Where To Incorporate The Psychology of Sales in Your Marketing

Where To Incorporate The Psychology of Sales in Your Marketing
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e humans are an emotional bunch. Personal judgments, biases and values drive our opinions and actions in almost every way – and the way we respond to marketing is no exception. In fact, our buying decisions are only based on 20% logic, with the other 80% affected entirely by emotion.

Psychology of Sales Marketing

 

This finding is part of an infographic released by Salesforce on “The Psychology of Sales Marketing and the Human Mind.” In it, Salesforce outlines some of the major psychological findings related to how people make purchasing decisions.

 

Whether you realize it or not, the marketing messages you put in front of your prospects and customers are eliciting an emotional response that may be helping or harming your content’s effectiveness.

 

By understanding the psychological factors at play when a customer interacts with your brand or product, you can reshape your marketing strategy to improve conversion rates.

  

Check out the full Salesforce infographic to get a better understanding of the common biases that influence customers’ purchasing decisions. Then look at how you can – and should – incorporate this knowledge into your own marketing programs:

 

Marketing Strategy

 

When crafting your overall B2B marketing strategy and choosing the vehicles you’ll use to spread your message, an important thing to keep in mind is the story you want to tell.

  

As this story takes shape, is it making your brand more likable in the eyes of your customers?

  

The Advertising Research Foundation has found the emotion likeability predicts whether or not an ad will increase a brand's sales and that positive emotions can have a larger influence on customer loyalty than trust and other judgments on a brand’s attributes.

 

 

Craft a brand story that will elicit positive emotions in your market and make sure each aspect of your marketing strategy supports this positive story.

 

 

Content

 

To support your overall strategy, the marketing content you create should take into account the psychological reaction that even single words or phrases can provoke.

 

 

For instance, MRI studies show words like “instant,” “immediately,” and “fast” cause an increase in mid-brain activity and make people more likely to buy.

 

 

This is one example of the many cognitive biases the human brain uses to take shortcuts during the judgment process.

 

 

Under the “Status Quo Bias”, your market will respond less favorably to content they perceive as being a major change from what they know or like. Instead of presenting your offer as a “radical departure from the norm” and challenging their way of thinking, slowly ease them into new ideas.

 

 

 

Lead Conversion

 

 

Actually converting leads into customers, arguably the most important stage in your marketing strategy, comes with its own psychological strategies to consider.

  

Luckily, if you understand the biases people entered your lead conversion pages with, you can frame your offer to capitalize on them.

  

This is called “The Framing Effect Bias” which causes people to react differently to content based on the angle in which it is presented.

  

Leading with benefits versus more logistical information will cause your audience to move through the rest of the lead conversion process with the benefits top of mind – rather than the cost.

  

Clearly, the way our brains operate has a great effect on the emotions we experience and the decisions we make. While this may seem frustrating for some, smart marketers see it as an opportunity!

 

 If we consider the 20%-80% statistic mentioned earlier, we can determine that how you say something is four times as important as what you are saying.

  

I hope this intelligence serves as a primer for how you can incorporate psychological principles across the board – helping you say the right thing to elicit the response you’re working towards.

 

 

The Penguin Team

by The Penguin Team on June 04, 2015

As a leading B2B digital marketing agency, We help B2B Technology Companies, enterprise software, and hardware companies increase brand awareness, reach more qualified leads and close more customers. Penguin Strategies is a Diamond Partner of HubSpot.

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