5 PSYCHOLOGICAL TACTICS MARKETERS USE TO INFLUENCE CONSUMER BEHAVIOR. ᔥfastcompany.com

IN A QUEST TO UNDERSTAND WHAT DRIVES CONSUMERS’ DECISIONS, MARKETERS HAVE TURNED TO PSYCHOLOGY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT COULD MAKE AN IMPACT.

BY ROBERT ROSENTHAL
The vast majority of marketers aren’t psychologists. But many successful marketers regularly employ psychology in appealing to consumers.

Smart, skillful, honest marketers use psychology legally, ethically, and respectfully to attract and engage consumers, and compel them to buy.

Here are a few tips and tricks for using psychology to your own marketing campaign’s advantage:

1. RUN EMOTIONAL IDEAS
Studies have shown emotional and psychological appeals resonate more with consumers than feature and function appeals. In advertising copy, benefits—which often have a psychological component—generally outsell features. Demonstrating how that new computer will improve a potential customer’s life tends to have more influence rather than explaining how it works.

Salespeople have long understood the power of emotional appeals. In the 18th century, when the contents of the Anchor Brewery were being auctioned off, the auctioneer said: “We are not here to sell boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”

2. HIGHLIGHT YOUR FLAWS
It’s no secret that consumers tend to doubt marketing claims—for good reasons. Many simply aren’t credible. One way to raise credibility is to point out your product’s shortcomings.

Among the most famous examples was an ad for Volkswagen, which contained a one-word headline: “Lemon.” Opening body copy below a VW photo read: “This Volkswagen missed the boat. The chrome strip on the glove compartment is blemished and must be replaced. Chances are you wouldn’t have noticed it; Inspector Kurt Kroner did.” The ad went on to discuss a “preoccupation with detail.” The Lemon ad became a textbook example of how to optimize credibility.

3. REPOSITION YOUR COMPETITION
In Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout delve into the limited slots consumers have in their brain for products and services, and the importance of positioning one’s business in the ideal slot.

They also write about repositioning—changing the position a business occupies in consumers’ minds. A prominent example of repositioning the competition is when the Jif brand launched the “Choosy moms choose Jif” campaign, competitors were suddenly repositioned as products for mothers who didn’t give a damn about the food their kids consumed. What mother didn’t want to think of herself as a choosy mom?

4. PROMOTE EXCLUSIVITY
Near the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid sits self-esteem. People want to feel important; like they’re part of an exclusive group. That’s why advertising copy sometimes says: “We’re not for everyone.”

The U.S. Marines ran a very successful campaign for years with the tagline: “The Few. The Proud.” Perhaps the most famous modern example of exclusivity in advertising is the American Express tagline: “Membership has its privileges.” But to make an exclusivity appeal work in the long run, marketers must mean what they say. Empty claims tend to be counterproductive.

5. INTRODUCE FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, AND DOUBT
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt, or FUD, is often used legitimately by businesses and organizations to make consumers stop, think, and change their behavior. FUD is so powerful that it’s capable of nuking the competition.

In at least one case it did just that. When Lyndon Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964, he wanted to stoke public fear that a President Goldwater would raise the risk of nuclear war. The “Daisy” ad, which ran only once, showed a little girl, followed by a nuclear explosion with a voiceover of LBJ ominously stating, “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark.” Johnson carried 44 states, and took 61% of the vote in a landslide win.

—Robert Rosenthal is the founder of Contenteurs and author of Optimarketing: Marketing Optimization to Electrify Your Business.

Link to original article: http://www.fastcompany.com/3032675/hit-the-ground-running/5-psychological-tactics-marketers-use-to-influence-consumer-behavior

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Conversion Optimization ᔥconvert.com

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) or conversion optimization is the method that focus on improving conversion rates. In the context of website optimization, it is focusing on improving on the actions of visitors to proceed to the next stage of the goal funnel.

Conversion optimization can, for example, use heat maps, user testing, analytics, and surveys to build hypothesis on what might be the reasons visitors are not from moving forward to attain website goals. A/B testing software is used to validate these hypotheses.

What is a conversion rate?

Conversion rate is the percentage of people taking the preferred action. An example is: an e-commerce site has 100,000 unique visitors and 2,000 purchase on the website. This is a conversion rate of 2,000/100,000 or 2%. The e-commerce websites primary goal is not to convert visitors to buyers, the goal is to increase revenue per visitor (RPV). Most e-commerce-focused tools like Convert Experiments offer RPV as key performance indicator (KPI) in their reporting.

Although the primary goal of conversion optimization is to increase the main KPI (goal), it attempts this through optimizing the entire funnel, step-by-step. Each page has one KPI or one key objective to achieve.

On what KPI’s do you focus conversion optimization?

Conversion optimization experts know that each web page has a goal and typically when visitors move to the next page the conversion rate increases. For example a list of key goals for commonly used web pages are:

  • Homepage of e-commerce – goal: move visitors to category pages
  • Category page of e-commerce – goal: move visitors to product pages
  • Product pages of e-commerce – goal: move visitor to “add to cart” page
  • E-commerce cart – move visitor to payment page

Each of these pages has a particular goal and increasing the volume and quality of visitors moving to the next phase in the funnel is called conversion optimization. Want to try the best conversion optimization tool?

Link to original site: http://www.convert.com/conversion-optimization/

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Design Websites With Marketing Psychology ᔥblog.convert.com

April 29, 2015

In recent years, the Internet activity has moved more and more towards social media sites. We have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more as social tools which marketers can use to drive conversion. With these in mind, understanding marketing psychology and social proofing becomes even more important, as it really helps turn your website to become a reliable and trustworthy source in the eyes of the customer.

In a podcast hosted by Creative Thirst‘s CEO – Bobby Hewitt, we at Convertlearned how important social proof and social influence is, and how you can improve your website design and conversion through effective marketing psychology. Marketing has always been about how to reach out to people and tell them about your product/service. The more effective your marketing campaign is, the more people will know about your product, regardless if it is offline or online.

Website Design Marketing Psychology

Employing Psychology in Web Design

According to Robert Rosenthal’s article – 5 Psychological Tactics Marketers Use to Influence Consumer Behavior,

The vast majority of marketers aren’t psychologists. But many successful marketers regularly employ psychology in appealing to consumers. Smart, skillful, honest marketers use psychology legally, ethically, and respectfully to attract and engage consumers, and compel them to buy.

Following the marketing psychology in web design can have a positive effect in conversion. This means knowing and understanding the needs of your website visitors and how these needs be implemented on your brand page. Designers, marketers and website owners of any niche make use of marketing psychology to bring forth their and their customers’ expectations.

But a positive customer’s response doesn’t come easy and customers usually look for something such as proof, feedback, reviews, etc. Before they trust you. That said, the purpose of marketing psychology is to make your website become more trustworthy, and that has an extreme importance. Always remember these key points in web design and marketing psychology when you are creating a page;

  • Quality
  • Page design and elements
  • Less is more
  • Color scheme
  • Visual flow
  • Social Proof

Having all of these in mind, your website will likely end up with satisfied and returning visitors, whether they want to purchase your products, acquire your services, recommend your business to others, or set up a partnership with you.

The Role of Social Proof In Marketing Psychology

Social proof has an excellent role in website marketing psychology and is a powerful strategy in improving conversion rates. Social proof is a psychological occurrence from social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior and they just believe and follow the behavior of other people for making an instant decision.

For instance, each visitor is unique, has their exclusive needs, and have different points of view. Social proof is just one part of persuasive design that designers can use to make their business become trustworthy. Designers can use social proof to make prospects feel more comfortable. This does not ensure customer engagement, but it increases the chances of hooking those casual visitors.

Establish credibility and trust with social proof. Publish the evidence surfers seek and…

The key to implement an effective social proof marketing psychology in web design are as follows;

  • Every page really needs to be designed persuasively.
  • Your content has to be good, relevant, and worthy.
  • Visits can be influenced online, but showing clearly what other people have done before them is the key.
  • Combine social proof with the action that you want your prospect to take.
  • Combine that action to what others had taken before your prospect. In this way, your previous online visitors are influencing new visitors and new prospects to take more action.
  • Let your visitors influence future visitors for you. A simple ‘tweet this’ button can go a long way.

Always keep these points in mind as its importance in conversion and website design. Moreover, don’t forget to conduct A/B testing to find out which page elements gets better or bad results as well as the best emotional triggers for your site. This simple test can affect almost all the aspects of your marketing campaign. Visit us at A/B testing software” href=”http://www.convert.com/” target=”_blank”>Convert to learn more about conversion optimization.

Link to original site: http://blog.convert.com/design-websites-marketing-psychology.html?837&utm_content=buffera8840&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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