely to try and obtain it. If so many people bought a product and now there are now only three left, consumers will think that everyone else bought it because it was so good! However, don’t use fake scarcity and claim you only have three products left if you actually have many. This is simply unethical and consumers will likely see right through it. You don’t need a Ph.D to successfully incorporate psychology into your marketing scheme. You could absolutely strengthen your marketing strategy just by using some of the marketing psychology principles.
