How Psychology helps to increase Sales in Marketing?
By: Digital Keshav, Digital Marketing Consultant
Tags: Marketing, Sales, Consumer, Business Strategy, Psychology

Advertisers have covered a long way to leverage psychological strategies to make consumers understand their products. From television to social media platforms and from bus stops to multiplexes, people encounter nearly 5,000 advertisements every day.

Yes, you got it right! This is the number of advertising messages that people see in a day. Now you are perhaps thinking about the competition in the field of advertising. Yes, there is a huge competition in this field. The question is “How can you make people notice your advertisement?”

The answer lies in advertising strategies. Advertisers have examined that they can harness psychology and have gone a long way to find out what attracts people and how they can make them buy their products.

If you are unaware of these factors, let me tell you how you can make people buy your products, through psychology.

As a marketer, you may have expertise in marketing only, not in psychology.

You might be thinking that psychology and advertising are two different areas then how can they relate with each other?

Well, psychology and advertising are converging areas. I will tell you how.

Psychology refers to understanding human behaviour on a certain thing such as how they behave or react in a particular situation and why they behave so.

While advertising refers to influencing consumer behaviour to make purchase decisions.

No matter what type of advertising you are doing, be it traditional or digital advertising, you should target thinking or feeling or both approaches in your advertisement.

Before going for the psychology of advertising, understand how consumers process, understand and respond to the information.

These are the two approaches or models to monitor consumer behaviour — the Consumer Processing Model and the Hedonic, Experiential Model.

CPM helps in analysing the thinking process while HEM targets feelings. You will probably pick a model that is appropriate for your products and audience. Consider these models as the scales to measure the thinking ability and feelings of a consumer. You can choose any of the approaches in your advertising.

In the thinking approach of advertisement, a consumer can use logic and the valid reasons to buy the products by evaluating the benefits and characteristics of the products. You can utilize the thinking approach in your advertisement only if

I. You want to showcase the features, benefits and other information related to the product.

Ii. Your product is portrayed as a solution to a serious problem such as health-related products.

Iii. This approach lines up with your brand and target audience.

For example, when the operating system of your phone asks for an update to a new version, you receive a list of specific features, benefits and information related to the newer version. There is not any other fluff in that list. Similarly, the thinking approach or CPM approach works.

The feeling or HEM approach uses emotions to analyse consumer behaviour. Feelings or emotions such as sadness, humour, fear, fantasy, fun etc, are the primary factors in feeling approaches to win new consumers.

As per the report of Neilson in 2016, the advertisements that had an emotional approach got a 23% hike in their sales. You should utilize the feeling approach if

I. Your advertising needs some type of emotion in it.

Ii. It matches your brand voice and target consumers.

Iii. You need to create a focus on a situation.

For instance, companies or big brands generally create specific advertisements when they celebrate the anniversaries of their brands. These sorts of ads don’t focus on any products but they celebrate it by giving some items to consumers in the form of gifts. It leverages the brand voice and consumers feel happy by getting gifts.

If you are ready to target the feeling approach for your product advertisement, you should have the knowledge and understanding of the emotions to be used in the ad, that leaves a good impression on your target audience.

I would like to share some of the emotions that advertisers use in their advertisements to attract consumers.

Every brand nowadays is trying to be funny and make advertisements that are full of humour. For me, humour is how brands having ordinary products can make their consumers feel like their products are the best ones.

If you utilize humour in your ads, it will become memorable for the people out there. Humour makes people remember your product and brand. Not only you will entertain people but also increase your brand awareness and visibility.

You can engage your consumers and they will remember your brand and product through your ads.

The company that is embodying humour in marketing effectively is “Dollar Shave Club”.

Fear is an emotion that can create trouble for you if not used effectively. It is a tricky emotion that should be used wisely in an ad. In this approach, the advertisers use fear as the persuasion technique and show the problem-solving nature of the product to change consumer behaviour.

The usage of excitement feeling in the advertisement is suitable if you are launching something or offering something exciting to your audience. For example, your brand is offering discounts or a sale. This can lead consumers to make a purchase decision and buy your products.

Sadness evokes empathy or compassion in a human. Making people sad can bring their attention to your products. It sounds unpleasant but it can be effective in creating awareness of social matters.

Different emotions persuade consumers in different ways. It is important to use the emotion that is suitable as per your brand, product and leads to your goal.

Consumer information process involves different steps that happen before the customers make the purchase decision. It is important to understand how the audience is processing the information you are offering.

Below are the important steps that occur prior to customer purchases.

The first thing that happens when people see your ad is the exposure to information.

This step is derived from the brand awareness concept. When a viewer is seeing your ad for the first time, he may not remember it. That is the reason you should add a repetitive factor so that your advertisement is visible and exposed to your audience.

The basic concept of exposure is to expose your product or brand in front of the viewers.

The next step in consumer information processing is getting attention from your viewers. After being exposed, the main target is to grab attention. Although you cannot control your viewers and there are fewer chances that they will see your ad but you have to lure attention from the individuals.

There are different methods of enhancing customer attention. For instance, you can use colour psychology principles to attract people. You can use motion or movement in your ad to capture the individuals’ attention.

When you grab a person’s attention, he/she will definitely like to know more about your products, brand and services.

Comprehension is the third and quite important step in consumer information processing. Consumers should be able to understand or comprehend what you are selling.

Because on the basis of the comprehension, consumers will make the purchase decision. So, ensure that your underlying message is comprehensible and is not over-shining your product.

If you are lucky enough to grab the attention of the consumers, proceed to the step of the agreement. Put a credible message that lines up with your consumers’ needs and the agreement will be done. To know more about it, you can read this article.

Making your ad stand out in the competition is the primary target in this step. For this, consider the ad that you saw that was outstanding. Try to learn the reason why it was outstanding.

After learning the reason, create an ad that helps your product to stand out in the crowd so that consumers don’t have to think about your competition on the purchase time.

You can check out the work that your competitors are doing and ensure your ad is better from theirs.

In this step, consumers make decisions based on the previous steps. Consumers will make decisions by considering various factors such as competition, pricing, need, benefits, etc.

To make the process easier, you can add a call to action to push your customer towards the purchase.

Remember the consumer evaluates multiple factors before buying any product. Ensure that you stay ahead from your competitors in those factors. Put yourself in the shoes of the consumers and try to understand their concerns.

This is the last step in the consumer information process. It consists of the goal, that is, to make customers buy your product.

If your consumers are completing the goal that means your ads are working. You are providing the information according to your consumers’ needs.

For any reasons, if your ads are not working, you need to focus and analyse the problems deeply.

These are the steps that can help you understand your consumers’ behaviour. I have shared the basics with you and hopefully, you have understood it.

Utilizing psychology in your business advertising will be fruitful if done correctly. It will not only make people remember your brand but also help you to capture a high audience.

Work on it and see the magic yourself!