What is Marketing Psychology?

When it comes to digital marketing, it’s important that those who devise marketing campaign,s for example, understand the following in order to execute their roles as effectively and successfully as possible:

• Who the customer is
• What the customer wants
• What drives the customer to, ultimately, make the purchase or commit to a service

When the marketer has the answers to those questions then some psychology can be used in order to ensure the increase of sales. If your sales are already exceeding your expectations, then marketing psychology could work to keep those leads and sales consistent for as long as possible. Basically, marketing psychology should be used in campaigns regardless of how successful your business might be. In this article we’ll be discussing the following:

• What marketing psychology is
• The different marketing psychology principles
• How psychology can be incorporated into a marketing strategy

What is marketing psychology?

Marketing psychology is mostly defined as a variety of psychology principles that are incorporated into content and marketing and sales strategies. Essentially, it’s the act of looking for and identifying patterns in consumer behaviour that can be used to a business’ advantage when it comes to increasing leads and sales.

Regardless of the industry you work in, marketing psychology can easily be implemented which, in turn, will help to make a company more successful. However, this isn’t something that will happen overnight. 

What are the marketing psychology principles?

There are five marketing psychology principles that marketers use in order to ensure the success of either their own company or that of their clients’. The top five marketing psychology principles include:

1. Reciprocity principle – based on a specific concept that, if a business does something good or nice for the customer, the customer is likely to return the favour. This might also keep customers coming back to your business because they know, almost certainly, that there’s something positive in it for them
2. Information-gap theory – when there’s a gap in someone’s knowledge, especially if it’s something that particularly interests them, they’ll take steps to learn more about it. By working out what your target audience might be interested in, then you can fill the knowledge gap with content that’ll lead straight to your business’ website
3. The scarcity theory – suggests that humans typically value things more if they believe that they’re rare or collectable. If things can be more easily or cheaply accessed, then a lower value will be placed on them
4. Social proof theory – relates to the fact that consumers will place more trust in products if they know someone else who will be able to officially validate an item’s value, such as when someone buys an antique, they might wish to have it valued externally, for example, before they trust it enough to actually make a purchase
5. Loss aversion marketing – this identifies that, when it comes to consumers, they’d rather mitigate the risk of loss rather than take extra steps to acquire gains. In a sense, they’d rather protect what they already have

How can you incorporate psychology into your marketing strategy?

While it might be tempting to try and implement all of the marketing psychology principles that have previously been mentioned, you must, instead, think about the following things before incorporating any of them into your own marketing strategy:

• The business you’re working for, whether it your own employer or a client
• Your current strategy and which of the principles would suit it best
• What your existing data says about your customers and target audience

One principle might suit your current strategy more than another one. Just because there are five common principles doesn’t mean you have to use every single one of them. Where you could do that, it will take a lot of planning and careful data-collection to incorporate and execute them successfully. In turn, this will cost a business a lot of time and money, but it might well be worth the investment.

Kumo Digital is a dedicated, expert digital marketing agency in the heart of the East Midlands. With a wealth of specialised knowledge and expertise to draw upon and with over two decades of industry experience, you’ll always be able to look to us here at Kumo for bespoke digital marketing services. As well as professional content creation and website development, we’re also about to carry out meticulous SEO services and PPC services that can be relied upon every single time. For more information about how we can help you today, get in touch with a member of our friendly team today – we’re always happy to hear from you.