How to Use Psychology to Impress Your Customers

With understanding the customer being such a key part of campaigns, it's not difficult to see why psychology is becoming an important consideration when planning strategies.

People are often intimidated when the word comes up in brainstorms, but there are some very basic principles of psychology that can be used to guide your future customer experience strategy.

Provoke an emotion

Studies have shown that campaigns that address the emotional side of consumers are more likely to resonate with them. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to claim that your next campaign will save a life, but try to understand the sentiment behind your product/service. John Lewis has become the expert at provoking emotions in its advertising campaigns, especially with its big annual Christmas advert.

You may not have the budget of John Lewis, but you can take the same principles to connect and engage your customers. Understanding what motivates consumers to buy your product or service is often the first step towards creating a customer experience or campaign that provokes an emotion. For example, if you're a roofing company, the reason people come to you is to create a safe home for their family. This could be the perfect drive of a new B2C campaign.

Prime your audience

A psychological technique called priming can be used to influence your consumers. The idea is that you can expose your audience to one stimulus that will make them respond in a certain way to a secondary stimulus. When implemented effectively, marketers can use subtle priming methods to make it easier for consumers to remember key bits of information or specific parts of a campaign.

By using certain colors or themes in a campaign, you can direct your audience and their behavior to act in a more controlled way. This can be used to guide your customer experience and user journey in a way that helps you achieve your business goals.

Be part of the crowd

We all know that there's power in numbers, but did you know it can influence your customer experience strategy? The social proof psychological theory suggests that people will adopt the beliefs of others if they respect or admire them. This can be easily implemented into marketing campaigns by using customer testimonials, case studies or even just by displaying your follower numbers on different social platforms.

For many brands, social influencers are becoming a key part of their marketing strategies because of how they can encourage others to agree with them. This only works because of their proven social influence, but can be extremely successful. It's also something that can be cultivated through social media management and online forums if you're able to nurture your consumers to become ambassadors for the brand.

The Baader-Meinhof effect

Everyone has had that moment when they see a new product and then they start seeing it everywhere they look. Well, it's not just you - there's a real psychological reason why it happens. The Baader-Meinhof effect, also known as "frequency illusion", is what creates this behavior. It's based on the theory that when you spot X for the first time you subconsciously look out for it elsewhere, then confirmation bias sets in, giving you reassurance that X is everywhere.

This can influence your marketing strategy as once people start noticing your brand, the impact will snowball. It's why even small businesses can benefit from reaching out to social influencers or campaigns.