Usage of Psychology in Digital Marketing
How Important is Psychology in Marketing?
Companies are adapting to the new forms of marketing techniques to quickly test and understand audience behaviour. Consumers are becoming more aware and questioning the brands regarding the value earned after buying any product or service. Situations like these have forced many of the MNC’s to start integrating design thinking, human-centred design for developing products etc as these principles help to empathize with consumers and provide solutions efficiently and effectively.
Most of the time we aren’t aware that brands are investing in various tools and methods to deeply segment the data for developing the products, re-design the existing category etc. For example, a tool like Crazyegg will help the firm to understand user behaviour when they visit your landing page.
( i.e. Heat Mapping — A heatmap is a graphical representation of data that uses a system of colour-coding to represent different values. Heat Maps are used in various forms of analytics but are most commonly used to show user behaviour on specific webpages or web page templates.)
There are multiple processes involved in this Psychological process :
- Persuasion Architecture
- Emotion-Driven Behavior
- Social Proof
- Scarcity and Loss Aversion
- Reciprocity
- Commitment and Consistency
- Anchoring
A. Persuasion Architecture:
It means simply designing the website to engage, understand, Recommend and Convert the audience. A conversion can be anything like downloading a whitepaper, reading an article, going to the website — it is any action that meets the objective of the email, social, search, display ad etc. One of the most important findings of consumer psychology is to make things simple and clear for the audience/customer i.e. to avoid any hindrances that might hamper the conversion. Making it easy would simplify it for any user ( Inspiration from the Feynman Learning Technique could be applicable here — Organizing the content into a simple narrative that you can tell )
To make the conversions clear it’s important to understand the psychological cues that will lead to action. They are divided into implicit and explicit cues.
Explicit visual cues
These kinds of cues are direct and can easily be pointed out on the page. Using arrows, lines, pointing fingers, and human line of sight are a few ways explicit visual cues can be used on post-click landing pages.
Implicit visual cues
These cues are subtle and often go unnoticed by visitors. However, they do their job of highlighting particular elements quite well. Some of the most commonly used implicit visual cues on post-click landing pages include white space, colour contrast, and encapsulation.
For eg:-
*Above image clearly explains how Implicit cue is the call-to-action ( Both Register for demo class & Learn more about the program ) and Explicit cue is the woman pointing towards the text “ Certificate Program in Digital Marketing”
[This is supported by the discovery of the Triune brain, in the 1960s, by neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean who identified that there are 3 main parts to the brain:
1. The Human (new) — responsible for language, learning, conscious thoughts and our personalities
2. The Mammalian (middle) — deals with our moods, emotions and hormones.
3. The Reptilian (old) — in charge of our most basic survival functions — eating, breathing and fight-or-flight reactions. Significant research by Christophe Morin has discovered that the “old” brain is actually responsible for driving buying decisions and that it tends to be initially engaged by imagery more than text. — This excerpt was taken to explain the scientific aspect of our brain from a case study]
B. Emotion-Driven Behavior
In today’s world, we all look into various data points /factors before purchasing any product/services. But honestly, we make our decisions based on emotions and come up with explanations to back up our choices.
{As Douglas van Praet writes in his book, Unconscious Branding, “Influence is born by appealing to the emotions while overcoming rational restraints.” In fact, he claims that according to recent research conducted by Timothy Wilson at the University of Virginia, we make 90% of our decisions without consciously realizing we’re doing it. }
We can achieve the goal to trigger some action from the user with the help of creatives, storytelling, persuasive subject lines and compelling copy.
*[Free Webinar] Career Opportunities in a post-COVID era — is a great example of a persuasive subject line.
* It also showcases the user to click on the CTA button — “ Register Your Slot for the Webinar”
Another great example of storytelling is the brand story made by Paperboats and how their ads connected with the audience by reminding of their childhood memories with different flavours that give a feast for the customer’s taste buds.
Always remember people always connect with the story as those memories will be imprinted in your brain as images and stay forever. Thus it will lead the customers to rationalize their conscious decisions to meet their subconscious ones.
C. Social Proof
We tend to purchase or do things if someone in your network has done the same. For example, we naturally have a feeling to check a restaurant which is crowded or has been garnering lots of positive reviews rather than the one with no noise.
As many psychologists have mentioned it’s a common tendency or behaviour where people compare themselves with their peers. Common tactics employed by the companies are ( Positive reviews, customer testimonials, Influencer endorsements, growing your social media following, number of users or customers, awards & recognition etc)
*In this image, Basecamp is mentioning the data points ( 2,85,000 and how 20L projects have been fulfilled.
D. Scarcity and Loss Aversion
People purchase materials in a hurry if they come across the products in limited availability or to avoid loss of money by availing any discount offer. For example, Nike launched limited edition Jordan sneakers to create a sense of emergency among its customers. When OnePlus comes up with their new model and the price cut happens in the previous model, a certain set of customers purchase earlier models as it comes with a discount of up to 15%.
*It has a combination of the limited time offer and loss aversion factor. As the offer stands only for the day + 44% Off for the product.
*Nike and Jordan Brand unveils the 2017 BHM collection
E. Reciprocity
It’s human nature to dislike being indebted to others, which is the basis of the Reciprocity Principle. Companies need to offer something valuable to the customers, subscribers, followers etc. Consumers provide their data which is of high value to any company and customers are willing to give it up if the offer value is good enough to them. For example, Backlinko is asking their website visitors to provide their email ids in exchange for free exclusive traffic tips which will seem beneficial to the audience
*Backlinko is fetching mails by giving free tips to the visitors
*Amazon Prime — Here Amazon offers its prime users fast & free delivery on over 100 million items.
F. Commitment and Consistency
As a brand, if you can get the audience to sign up or subscribe there are high chances of purchase from those visitors. Most of the companies ask you to register an account before buying anything from their website. Few brands have simplified the process by collecting the data points on the go that’s required to create the account and finally leading to the purchase by customers. Another way to get the customers curious is by getting the products in your customer’s hands even in the absence of implicit or explicit commitments to buy.
*In this image Spotify is asking the visitors to download it and try premium for free ( Commitment to be given by the consumer by downloading it )
G. Anchoring
Anchoring is a cognitive bias otherwise known as a heuristic, that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information you receive (the “anchor”) when making decisions.
People make decisions based on the initial information they get access to as they are preoccupied with many other things in life. As a brand, it’s very important to give precise information without any error as it will hamper the overall growth if found.
In the above image, people might choose the second option as the pricing is less and the anchoring factor of saving 30% is lucrative for the potential customer.
Psychology will play a pivotal role in marketing and tools like SparkToro which provides audience behaviour just confirms the truth. It will be an integral part of any businesses that are launching their product/ service.
(* The idea of this content is inspired by Kath Pay, Marketing Director, Cloud.IQ )
