Psychological hacks in Marketing #1 Emotions

Marketers focus on the persuading and influencing the right audience to buy their products and services. They know that people buy only when they are needful, have an interest or their friends are aspiring or buying what they are considering buying. Influencing these audiences and getting their business requires a very good understanding of their needs, desires and their decision-making process. Some companies invest a lot to understand the behavior and personality of consumers through analytics, research, and proven databases that have buying data built over time. Most of these insights need a little input from psychology if they must achieve their intended result of the prospect buying at the end of the sales cycle.

Obviously, there is no replacement of insights from those consumers’ decision-based studies/researchers and facts, but we are all human beings, complex creatures 😉 and have a natural tendency of reacting with different sensations.

Thanks to psychology for all the theories that determine human characteristics. A little understanding of these psychological facts and theories could make us all better marketers and even better salespeople.

Look at this picture –

Now imagine, simply replacing this image with the text: “Two chimpanzees are sitting.”. The emotional response generated by the picture vs. the one generated by the text is very different. While one looks rational explanation of the picture, looking at the chimpanzees in the picture evokes much more response than just rationalization

The primitive part of your brain controls your gut reactions and emotions; it works faster than the conscious mind. Yes, emotions make a longer lasting impression than rational thoughts. No one can deny the fact that feelings and emotions play a huge part in our buying decision-making. People do not buy your product or service. They buy a solution to their problem, something that comforts their brains, gives them a sense of belonging, a path to what will achieve their goals, or gives them the pride of ownership.

It is not just the costume; it is the feeling of BEING A SUPERHERO.

Take Away –

While creating the content and the copy, including the emotions or the pride of possession that your consumers will experience, should work better than just telling what you got to offer.

Consider answering –

• What problems your product will solve for them?
• How your product will solve their problem?
• Explain the feeling that correctly expresses the security/ property/bond / they will experience after owning your product
• Use words that create excitement, urgency or even a little anxiety
• Make them feel respected and important

While running any ad campaigns –

• Trigger Emotions
• Sell Benefits not features
• Sometimes you can use absurd images with a bold message to communicate emotions to your prospective buyers.
• Use images of – food, animal or kids (if they go with your offering) that instantly captures the attention to contextualize your offerings.
• Use facial Expressions in the images to express the possessive feelings and ownership and security.
• Use sensory adjectives, g., “rough day” over “bad day.”

While designing a website page–

• Use images that convey emotions
• Show how you can offer the best solution to their needs
• Examples of your proud customers
• Sell benefits
• Consider all the points mentioned above too

Learn More about Website Design: 10 Tips for a Great Website Design for your Business

We can’t decipher everything a consumer thinks when buying, but if you consider the general psychological hacks mentioned above, you can not only have a better strategy in place, but your communication will look and sound much more humane and relevant at the same time.

This is one of the many approaches to human psychology that can give you great results when implemented thoughtfully. We will explain many other hacks in our next articles. Stay tuned for our blog posts or subscribe to our newsletter to understand how simple psychology information can help you build an impressive and impactful marketing campaign.