The Science Behind Online Decision-Making. A Review.

What do sour cream and orange juice have in common? I don’t know, but the brain has some pretty wild connective associations going on.

Let me explain.

When you see sour cream, there is a part of your brain that is also thinking about orange juice. Sounds weird? Probably, but this concept actually has a super useful application in marketing. Or to be exact, for conversion optimization.

The concept I am talking about is called implicit associations. And what I really thought was fascinating, is how it’s been used to increase the number of bookings for a hostel.

One of the most important aspects of choosing the right hostel is safety, especially for women. But if you straight-up talk about safety on your landing page, you actually seem like less of a safe hostel, to begin with.

I think it’s kind of like when someone wants to appear confident. Nobody will think you are a confident person, by saying you are confident. In fact, people will assume the opposite.

So the question is, how can you communicate the benefit of safety, without scaring people away by naming it directly.

Simple. You use implicit associations. Now the question becomes, what is associated with safety? Well, it’s quite obvious once you know it because it’s…

*drumbeats*

… the cleanliness of a hostel.

Yes, cleanliness is implicitly associated with the safety of a hostel. And I think it’s easy to understand if you ask yourself this one simple question:

Would you book a hostel, which looks dirty? Hell no.

But not being aware of implicit associations doesn’t make you draw such conclusions necessarily. So it’s really interesting to know about things like these when you want to optimize the copy and conversion on your own website. Thinking about implicit associations can communicate key benefits that otherwise don’t increase conversions when stated directly.

This is what I learned in week 3 of the CXL digital psychology & persuasion certification program. I have to admit, I really got sparkling eyes while watching the video presentations this week. It really made me feel excited somehow. Like I discovered something important that will get me closer to becoming a great marketer and copywriter. 🤪

The next part of the decision-making course was about how scientists measure attention, emotion, and memory. These are three critical things you need to help people make a decision. I liked being able to see behind the curtains of the experimental part of psychology.

It was also kind of a funny presentation. Seeing attractive girls and not noticing a Godzilla in the background was quite amusing and showed how certain automated attention ‘trigger’ really can direct your focus for example. As humans, we are wired to pay attention to faces… and breasts :)

But attention alone isn’t enough to ‘force’ decision making. So the next part talked about emotions and how they are measured. It was interesting to see how psychologists today use some crazy tech and eye-tracking software to measure real-time responses of people consuming specific content on websites. Seeing where people feel emotional highs, and how these emotional highs affect decision making like purchase behavior was really interesting to see.

Lastly, the presentation went over the importance of memory. Imagine you have generated attention and an emotional response. Your potential customers might be hooked, but it all doesn’t matter when they can’t process what it’s all about… and more importantly, not remember what your website or ad was all about.

And the best part?

In the end, the presenter showed two different tv commercials. I really loved seeing the principles I just talked about (attention, emotion, memory) in action and how they’re applied in the two video ads they showed at the end.

The question then was…

“Which of these 2 TV ads was a success and which one decreased sales by actually 10%?”

Ten. Freakin’. Percent.

Wow. Obviously, I watched these commercials a couple of times. In the end, one of the commercials simply didn’t connect the product with the content of the commercial. So there was a disconnect between what’s being advertised and what people actually saw.

People simply didn’t remember what the commercial was about or how it connects to the product itself. Definitely a great lesson. I hope they will show some more case studies like that in the next courses as well. Would be amazing.

Oh, and one more thing…

This week, there was actually one thing that really confused me.

The study guide has a few topics listed that are required to pass the exam, but they aren’t covered inside the courses. It’s 2 topics specifically in module 1:

• Task switching (attention basics course)
• Integral vs incidental emotions (decision-making course)

These 2 are listed as a requirement for the exam… but I couldn’t find or see anything about them in the courses…

So I wrote a message to the support and they said its all good, as long as you watch the courses you’ll know everything you need.

I’m still a bit confused about it though, but let’s see. I just ended up asking my good old friend Google about it and created an extra note in my summaries for it. Should be enough I guess :)

Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on the study guide, since from Monday 22th of June I’ll start with module 2 of the certification program. Module 2 will be all about neuromarketing & persuasion models.

I actually can’t wait to get to the cognitive biases in module 2. They already teased going much much deeper into cognitive biases in module 1. So I’m stoked to see, what I’ll discover in module 2 finally. I might even take a sneak peek at the cognitive biases course just because I can.

With that being said…

I will now pay close attention to implicit associations people make, as well as have a better understanding of tv commercial principles. So time to watch some TV commercials after a long time of not watching TV at all.

See ya next week for the review of week 4.

Till then,

Sascha