There’s a lot that goes on in the human brain when we decide to buy a product. Although not many marketers are psychologists, having a basic understanding of the science of psychology and its uses in marketing can be very helpful. Here’s how psychology can help you increase brand awareness that can ultimately lead to more sales.
What Is Marketing Psychology?
The concept of marketing psychology is simple: using the principles of psychology to influence more people to follow a brand and buy products or services. It’s also known as “neuromarketing” and it can be a powerful way to increase the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
Marketing Psychology 101
There are 10 main principles of marketing psychology that can be used in different contexts to produce results. Marketers need to understand their audience in order to choose the approach that will work best for their company and any given campaign. The 10 principles are:
- Priming: Getting a person ready to take the next step, such as increasing brand awareness to later influence purchasing.
- Reciprocity: Providing something to prompt the audience to give something in return.
- Social Proof: Relying on the trust in an influential person to gain new customers.
- The Decoy Effect: Using a “decoy” price to get someone to buy a more expensive option.
- Anchoring: Setting a price artificially high, then offering a sale to make it seem like a great deal.
- Scarcity: Limiting availability intentionally to increase value.
- The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon: Making it seem like a product or service is suddenly everywhere and extremely popular.
- The Verbatim Effect: Getting an audience to remember themes instead of a specific message.
- Clustering: Leveraging the tendency of people to group things together so they remember them more effectively.
- Loss aversion: A tactic that reminds people that they don’t want to lose what they have.
While some of these tactics can be ethically questionable in certain situations, it’s important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all method for using marketing psychology. You have to evaluate the situation and tailor your tactics to be as effective as possible while maintaining the necessary ethics.
Using Marketing Psychology to Increase Brand Awareness
Several of these 10 principles can be used to increase brand awareness. One of the most popular tactics today is using social proof to build a brand. Influencer marketing leverages the trust and influence people have built up with their social media audiences to create buzz and eventually sell products.
Brand awareness can be built in so many ways, from using the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon to get people curious about your brand, to priming and clustering. Using a variety of tactics, people will start to remember your brand and be ready to buy when the time is right.
When you reverse-engineer marketing psychology, you’ll see how brilliantly simple it is. You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand what makes people buy. People are impulsive and emotional in their buying habits, and the right words and images can easily sway them. Getting people to say “yes” doesn’t have to be difficult.
One of the most important things to remember when using marketing psychology is that no one likes to feel duped. When choosing your tactics, think about how you can leverage them while maintaining trust with your audience. You don’t want them to feel misled—they’ll never buy from you again!
