7 tips and tricks to use Psychological Marketing for your business

Remember: What is psychological marketing?

Psychological marketing is a strategy to trigger positive emotional responses from your consumers to incite them to buy from your business.

Psychological marketing is a great strategy to give you new exciting ideas to increase purchases or visibility for your business. It’s about making consumers feel like they have the power in whether they buy or not from you, yet helping them along the buying process with certain psychological marketing tips put in place on your website.

1. The power of Color Psychology
What’s your favorite color?

Color can have a surprisingly powerful impact on a consumers behavior and purchase decisions. The color could even be the one reason why a consumer buys from you and so it’s an important psychological marketing strategy to consider when working on your website design. Peoples’ attention is nine times out of ten directed towards the visual appearance of a site than what is written and so it’s important you choose the right color that represents your business, and what you want consumers to perceive from your site.

Color psychology is about influencing consumers on their purchase decisions. Different colors represent different feelings.
For example:

• Red: a color of urgency associated with movement or excitement. This is normally used during sales.

• Green: a calming color that promotes nature and harmony in the brain. Generally used for environmental issues.

• Blue: a color representing reliability, security and accessibility. A color often used by financial groups.

• Purple: a color representing creativity, problem-solving and luxury. Brands such as Cadbury or Hallmark use this color.

REMEMBER

• Color psychology can have a powerful effect on a consumers behavior and decisions
• A lot of importance is put on a website’s visual appearance
• Different colors influence people in different ways

2. Social Proof your content
20 shares last week, 40 yesterday, 100 today, when will it stop?

We all like to be reassured that what we’re reading, buying and using is also being read and enjoyed by others. So if you’ve got content that you want people to share, add social media sharing buttons, along with the number of people who’ve read, shared or commented on your content. New visitors will be much more likely to share your content if they see that others have already done so, proving its credibility and popularity. This is a specifically good thing to add if you have a blog on your website. It allows you to manage your article’s visibility and understand how well your content is coming across to readers.

REMEMBER

• Place social media sharing buttons at the end of your content
• Show the number of people who have shared/commented to incite others to share your content

3. Implement the Anchoring Effect
Let’s be honest, €9,99 sounds better than €10 even if it is just 1p saved.

The anchoring effect in psychological marketing is a strategy used to get consumers to make a decision based on comparative values rather than intrinsic values. So it’s an essential marketing strategy when thinking about your pricing strategy. Think about it in these two ways:

• Let take the example of a bottle of Sprite. A 12oz can costs €1.39 but a 25oz bottle costs €1.59. For just 20 cents more you can get nearly double as much Sprite. Bearing in mind that both are still expensive for what you get, consumers will more likely buy the bigger bottle because they think they’re getting a good deal.

• Secondly if you’re running a sale always put the previously higher price next to the lower price. Even if the price is still relatively high, the initial price was anchored and consumers perceive that they found a good deal.

The anchoring effect on consumers makes them take decisions based on the current fact without thinking whether it’s the best overall decision…obviously their decision to buy is good for you but be careful to not go too far for consumers to find out the traps in this approach .

REMEMBER

• The anchoring effect is a strategy to get consumers to make decisions on comparative values
• If you’re running a sale put the higher previous price next to the new lower price
• This technique makes the consumer feel like they’ve got a great deal even if the final price is still fairly high

4. Play on the Scarcity effect
Once it’s gone, it’s gone!

Remember when you were wanting to book a hotel on booking.com and it said ‘Only 2 rooms left at this price’? Well that’s scarcity, and a psychological marketing technique used by lots of websites to put pressure on consumers to buy. It all goes back to the simple supply and demand formula; the less availability of a product there is, the more the value increases and therefore leads to an increase in the demand for that product.

Let’s take Facebook as an example. In the early days it was only available for Harvard students, then Ivy League got access which then lead to it being available to college students nationwide. After that it was available to school kids then selected companies. By 2006 it was available to the whole world. Facebook now has billions of users yet at the beginning was only accessible to an exclusive group, but then others wanted in too. Its limited access increased the appeal and helped grow its popularity that we know of today.

REMEMBER

• Scarcity goes back to the simple supply and demand formula
• The less you have of a product and the more valuable it is leads to higher purchase demand

5. The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon
It’s like déjà-vu all over again.

Have you ever noticed when you’re looking at clothes or furniture on a website, then go on another website and they pop up again in an ad on the page? Well this all links to the famous Baader-Meinhof phenomenon; you see a word or a piece of information for the first time and then it pops up elsewhere, and you’re thinking ‘That’s weird. I’ve just read about that recently’ .

And it’s because of this phenomenon that marketers need to focus on nurturing consumers to understand their online behavior. Once you see someone clicking on your website a lot and visiting the same pages twice, you need to swoop in and take advantage of this. And retargeting campaigns is a great way to subtly (but also make sure you’re everywhere ) remind consumers that they were looking at your products/services thus increasing the chances of them converting into paying customers.

REMEMBER

• The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is when you see a piece of information once then it appears somewhere else afterwards
• Put in place a retargeting campaign for customers who interact a lot on your site to get them to convert into buying from you

6. The fear of missing out
A bit like when you have to work whilst your friends are all on holiday.

We all hate FOMO (fear of missing out), just like if you have to work late and all your friends are in a bar, well it’s the same when purchasing a product/service. For example, a consumer is pondering over a product on your website wondering whether they should go for it or not, and you need to implement something to push them that just bit closer to completing the order.
A good technique (especially for e-commerce sites) is to put a countdown clock. This could be on a product page, a countdown clock showing how long a consumer has left to get next day delivery. Another technique could be once the product is in the basket, a countdown to how long it will stay in the basket to put pressure on the consumer to finalize the order.

You may have noticed these techniques being used on Made.com and Ventes Privés. For example with Ventes Privés you normally have 15 minutes to complete your order. This technique puts this fear of missing out onto the consumer if they don’t buy in time.

REMEMBER

• A countdown effect on your page will put some pressure on consumers to buy
• It puts the ‘fear of missing out’ feeling if they don’t buy in time

7. Provide real reasons to buy from you
Show your consumers why they shouldn’t not buy from you.

As well as using specific techniques such as the countdown one, you also need to show your consumers why your products are so great to buy. This can be done by providing context such as customer reviews. Positive (I hope you don’t have any negative ones!) reviews reassure potential customers that others are also buying from you and had a good experience with your business. Reassurance is one of the keys for persuading potential customers to buy from you, they need to know that you’re credible and provide a good service.

REMEMBER

• Provide context for potential buyers by displaying positive product reviews
• Consumers need to know why they should buy the products from you and not anyone else

Conclusion

Psychological marketing techniques are used to trigger consumers to buy from you whether this be through color psychology, countdown effects or playing on the display of discounted prices. These are subtle ways to influence a consumer’s decision and can be a great way to increase your business sales.