The psychology of marketing. It’s an incredibly interesting field, and also one that’s a little… devious.
Understanding how the human brain works can help us all to be better marketers.
For example, we know that campaigns that strike an emotional chord (whether they make us laugh, cry, excited or angry) are often successful. Think about The Westjet Christmas Miracle. Or this Interac Be in the Black campaign. Or one of my current favourite campaigns, “Own it.” from Special K.
These campaigns are not just successful because they elicit and emotional reaction in us, but because they do, they tend to be shared more often.
So, as marketers, what kinds of things should we keep in mind about the human brain as we are generating marketing content?
Emotions are key. Not only do we process emotions way faster than thoughts, they stick with us longer. You’ll remember an experience that had an emotional attachment to it over one that did not much longer.
Use images or video. Our brains process images 60,000 times faster than text, but beyond that, we’re more attracted to a beautiful image or watching a video over reading a long wall of text. Let your pictures tell a story, and break up your text with lots of images.
We long for an H2H connection. Bear in mind that so much of our interactions today happen virtually; via email, phone and social media. We long for a connection with another human being. For that reason, try to include images with human faces on them. With one of my clients, we like to do weekly Facebook business or employee profiles that include a photo of the person we’re profiling. They always do well. If you wanna get really nefarious, post photos of babies or puppies or kittens. 😉
FOMO. Many businesses use FOMO (fear of missing out) as an effective marketing technique. Examples of this would include “limited time only” offers, or even click bait (which I personally hate, but I guess it works, because I don’t see it going away).
Here’s today’s Infographic: 12 Secrets of the Human Brain To Use in Your Marketing:
Infographic courtesy of myemma.com