5 Reasons You Need To Understand the Psychology of Marketing

In sales and marketing, its mission critical to recognize that consumers always make their buying decisions for their own reasons, not yours. Hence, it’s imperative that you fully understand your average customer’s buying approach in order to target them efficiently and effectively via your marketing. Just imagine how effective your marketing would be if you were privy to your customer’s psychological profile and how to best engage with them, even before they’ve entertained thoughts concerning your services or products. Using psychology can do this for you.

Following are 5 reasons you need to understand the psychology of marketing.

1. Emotionally Appealing
Human beings make most of their decisions based on emotion. Sure, logic comes into play, but in most cases, after the fact. Effective marketing strategies appeal to human emotions, making consumers “feel” first and “think” later. To use this psychological approach, you need to put an emphasis on how your product or service will make the buyer feel, or how it will eliminate an existing pain. Fast Company does a great job of broaching the subject in 5 Psychological Tactics Marketers Use To Influence Consumer Behavior.

2. Self-interest aka what’s in it for me?
By nature, people think mostly in terms of “what is in it for me”?’ Take advantage use of this psychological principle when you market your products or services online. Compose your sales scripts using this concept and make sure that it directly informs the consumer of how the product/service will help them. Keep the ‘”what’s in it for me (meaning the consumer)” in mind and you can’t go wrong

3. Take Advantage of the Reciprocity Factor
The idea of “reciprocity” is really simple. . . If somebody does something nice for you, you naturally want to “reciprocate”. There are lots of ways to take advantage of the reciprocity factor in marketing. It could be anything from providing a special eBook, to a fancy after dinner mint provided at your favorite restaurant, or lint brush for your dry cleaner, just as long as it relates to your business. Even simple things like a thoughtful hand written note will go a long way toward establishing reciprocity.

4. Boost Your Credibility
There are just two primary reasons why consumers won’t buy from you. One, they’re not interested in what you’re selling/providing. Two, they don’t have confidence in what you’re saying. Credibility and believability are important, particularly online, from where the barrier of entry for sellers is so low. A lot of consumers today are concerned about potential risks of ID or credit card fraud, or instances where they pay for something online but never receive it. It’s these situations that make it so important for you to do everything possible to increase credibility in the eyes of today’s consumers. In 5 Steps To Build Trust Using Content Marketing, Entrepeneur offers some actionable advice for marketers struggling with building trust.

5. Boost the Perceived Value
If your product or service isn’t viewed as providing more value to the consumer than the price, then nobody will buy. The crucial element, then, is to increase the perceived value of whatever it is you’re trying to market and the perceived value needs to outweigh the cost. Sure, you can increase the value by lowering the price, however, you can also have a similar effect by conveying the great results that the user will experience more clearly, and precisely what it’ll mean for the potential buyer. You can do this in several ways, covering the negative consequences of not having your product or service, comparing what you have to offer to similar solutions and including free bonuses or premiums.

By utilizing the psychology of marketing, instead of trying to deal with fierce competition, groveling for the customers that are ready to buy, you can build a relationship with consumers who’ll never want to consider what your competitor’s are offering if you get the process down right.

Don’t take it completely from us. Check out this inspiring TED Talk by Rory Sutherland -“Life Lessons From An Ad Man”

How have you used psychology to improve marketing results?

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2 Emotions To Exploit (And 2 To Avoid) For Contagious Social Media Marketing

No matter if you’re trying to inspire empathy in your readers or just trying to make them laugh, harnessing emotions with your social media marketing is a vital skill to have. In no field of marketing is an effective use of emotional direction more important than social media. With such limited and congested real estate, every nuance of your headline, copy and post topic must work in tandem in order to rise above the rest of the pack.

Studies have found that content that elicits an emotional response typically gets shared twice as much as that which contains little emotional value.

However, playing with emotions can be a dangerous game. Not only can it lead to accusations of being manipulative, but picking the wrong emotions to target can have a dampening effect on the potential virality of your content.

With the help of several psychological studies, this post will detail exactly which emotions you should try to elicit in your readers – and which you should avoid – in order to give your social media marketing a contagious edge.

Emotions to avoid

1. Joy

Joy and happiness may seem like an obvious target when pursuing social media virality, particularly as countless heart-warming stories invariably clog up our newsfeeds on a daily basis.

However, while aiming to achieve happiness through your post is not necessarily a bad goal (any emotion is better than none), it isn’t always the home run that you’d expect it to be.

Although happiness can be a fantastic driver of sharing behaviour, it has the dual problems of being difficult to achieve and without doubt the most sought-after emotion in marketing. This market saturation of people trying to make readers smile makes it extremely difficult to stand out from the crowd.

The content that does rise to the top is almost always human stories, due to the extra gravitas that comes with the reality of the subject matter. It often takes a mammoth marketing budget and a huge established presence for a branded happiness campaign to take off, as was the case with Coca Cola’s “Share a Coke” series.

At the very least, humour or inspiration (both of which directly lead to happiness and exhilaration) should be considered as the primary aim of your post:

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2. Sadness

At the other end of the emotional spectrum, sadness-based content is another almost ever-present feature of our newsfeeds.

However, like happiness, sadness is another emotion which is too frequently chased in marketing. Whether genuine sorrow or an offshoot emotion such as nostalgia, the power of such a palpable emotion has long been clear to marketers, who have exploited it to the extent that audiences are now highly desensitized to it. With such levels of desensitization comes increased scrutiny. If something is designed to make someone feel sadness and misses its target, it risks incurring cynicism instead.

Without paying due care and attention to your copy or overusing sadness as an emotion, it’s also possible to create an unwanted association between your brand and sorrow.

What’s more, a study conducted by Johan Berger concluded that sadness-evoking content fared much worse when compared to other emotions due to being characterised by inaction and low levels of emotional arousal, thus considerably weakening the potential for content to be shared.

Emotions to use

1. Anger

While it’s once again important to stress that playing with emotional appeals does come with risks, anger and frustration are two emotional sensations that offer huge social amplification potential.

Clearly, having people associate you or your brand with feelings of anger or frustration is not a good thing. However, by acting as a conduit for news that causes feelings of consternation, you can tap into huge viral possibilities.

Framing your content or product with anger is a delicate business. Whether achieved by sharing a genuine grievance that you have personally suffered or otherwise, it’s important that, once your content has the reader emotionally hooked, you offer a resolution. Avoid inciting righteous indignation, as it’s extremely difficult to backtrack from.

Leaving the anger lingering risks the association between it and your brand sticking. If you’re able to turn that anger into a positive emotion then the journey you take the reader on can be truly invaluable in terms of brand building.

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The example of WhatsApp founder Brian Acton is a fantastic one. Although not framed in an overly angry fashion, every reader can relate to the frustration Acton must have felt upon being rejected by Facebook for a job opportunity.

The resolution is that he went on to found WhatsApp, eventually selling up to the very company that rejected him back in 2009 for a mind-blowing sum. It’s little surprise that the Business Insider article covering the story received much more attention than almost all of their other stories about the app and Acton, despite its comparatively short length.

Another way of closing the loop opened by utilising anger and frustration is by highlighting a common pain point in your initial social post and then demonstrating how your business or product solves the problem.

2. Surprise

Just as it’s not always in your best interests to chase joy or sadness due to their saturation, surprising readers and subverting their expectations is a sure-fire way of stoking the social flames.

Surprise may not be one of the first emotions that springs to mind when it comes to social media, but a study conducted by professors at Emory University found that people are “designed to crave the unexpected.”

Examples such as the Oreo Super Bowl blackout Tweet, which surprised through the speed with which it responded to a real life event, are proof of how well surprise can work on social media:

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Surprise also has an amplifying effect on the emotion it leads towards, offering further sharing potential.

If the audience know your social channels consistently deliver content designed to make them smile, they’ll enjoy it. However, if you place a post designed to elicit happiness or laughter in amongst more serious content then it will receive much more attention.

Surprise is also perhaps the best emotion to use in order to create a memorable, lasting relationship with readers. We consume heart-warming and sad content every day, but outside of our favourite news outlets, we’re unlikely to remember where we saw that content.

By surprising people, you connect in a more memorable fashion.

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Why Psychology is the Future of Social Marketing

What do marketing and science have in common?

How can we combine the two to better build our brand reputations?

The answer to these questions are: they have the human brain in common. And when we combine the two together, we have a recipe for success.

You’re about to go where no marketer has gone before.

Are you ready?

Our brains have learned how to react to spamminess. When it’s exposed to too much commercialism and “selly sell selling,” it shuts down. The brain stops all communication with that message trying to get your attention.

So how do you take advantage of psychology in your marketing? You have to be a smart marketer, not a boring one.

The boring marketer

The boring marketer doesn’t understand the dire need to capitalize on their marketing in ways that are new, fresh, and different to their target audience.

Instead, they come back again with the same marketing strategies from a decade ago. When it doesn’t work, they just push the message harder and try to wear down the few remaining people that are listening to them.

The smart marketer

You’re a smart person. I have no doubt in my mind that you are. You’ve chosen to participate in one of the most stressful jobs that you can have, are constantly changing and adapting, measuring and comparing analytics, etc. And you’re doing this all because you want more results, better results!

That’s what smart marketers do, right?

In fact, the smartest marketer will understand that there is a psychological trigger involved in creating that sale or adding that subscriber to their list and they take the necessary actions to get their audience to do so.

The smart marketer realizes that what may have worked yesterday, may not work today. People are always changing. Their likes and dislikes evolve, and as a great marketer, you understand that you have to roll with the changes.

So why not involve more science and psychology in your marketing? Learn more about the brain and human behavior. Understanding the actual triggers that get a brain to make a decision will make it all the more easier to get customers to convert.

I want to explain some action triggers that smart marketers are successfully success. This is where you can start using psychological marketing to your advantage.

Repetitive marketing

Have you ever watched a television commercial that had a phone number on the screen?

Sure you have.

But what you may not have realized is that when the announcer speaks over the commercial, they usually give you the number not once, but three times.

That’s significant. It’s not twice, it’s not four times. And it’s three for a reason.

The repetition from the commercial is now ingrained in your memory. It’s like having a song so stuck in your head that you start singing it without realizing.

Use repetition with your marketing messages to help your audience remember them.

How to do it

Repetitive marketing can work really well on social media.

The main thing to remember is to stay consistent with everything. Your message, your content, your brand, and your engagement. You’re indirectly “selling” every time you help someone, or write a great article solving someone’s problem.

Something else to concentrate on is sticking to whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. Set a blogging schedule and stick to it. Visit your most successful social channels every day, and stick to that strategy.

Do that over and again, and you’ll start to see the psychological effects of repetition. Your followers will see you as someone that’s helpful, with knowledge and stability. Because when your ideas are consistently there, people become attached to that idea.

The comprehension factor

There are all types of psychological ways to improve the clarity of your message, so your audience better understands it.

You can do so either logically or emotionally.

Under the umbrella of these two comprehension factors lies a whole community of triggers and responses that are lying around in the human brain.

Let me explain the logical side first. These are the ways you can reach people using this frame of mind.

Left-brained marketing

Let’s brush up. The left side of the brain is known for controlling the right side of the body, and the more academic sides of the brain.

Left-brained marketing describes products and services from a practical standpoint. It talks about what you get, why you need it, and why no one else does it like they do.

In the article above, they explain how facts, testimonials, and other truths and hard evidence that make us realize that this is the right product for us to purchase.

Appeal to this side of the brain by stating facts to the reader. If they do this one thing, this other thing will happen. Cut and dry, no sugar coating. That’s the way it is.

It’s a pretty straightforward approach that most marketers use today. And while that used to work a lot back in the day, today’s consumer’s attention span makes that a lot harder.

Can the logical approach be used alone to grab sales? Sure.

When you can make your case in the few seconds the audience is paying attention, it will work.

However, it works better when coupled with creating emotion. That’s going to put you on the road to faster conversions and more customers.

How to do it

Tell it like it is. Show your audience why they need your product, how they could use it, and what it can do for them.

The right-brained marketer

The right side of your brain is where creativity is stored. Right-brained marketing doesn’t necessarily sell the product, but the dream.

Your product is only a bridge to take the customer where they want to go.

When appealing to this, focus on building a robust and personality-rich social marketing plan that spreads brand awareness and gets people talking about the product. They use a massive amount of visuals. They’re focused less on the product, and more on the person using the it. That drives a connection.

How to do it

Visuals are your friend when it comes to getting people to connect with your product or service.

If you were trying to sell a timeshare in Florida, you wouldn’t show an image of the condo, but rather of a family having fun and making memories on the beach, with the condo in the background.

You are painting an image in the reader’s head of the result you want them to be thinking about after they do whatever it is you’re wanting them to do.

It’s connecting them on an emotional level.

Final thoughts

You need to use all of the tools that you have at your disposal.

A carpenter wouldn’t go to work with just a hammer and nail, without a tape measure, pencil, and saw. Even though he’s known for the hammer and nail, these other tools help him get the whole job done.

If you aren’t using science and psychology in your marketing today, then you aren’t using all of the tools at your disposal.

When creating your campaigns, ask yourself these questions:

• How does this factually make the case for your product?
• Does this move me on any level, does it make me feel something?

Having conversations will level the playing field and help you to understand what you need to say and do to help your customers. From there, it’s a fine-tuning process.

This is all one small step for science, one giant leap for the marketing industry.

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Why Do People Share What They Do? Here's What Neuroscience, Psychology and Relationships Tell Us About Highly Shareable Content

What makes you stop scrolling through an article, open up a social media app and hit the share button?

Is it logic, emotion, or something else?

Turns out, there’s more to social sharing than just measuring metrics:Psychology.

The strange nature of our brains is the reason we hotly debate the color of a dress or why we freely and emotionally share a post by a grieving widow after the death of her husband or why we feel an urgent need to pass on that video of the ice-cream eating dog to our animal-loving father-in-law. (Guilty!)

It’s not logic that guides those shares; it’s emotion. How else can you explain 8.2 million hits to a YouTube music video that a majority of people claim to have not liked?

If you want your content to be shared and shared regularly, understanding the “why” and “how” behind social shares can go a long way in showing you how tocraft the perfect post for your audience. In order to do so, you might want to:

1. Understand why people share content
2. Know what kind of content they’re more likely to share
3. Set about the task of creating content that satisfies those emotions

We’ve put together a few handy tips on how to understand what your audience wants and start the process of delivering it to them.

5 Reasons Why People Share to Social Media

1. Neuroscience: We share to entertain, inspire, and be useful

Even though social media does have a tendency of having people focus on themselves, the primary reason that people share things on their Facebook pages or Twitter feeds, research shows, is to be useful to others.

In a 2013 study conducted by psychologists at UCLA, the researchers were, for the first time, able to determine which brain regions are associated with ideas that become contagious and which regions are associated with being an effective communicator of ideas.

The TPJ or the temporoparietal junction is this area of the brain that lit up during functional magnetic resonance imagine (fMRI) brain scans when people were first exposed to new ideas that they would later recommend.

Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA professor of psychology and of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and author of the book Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect, noted:

Our study suggests that people are regularly attuned to how the things they’re seeing will be useful and interesting, not just to themselves, but also to other people. We always seem to be on the lookout for who else will find thishelpful, amusing or interesting, and our brain data are showing evidence of that. At the first encounter with information, people are already using the brain network involved in thinking about how this can be interesting to other people. We’re wired to want to share information with other people. I think that is a profound statement about the social nature of our minds.

2. Psychology: We share to express who we really are

In 1986, psychologists Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius recognized that there is a disparity between our “now self” and our “possible self.”

In a paper they published at the time, they developed the concept of our possible selves:

1. the ideal selves that we would like to become
2. the selves that we could become, and
3. the selves that we are afraid of becoming

This first self, the idealized version of ourselves is what we frequently tend to share on social media.

Whether or not this representation of our possible self is realistic or not is irrelevant, researchers note. The point is that we’re picturing in our minds this possible self that we are or may someday be and sharing information that fits in with this notion of who we are.

When we share in this mode, sometimes what we’re sharing is a sense of our ideal self and who we aspire to be. This is why some people share political commentary, outrage over particular issues, and success stories of people who they hope they can be like someday.

As the authors themselves so eloquently note:

Possible selves contribute to the fluidity or malleability of the self because they are differentially activated by the social situation and determine the nature of the working self-concept. At the same time, the individual’s hopes and fears, goals and threats, and the cognitive structures that carry the are defining features of the self-concept: these features provide some of the most compelling evidence of continuity of identity across time.

3. Community: To nurture our relationships

Whenever I see a funny comic about procrastination, I share it with my closest friend, a proud procrastinator. Whenever I see a funny dog video, I send it straight to my father-in-law, the animal lover.

Every time I see any of these things, I feel an immediate connection to those people. I think of them and feel the urge to share what I’ve found with them.

I’m not alone.

In a study undertaken by The New York Times Customer Insight Group in conjunction with Latitude Research titled “The Psychology of Sharing: Why Do People Share Online?” 78% of respondents said that they shared information online because it let them stay connected to people they may not otherwise stay in touch with.

Further, 73% of them said they shared information because it allowed them to connect with others who shared their interests.

4. Motivation: To feel more involved

In my days of daily journalism, an editor at a local newspaper once told me his fix for a slow news day.

Dogs and babies.

“They’re cute,” he would say. “They pull at your heartstrings. No one can resist a cuddly dog or a cute baby. Preferably both together.”

The medium may have changed but the message hasn’t. People still love cuddly dogs, cute babies, preferably both together.

In fact, as far back as fifty years ago, studies were being undertaken to see why people talked about brands and coming to the same conclusions that we are today. In 1966, in a study reported on by the Harvard Business Review, the researcher Earnest Dichter found that 64% of sharing is about the sharer themselves.

He noted that there were four motivations for a person to communicate about a brand.

1. The first (about 33% of the time) was because of product-involvement, that isthe experience was so good, unique, or new that it had to be shared.
2. The second (about 24%) was self-involvement, that is, to gain attention byshowing people that you were part of an exclusive club of buyers or had inside information.
3. The third (around 20%) was other-involvement, that is wanting to help out and express caring or friendship.
4. And finally, the fourth (also around 20%) was message-involvement, that is,the message was so wonderful or funny or brilliant that it deserved to be shared.

5. Altruism: To get the word out about specific causes

In the New York Times Customer Insight Group report, 84% of respondents said they share because “it is a way to support causes or issues they care about.”

In fact, the report further goes to show that 85% of people say reading other people’s responses helps them understand and process information and events. So not only do we share information about the causes that are dear to us, but we respond to causes that are dear to other people if they take the time to share that information with us through social media.

Remember the ALS Ice Bucket challenge?

What People Share and How to Make Your Content Go Viral

In a research study titled “Why Content Goes Viral,” assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business Jonah Berger (who you may also know as the author of the book Contagious) and co-author Katy Milkman looked at 7,000 articles published at The New York Times to see which ones got the most views and social shares and why. The goal of the study was to document what makes content go viral and how to replicate those findings to create viral content.

This infographic from CoSchedule does a great job capturing some of the findings of the study:

The researchers from the study came up with three key ideas based on their findings:

1. Positive content trumps negativity

You may not know it from your Facebook feed, but Berger and Milkman found that positive content and stories were far more likely to be shared and to go viral than negative news stories.

Are you surprised by this finding? Most people are. But the reason bad news sticks in our minds more than good news is because of our brain’s “negativity bias.” Human brains are wired to react with greater sensitivity to bad news and feedback than anything positive, and so you may see and hear a hundred pieces of positive news throughout your day but remember that one news story about a sick child. It also explains why you remember an insult or attack decades after all the compliments and accolades have been forgotten.

Yet, research shows that if you want your content to go viral and reach more people, it has more of a likelihood of doing so if it comes in a positive package.

How to create positive content

Try framing events in a positive context. Research shows that superlatives can be super effective in headlines. For example:

• Best
• Biggest
• Greatest

As Courtney explains in this post, Buffer’s focus on positivity and happinessmeans that we turn this technique inside out with posts such as 10 Things To Stop Doing Today to Be Happier, Backed by Science.

2. Content that evokes high arousal emotions does better

This is probably not quite as surprisingly, but Berger and Milkman found that the more a piece of content could evoke a high-arousal emotion such as awe, anger, anxiety, fear, sadness, humor, or wonder, the better its chances of being shared repeatedly and going viral.

That’s why counter-intuitive takes on issues do so well and why articles that make you angry are often the ones that you forward to friends.

In fact, this is backed up by our own research here at Buffer. In a recent experiment, we found that one of the key things that makes images go viral is an element of surprise.

In the NYT study, the articles that scored highly on different dimensions were:

Emotionality:

• Redefining Depression as Mere Sadness
• When All Else Fails, Blaming the Patient Often Comes Next

Positivity:

• Wide-Eyed New Arrivals Falling in Love with the City
• Tony Award for Philanthropy

(Low-scoring)

• Web Rumors Tied to Korean Actress’s Suicide
• Germany: Baby Polar Bear’s Feeder Dies

Awe:

• Rare Treatment Is Reported to Cure AIDS Patient
• The Promise and Power of RNA

Anger:

• What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses
• Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million

Anxiety

• For Stocks, Worst Single-Day Drop in Two Decades
• Home Prices Seem Far From Bottom

Sadness

• Maimed on 9/11, Trying to Be Whole Again
• Obama Pays Tribute to His Grandmother After She Dies

How to create emotional content

One of the driving forces for emotional content is someone’s first touch with your content: the headline.

There are some amazingly useful tools out there to help ensure your headline packs the right emotional punch.

• CoSchedule Headline Analyzer – This fantastic tool will quickly tell you how to improve your headlines by scoring you on your word choices. It takes a look at the words in your headline and sorts them into four categories: common, uncommon, emotional, and power. The more emotional and power words, the better your headline.
• Advanced Marketing Institute Headline Analyzer – This free tool analyzes your headlines to determine the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score of your headline. The tool analyzes the total number of EMV words in relation to the total number of words in the headline and comes up with a score.

3. Practical and useful information wins out every time

Finally, no surprise to anyone who has read and shared our own content here at Buffer (thank you, by the way!), content that helps you solve a problem, gives you actionable tips, and shows you practical strategies for living your life is destined for success as long as it can meet the needs of a large number of people and do it in a unique and interesting way.

How to create practical, useful content

In her article Transforming Content From Lifeless to Actionable, blogger Amanda Gallucci offers the following tips on how to do this effectively. She writes:

1. Involve your audience: This might involve comments, surveys, or questions, but most importantly, referencing your audience in the content itself. Gallucci suggests creating interactive modules that readers can use within the content itself.
2. Link your research to applications: Research and numbers are great, but showing how users can apply that research to their lives or solving their problems can be a great way of providing value.
3. Look beyond your industry: When it comes to inspiration, don’t let your industry experts be the only thing that guides you towards creating useful content that is a match for your audience. If your business focuses on finances and numbers, considering learning from creative businesses, and vice versa.
4. State the intended outcome early on: Whenever you’re creating a piece of content, it’s always a good idea to state, right upfront, what the visitor or reader will get if he or she reaches the end of the article. Make a promise to your reader to teach or educate them, and then keep it.
5. Think ahead: One of the best things you can do for your content is to have an editorial calendar that guides your day-to-day content decisions and gives you the flexibility and room to comment on industry-specific events and anniversaries and give readers an analysis of any big news that comes up in your space.

So there you have it. Be positive, touch on some emotions, and be useful. The three keys to creating content that gets shared again and again. And again.

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