How Psychological Insights Help In Content Marketing
Psychology and Marketing go a lot similarly than people care to realize. If you don’t have appropriate know-how of what your customers believe and how they behave, then what’s the point of making all those planned strategies? To make compelling content, you need to be aware of what compels your audience. Psychology is the main source of finding out why people behave the way they do and learning about consumer behavior is what joins psychology and marketing together.
Gaining knowledge of a few of the basic psychological principles and then applying those principles to your strategy is what makes content go from average to great. Whether you’re building a website, an app, a new business, or running a social media platform, knowing these psychological insights will help you reach your goal. These aren’t tips of deception used to trick consumers, rather helpful tactics that optimize your user experience and have the potential to convert traffic into leads for your brand.
In this blog, we discuss the basic psychological insights and how they can help in your content marketing strategies.
1. Social Proof
Although a well-known concept, this still can not be left out of the list. Social proof is what your audience requires before deciding to invest in your products. More than half of the world’s population buys any product only after it’s recommended by friends and family members rather than trusting the marketing content from a brand they just heard about.
To make this work for your brand, show people that they can trust you. Encourage customers to leave reviews so that others can follow through with their footsteps, present real-life success stories from your brand, make testimonials, etc. One common approach to implementing social proof is used by restaurants as they offer a free drink if customers post a check-in with the restaurant’s name, on their social media platforms.
2. Reciprocity
It’s human nature that when someone does something for us, we eventually want to extend the same favor to them by doing something in return. This is called reciprocity, and it’s a growing trend in marketing.
Brands don’t need to be overflowing with products to introduce a giveaway campaign, offering samples, giving away the brand t-shirt, to providing knowledge on a difficult subject that your customer seems to be facing. When you give to your customer, you build a strong bond with them and this strong bond ensures a long-term relationship where the customer brings not only sales but also new audiences to your brand.
3. Decoy Effect
This is a very common and effective marketing tactic used by every brand. The technique includes presenting multiple offers of different costs. Eg. if a restaurant presents you with 3 offers:
- A burger for Rs. 60
- Coke for Rs. 70
- The burger and the coke for Rs. 100
In this scenario, consumers mostly choose the third option as it offers the most in the least amount of price, even if it is the most expensive on the list. The middle option isn’t really ideal, but it offers a good frame of reference for consumers to choose from. Studies show that when a ‘combo’ deal is introduced in comparison to the other ‘normal’ deals, people become willing to pay more for the combo deal as it seems to have more benefits for the customer. The decoy effect is a good way to get potential leads and increase your conversion rate.
4. Color Psychology
Studies show that people judge a product in the first 90 seconds after seeing it, and about 90% of that judgment comes from looking at the product’s color. Yes, it’s true that every person doesn’t like the same color, but the use of different color combinations can do wonders for your content.
Different colors are associated with different meanings. You need to choose a color whose meaning is associated with your brand. As you can see, Mainstream has a combination of blue and purple themes of color. This indicates the themes of energy, stability, creativity, and inspiration that we want to explore with our content.
5. Cognitive Fluency
Cognitive Fluency is the limited amount of attention provided by people mainly to simple information. The moment information starts getting complicated, people run the other way. That is not something you want your consumers to do if you want your business to become successful that is.
The simpler your content is for your audience to understand, the more they’re going to approach you for more. This cognitive fluency is also why people love emojis. They’re simple, expressive and don’t require a huge dictionary to be understood.
Hence, you need to use simple words, shorter captions, infographics, enticing graphics, and emojis! (if they fit your brand’s voice that is). Just make your user experience simple and valuable.
6. Models of Persuasion
Persuasion is the main goal of every marketing head. If you can not persuade the client to invest in your brand, then (and I literally shrug as I ask) why are you even marketing? The Fogg Model to persuasion is the most widely accepted model.
Dr. Fogg introduces the concept that persuasion drives desired behavior; to get results we need to make use of motivation, ability, and triggers to incite action. This means you need to create motivation in your audience, make your content simple, and present triggering CTAs to stimulate action from people.
The Yale model for persuasion holds that authenticity, trust, and sincerity make the audience take action. Hence, market content that isn’t only qualitative but also authentic for the audience to perceive it as valuable and real.
7. The Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon
Have you ever seen your friend use or recommend a product, and then witnessed all your social media platforms showing ads regarding that product? Seems creepy, doesn’t it? But wait, it has a very scientific and logical definition. Yes, we believe our phones are spying on us and hence show content according to what we’re surrounded by, but apart from that paranoid trait, there’s such a thing called the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon.
What happens in this phenomenon, also called the frequency illusion, is that when we see a product for the first time and get attracted to it for one reason or another, or unconscious mind looks for that product everywhere we go, and if we’re looking for it (even if without our awareness), there are huge chances that we will spot it everywhere around us. Another reason we feel this way about the product is our confirmation bias. That when we see the product multiple times, we get further reassurance that it has become omnipresent in our lives out of the blue.
Brands use this allusion to reach people’s conscious thoughts. When they see people clicking around their website or checking out their products, they ensure that people see them ‘everywhere’ by sending newsletters, text messages, and adding them to their list of target audiences.
8. Loss Aversion
People don’t like losing what they have. And you, as a brand, don’t want them to lose you either. Hence, in content marketing, brands create a fear of missing out for their audience and gain advantage from it.
To make use of this insight, you can introduce a campaign that offers a premium feature for a limited amount of time. When they use that feature and realize how beneficial it is, you end the trial period and bring back the premium deal once again. This reinforces the customer to buy the feature from you. They may not need the feature, but now that they’ve had it, they can’t get enough of it. And hence, they will pay to get it back.
Chances are, you’re already using one or two of these tactics in your marketing strategies to increase your audience’s interest. They’re not easy to apply and the results may take time to build up, but at the end of the day, psychological insights are essential to your content marketing process. Unless you know your audience, you won’t be able to make them take action. And if they’re not taking action, then you’re not succeeding in convincing them.