Effective Psychological Tactics in Marketing

In B2C business, it is vital for marketers to understand how customers think, feel and act in order to meet their needs. Knowing what motivates your ideal audience and putting your customer first, sets you up for success. This insight will tackle how predicting, understanding, and affecting human behavior plays a part in marketing, by illustrating campaigns and brands that excellently created a connection with people using psychological tactics.

The first thing in marketing, that makes sense is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and understand how they make buying decisions. Nowadays, 67% of buyer decision processes can be done digitally, thanks to eCommerce and technology in general. It’s vital to know that all consumers may not be at the same level of awareness about their need for your product, therefore, you have to consider how to trigger the consumer’s emotional needs such as; the need to feel accomplished, hunger, or illness, just to name a few. As soon as consumers realize what they want, they are driven to seek a brand that can help meet their needs. The buyer decision process can certainly be impacted with an intention through advertisements. When your target consumer starts their journey, it’s vital for your business to appear in the searches. Make sure your business is visible to the customers you want to target through social media and Google ads. Here are perfect examples:

Impulse buying is simply an act of making unplanned purchases. Many of us have done this one way or another. Emotions play a massive part in impulse buying. According to a study, the consumer’s emotional state affects their buying behavior, both positively and negatively. This is proven by what happened in 2020 during the pandemic, fears of shortages and price increases led to large-scale buying impulse buying, but that’s for another day. Impulse buying doesn’t necessarily mean spending a whole fortune on a product but when consumers feel that the product will serve them well and save their money in the long run they feel the need to buy. Miniso, a Chinese brand has mastered the art of psychological marketing. They use various promotional strategies and the one popular one is the Buy One, Get One Free (BOGO) promotion in its store. This makes shoppers feel like they have greatly gained from their favorite store. In addition, the in-store experience at Miniso is one-of-a-kind, it’s designed colorfully and products are arranged aesthetically making it hard for buyers to resist leaving empty-handed. To encourage impulse buying, create a welcoming store environment and use trendy background music that is obviously aligned with your brand tone.

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of understanding people, especially for businesses that exist to serve people. To achieve effective marketing, a brand must aim to create an instant connection and color psychology can’t be neglected in this process. The first thing to note is that each color symbolizes a meaning and is capable of triggering strong emotions in your customers. Typically blue symbolizes trustworthiness, red sparks up passion and motivation, and orange stands for confidence. We could go on and on but here the point is being able to understand your customers' beliefs and cultures you will know which colors to use. For instance, when we are creating an eCommerce website or a conversion-oriented page as creative designers, one of the tactics to use to increase your conversion rate is using the color red for the CTA buttons as it’s proven to be more effective if compared to a green button. From experience, we have discovered that using the red color will trigger the buyers to click and such tactics can increase the conversion rate. According to the study that was done, the conversion rate increased by 21% without altering anything else on the website. Obviously, there are cases and cases, and the N.1 suggestion we can give is to always coordinate and consult with your brand designer or creative marketing agency to understand how to move accordingly in the best direction without affecting the consistency of your visual brand guidelines.

Have you ever found yourself buying products or using services after seeing the reviews or reports of how well they worked? Customers tend to spend 31% more on businesses with the best reviews. That’s the power of social proof! Human beings have fears and in marketing these fears can be leveraged to capture their attention so they identify they need your products. One of the fears that marketers take advantage of FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out. By compiling testimonials and stories about your product from clients, you are able to create a FOMO effect for your ideal target audience. Typically, humans fall for authentic stories and once they see tons of people behind a story, they have no option but to follow too. Patagonia brand specializes in designing outdoor clothing for silent sports such as climbing, surfing, and skiing. It uses stories of its clients to reflect the level of appreciation clients have and to influence ideal customers to be part of it. Additionally, these reviews show the quality of the product which strengthens the brand’s mission and position in the market. Celebrity endorsement is a great investment to consider as it magically puts your brand at the forefront. Another interesting example is Tracy’s dog adult toys product review that stood out and started trending putting the brand’s product in the spotlight. The review was very well narrated about how the customer had bought the toy for sexual pleasure because a friend recommended it to her. In her review, she explained in detail how she used this toy to send her to cloud nine of pleasure. The product met and exceeded her expectations. Her review was shared on Twitter and retweeted with over 10 thousand retweets. This was a great moment for the brand to leverage the attention and boost their brand awareness.

Human beings tend to reciprocate when others do something for them and this is another psychological tactic marketers can use to “sow” seeds for a good return of “harvest”. Take a second to imagine yourself as a customer at your favorite store, how do you want to be treated as you make a choice to buy their new product? You want to feel free to ask, free to know more, and to feel a sense of belonging even after buying from them. In marketing, you need to consider how your brand can give value such as freebies, free trials, anniversary, or birthday messages. Once you honor your customers in this way, they feel acknowledged and appreciated and it motivates them to reciprocate in different ways. Nowadays social media is the most effective place to give that client love and receive it back through User Generated Content (UGC). Dropbox is a free service that allows users to store their documents, photos, and videos conveniently. It created a successful referral campaign that made its services have millions of subscribers in almost two years! By referring a friend to use Dropbox, one can get 500MB of storage and the referee receives the incentive. Spotify was able to build its successful business with more than 75 million fans of music through Word-Of-Mouth. Their first campaign required users to join through an email invitation. In an effort to make their service viral, Spotify's marketing team gave users five invites to share with their friends. This strategy became a successful one and many other digital companies such as Google Plus and Clubhouse have replicated it in their business models.

It is undeniable that marketing and psychology are closely related. You cannot achieve a successful marketing campaign without considering people’s thought processes and behaviors. If you know your customers' fears, pain points, and needs, you can help them discover the solution you can offer, and earn their trust in the process. Don’t take for granted precious moments when clients share great feedback, turn them into social proof and this creates a great feeling of belonging in their minds. We can go on and on talking about how you can apply these tips but if you want to know more, we are more than ready to help your business create authentic connections with your clients.