For a seller to do their job successfully, they must first know their customer and understand their customer’s wants and needs. To do these successfully, it is essential to understand human psychology.
Of course, marketers don’t need to have a psychology degree. Still, we can easily say that marketers can reach consumers more efficiently by using psychology theories, analyzing their customer base better, and making more sales.
This article will explain what marketing psychology is and how you can benefit from digital marketing psychology.
What is Marketing Psychology?
Marketing psychology can be defined as using various psychological principles from content, marketing, and sales strategies.
We can also think of marketing psychology to understand the decision mechanism which is people use when shopping.
4 Commonly Used Principles of Marketing Psychology
Let’s look at some of the common psychology principles used in marketing.
- The principle of reciprocity: This principle is based on the idea that when a brand does a favor to a customer, it will be rewarded; that is, the customer will do a favor for this brand.
- The principle of lack of knowledge: This principle is based on the principle that if there is a lack of information about a subject of interest, the person will do something to compensate for this deficiency.
- The scarcity principle: There is an understanding that people value rare things and that easily accessible things are not in demand.
- The social proof principle: This principle suggests that people consider other people’s thoughts and comments about the product when purchasing something.
Let’s examine these principles in more detail and how they are used.
- The Principle of Reciprocity
If you want to sell as a company, you have to think about the customer first. So to buy something, you have to give it first.
Because psychology shows us that to do a favor, people wait for a favor first. If you want people to shop from you, you must first offer them an attractive opportunity.
For example, having valuable guides and articles about the industry on your company’s website, sharing inspirational quotes on your social media accounts, sharing videos explaining how something is done will benefit the customer even when no shopping is in question.
- The principle of Lack of Knowledge
According to the information deficiency theory (incomplete information theory) developed by George Loewenstein in the early ‘90s, if there is a gap between what people know and what they want to know, an element of curiosity emerges.
Marketers use this principle in content marketing and social media marketing.
We observe that this method (titles in the form of question sentences) is frequently abused and used as click-bait. A person who sees that a blog post with a lovely title is empty may not stop by your blog again. For this reason, the content, as well as the title, should be appropriate and of high quality.
Companies want to direct their followers on their social media accounts to their websites and sell. For example, you can use the “scroll up” feature in Instagram Stories to drive traffic from the story to your website.
- The Scarcity Principle
Psychologists show that the harder it is to reach something, the more value it is.
It is possible to take advantage of scarcity because the thought that something is scarce, the thought that it will be over immediately, and the fear of not catching up activate the idea that people have unsatisfied needs.
When people fail to take advantage of a discount, they think they miss an opportunity and even lose their freedom of choice.
Limited product: We often see it on cheap airline ticket websites. The last five seats are left on the plane. People decide faster if they have a limited number of seats left. If they see 130 empty seats on the plane, they close the page to later purchase. However, if there are five seats left, there may be no tickets left after an hour.
Exclusive access: Brands offer exclusive access to add a premium flair to some of their products and services. In other words, having a product or service that not everyone has and only certain people can access creates a sense of importance in people. The hardware and software are the same as the regular version, but with minor visual differences, this product is marketed as a “limited edition.”
When purchasing a product or service to be included in the upper segment for an extra fee, having a pro package instead of the basic package is what people desire.
- The Social Evidence Principle
Robert Cialdini, who is considered a veteran in marketing and psychology and wrote the book called “The Psychology of Persuasion” argues that when people are hesitant to do something, they look around and get ideas from them.
On the other hand, social proof marketing takes a step forward from word of mouth and benefits from experts, celebrities, and users’ comments and opinions.
Include expert opinion: Experts in their field acquire their expertise not with a revelation from heaven but with their experience working on this subject for years. Thinking from this angle, you should get experts’ opinions in the field while marketing a product. One of the most common examples is that dentists are always featured in toothpaste advertisements.
Get help from a famous person: This is now called ‘‘influencer marketing’’. When a famous, popular, phenomenon person advertises your product or service, their followers and fans become more inclined to buy the product in question because of the love and admiration they feel for this person.
Include customer comments and feedback: Most of the time, word of mouth is the best marketing. If customers are satisfied with the product they purchased, they can tell or recommend this to their family and friends.
Understand the Purchasing Cycles of Consumers
First of all, you need to understand the purchasing cycles of consumers. This is because you have to have a different marketing effort for the different cycles.
After the consumer realizes that they have a problem, they start looking for products to fix it. After finding different product alternatives in the research process, it enters the comparison cycle.
Here, the price, features, benefits of the product are looked at. Then the user starts a more detailed search. In the last stage, the purchasing process is entered.
Remember that Consumers can Make Instant Decisions.
While consumers do not have any special needs, they can only make instant purchasing decisions while spending time on e-commerce sites.
These instant decisions are often influenced by factors such as how the product is presented, how attractive it is, and how it stimulates consumers’ emotions. To achieve this, there are several works you need to do on your e-commerce site.
It is essential to improve your product pages while working on mass psychology. Additional detailed information about the products, quality photos, product videos, catchy and remarkable explanations, and user comments play an important role in influencing the consumers’ instant purchasing decisions.
Especially emphasizing the visuality and using product photos that are interesting, intriguing, and will trigger the users’ emotions will be influential in instant purchasing decisions.
Make Your Visuals Stand Out
Visuality has a significant influence on marketing psychology. Especially today, even visuality can affect consumers’ purchasing decisions, reveals the importance of this issue. You should prioritize visuality in your site designs, product photos, product packaging and marketing, and advertising content.
Especially the impressive product photos should be one of your primary works in this process. In addition to the high resolution of the products’ photos, the white background promotional photos of the product and photos that affect consumers by showing a specific area of use will boost your marketing efforts’ performance.
