Marketing psychology. Psychology of advertising: methods of influence of marketing - to find and neutralize Does marketing work in psychology

Stores come up with new strategies to increase sales every day. The psychology of advertising and marketing is designed to get people to buy as much as possible. The buyer makes an independent unconscious choice, takes the product, and himself, as if under hypnosis, moves it to his basket. And only at home he realizes that he spent all his money on a product that he does not need at all.

How to protect your wallets from unnecessary waste and counteract shopping traps? To do this, you first need to understand your needs and desires at the present time. A. Maslow identified the basic needs and developed a pyramid.

Maslow pyramid

1. Physiological.

The most basic lowest level. A person needs food, water, shelter, sleep, intimacy. Only after satisfying this level of needs, he will be ready to move on. As a rule, all stores emphasize their sales, relying on these desires of a person, since there is always a great demand for them.

2. Safety and security.

All people need their own corner where he can hide in case of impending danger. Therefore, they install armored doors, alarms, intercoms, video intercoms, buy cars and self-defense equipment.

3. Love, affection, communication, friends.

To find friends and new acquaintances, a person goes online, builds relationships on a dating site. There are entertainment clubs where you can do something together and socialize.

4. Success, respect, recognition.

It is important for a person to be noticed and appreciated. Therefore, he wants to dress fashionably, maintain beauty, buy expensive sports cars, famous brands of perfumes and cosmetics, the latest models of gadgets. Stores are always up to date with new clothing collections, current styles in the fashion world, and modern technology. And demand, as you know, gives rise to supply.

5. Self-actualization, improvement.

This is the highest level of need, to which not all people get. Having satisfied the previous needs, a person strives for knowledge, he has a desire to learn, get an education, and improve himself. Here, firms target art, educational programs, travel.

Marketing gimmicks

The following types of influence on the human subconscious are used:

1. "Display of goods of daily demand."

To buy bread, milk, eggs or butter in a store, you have to wade through almost the entire store. And when you reach your destination, you already have a full basket of products that are good if they come in handy later, but the family budget is already badly worn out.

This is done with the aim of buying other items along the way and increasing the number of sales.

2. "Red price".

Very often discounts of 50%, 70%, etc. are arranged. Subconsciously, it seems to us that we get a benefit from this purchase, because we buy at a lower price. But in fact, behind discounts, stale goods are hiding, with expiration dates or an increase in price in advance.

3. "Gratitude".

After purchasing the product, some stores give a small present, which, as a rule, costs a penny and is unnecessary. The buyer is pleased with this sign of attention, but the feeling of duty remains that he needs to be given something in return for this. And he will come to this store again to receive pleasant service and return the debt as a purchase.

4. "Imitation and competition".

Situations based on this effect are used in advertising. For example, how a crowd storms a store to buy certain goods, they find it very profitable and attractive. Or how friends fight over a chocolate bar.

Subconsciously, "the light is on": you have to take it, until the others are ahead.

5. "Attractiveness".

An important role in the purchase of a product is played by who advertises it. Therefore, for the role of the performers of the advertising video, beautiful slender photo models, famous actors are taken. A person subconsciously forms trust in the product.

6. “Hurry. The quantity of goods is limited. "

Often this offer makes you grab money and run to the store at all times. A fictitious deficit effect is created. The brain does not even have time to process the information.

7. "Color solution".

The psychological relationship of color to sensory sensations is used. For example, green is freshness, nature. It can be seen in advertisements for health products and medical cosmetics.

In order not to fall for the bait of the store and rationally use your money, you must adhere to the following rules:

• Buy only on a pre-compiled list.
• Do not go to the store hungry.
• It is advisable not to use a cart, but to take a basket for groceries.
• We pay attention not only to branded products.
• Promotions and discounts are not an indicator of a favorable price.
• We pay only in cash.
• At the checkout we refuse to buy a product at a discounted price.

Marktund Werbepsychologie

Hogrefe Verlag fur Psychologie Gottingen Bern Toronto Seattle, 2002

in each of the sections, and even a sophisticated reader who is well acquainted with the literature in these areas, the book will be interesting. In this regard, you can especially pay attention to chapters 4, 5 and 6.

In the process of editing, I repeatedly caught myself on the fact that instead of purely editorial work, I just start reading the book as a reader, the text is so exciting and deeply written.

K. Moser's book will certainly be useful to those who, in their daily work, are faced with the need to make decisions on the use of certain marketing tools in the activities of an enterprise or organization. The concreteness of the empirical data presented, the patterns identified will give such specialists a fulcrum in justifying their decisions.

A large number of examples, illustrations, tables make the book interesting and easy to read.

Scientific editor, candidate of psychological sciences,

Associate Professor, Faculty of Psychology, St. Petersburg State University

S.G. Tarasov Kharkiv, December 2003

Nuremberg, September 2001 Klaus Moser

Good, long lasting and mutually beneficial customer relationships are an important part of marketing. Understanding the tastes, moods and fears of your audience helps a lot to build them. Knowledge of human psychology greatly simplifies this task.

9 principles of consumer behavior

Robert B. Cialdini, in his book The Psychology of Influence, described the basic human behaviors that can be applied in marketing and open selling. Some of its most relevant principles are outlined in this list, some are supplemented by the work of other experts.

It is important to remember that the classical principles of using psychology in marketing were created decades ago, so some of them could lose their relevance or significantly reduce their effectiveness. However, it is important to become familiar with them, as these principles form the basis.

Reciprocity principle

When you give a client a small gift, you create a sense of gratitude and a desire to do something for you in return. Some experts doubt the relevance of this principle, but in many areas it still works - with small signs of attention you win the client and develop loyal relationships.

Commitment principle

Most people feel uncomfortable if they have to break their own obligations. We subconsciously strive to fulfill given promises, even if we made them unconsciously. So you can come to a meeting with a client with a special agreement already prepared and mention the discount program calculated just for this transaction. When part of the work has already been done, it becomes inconvenient to refuse to conclude a deal - not a very honest move, but it perfectly confirms the work of psychological techniques.

The principle of authority

By increasing the credibility of yourself and your company, you generate trust and respect. To do this, you do not need to eliminate competitors or wage an unfair fight, it is enough to prove that you really understand what you are doing - for this, high-quality information content posted on your sites, in mailing lists and on open platforms will come in handy. Speakers at thematic conferences and useful comments on the forums will also be useful. Useful information is easily converted into authority, and authority into trust.

The principle of social proof

The principle can also be called herd instinct, but usually it does not manifest itself so clearly. Doing something yourself is always more difficult and scary than joining an already established company. In marketing, this will work thanks to the counters of items sold per day or the number of open page views. Any quantifiable criteria will motivate the emergence of the principle of social proof.

Attachment principle

If a person or company is sympathetic, they want to follow. It is not necessary to be nice and try to charm the audience, but it is necessary to correspond to their ideas about good, high quality or cool. Do not try to please everyone at once, this is impossible, but targeting one specific social group is quite possible. Choose a target audience, study it thoroughly and work out the image that will appeal to her.

Scarcity Principle

The effectiveness of the concept of scarcity is already in doubt, but it works for certain social groups. It is based on a simple relationship between supply and demand, the formula of which is clear to the consumer at an intuitive level - a limited supply gives rise to increased demand. If you have a product category that is not selling well, you can try to create an artificial scarcity environment around it - maybe not significantly, but sales will grow.

The principle of novelty

The illusion of novelty is a psychological phenomenon that everyone has noticed. As soon as you learn about a new product, you notice it everywhere. People who are looking for an apartment everywhere come across advertisements for the delivery of housing, and couples expecting a baby - on pregnant women. To use this phenomenon in marketing, it is necessary to distribute advertising messages through different channels - people who notice them in one channel will notice them in others.

Grouping principle

Our limited short-term memory prevents us from memorizing more than seven details at a time. Thanks to this feature, the human brain has learned to group similar information, and if you do it for it, you will get loyalty from consumers who have made it easier. Post blog entries by breaking them into groups and categories, add texts and tables to lists - this will make it easier for the reader to remember.

Generalization principle

In modern conditions of an overabundance of information, we remember only the most important or what lay right on the surface of the advertising message. To make this principle work for you, pay attention to the headings - most likely, the reader will remember only it. Commercial offers should be kept short and succinct - so that the main idea can be summarized in two or three sentences.

3 psychological experiments important for marketing

Modern marketing is unthinkable without psychological research and experimentation, some of which have played a key role in the formation of certain marketing concepts.

The experiment of Thomas Sanoki and Noah Sulman

Two scientists conducted an experiment in 2011 to find out how color combinations affect our short-term memory. The experiment was carried out using various color palettes - in one group the colors were harmoniously combined with each other, in the other they were in sharp contrast with each other. The results of the experiment showed that palettes with well-combined colors are better remembered, and the optimal number of shades in one palette is no more than three.

This experiment showed marketers the importance of color, and it shows in the smallest marketing details - right down to the color scheme of a commercial website. According to Sanoki and Sulman's theory, color contrast is important, but should only be present between the background and the main marketing message. It is better not to use contrasting colors or an abundance of colors in the basic design.

Solomon Asch's experiment

During the experiment, a group of subjects was asked obvious questions about the length of the drawn lines, but seven out of eight participants in the experiment were dummies and gave a deliberately incorrect answer. Under the influence of the influence factor of the group, the only true subject also gave the wrong answer. The situation simulated in Asch's experiment is very close to situations in real life.

Thanks to this experiment, marketers were able to assess the power of the group's influence on the behavior of a particular consumer. This feature of human behavior explains the success of such marketing moves as positive reviews about the company, pictures of happy customers on the site, and detailed laudatory comments in social groups.

Experiment by Christopher Chabri and Daniel Simons

American scientists have studied the selectivity of attention and perception in general. During the experiment, the participants were asked to watch a video and count the number of ball passes by one of the two teams. The objective of the experiment was not to determine the number of people able to correctly count the transmissions, but to calculate the percentage of those who did not notice a person walking in a gorilla suit in the process of completing the task. This question was asked to all the participants, and the results were impressive - almost all of the participants did not pay attention to the gorilla at all.

This gives marketers quite unambiguous advice on building a brand, advertising campaigns and a website. Try not to overload the image with details - this will scatter the attention of consumers; on the site, the path to purchasing the product should be as simple, understandable and noticeable as possible. Pop-ups and numerous information panels will distract the client.

When discussing issues related to the success or failure of a Western enterprise in the market, it should be remembered that in the West the buyer is the master of the situation. As a rule, he has the opportunity to choose not only between several sellers, but also between various goods that are indirect competition and satisfy the needs of the buyer from different sides.

The conditions for the success of a product in the US market are good quality of the product, fast and cheap service, a normal warranty period, as well as - and what is becoming more and more important with an abundance of products - the right marketing policy.

According to the generally accepted opinion of experts, marketing activities are the effective organization of all production and sales activities: from the purchase of raw materials to customer service, market analysis, styling (shape and appearance of goods), determination of the nature of packaging, choice of a trademark, fixed prices, planning and organization sales, advertising.

In the West, where the market for all goods is actually oversaturated, the conquest of new market segments in the field of consumer goods is possible only through direct or indirect competitors. Here advertising and market research often play a decisive role, since products usually differ from each other not in quality, but only in name and packaging. Therefore, when researching the consumer goods market, an analysis of all factors influencing a client's decision-making, including psychological, is the basis for drawing up sales programs for firms.

Market research for these products has become the domain of specialized firms. Experienced psychologists work in them, and therefore even large enterprises resort to their services.

Analysis of the market for fixed assets often requires specific technical knowledge of these goods. The number of potential consumers is more limited here than in the consumer goods market. This is why research on these markets is most often carried out by the product manufacturers themselves. In marketing departments, this is usually done by the market research and advertising departments in conjunction with the sales organization of firms that know the market better than others.

Components of the analysis of the market of fixed assets of production:

• - total market capacity;
• - rational distribution of demand;
• - own market share;
• - the number of competitors and their market shares;
• - advertising media and measures taken by competitors;
• - sales organization of competitors;
• - determining the motivation of regular customers from competitors;
• - design and other features of competitors' products;

comparison of our own products with those of competitors in terms of quality, profitability and price.

Japanese marketing guru Mitsuaki Shimaguchi believes that in the long term, the main sources of growth for companies will be their ambition and love for the consumer.

As for marketing in Japan, the world learned about it fifty years ago, when Toshiba President Ishizaka visited the United States as head of the delegation of the Labor Productivity Center (this is an economic organization that supports business, it still exists). The English word “marketing” cannot be translated into Japanese.

Now in Japan and around the world, marketing is a very important topic of management. At that time, marketing activities were used as a means of improving sales. So they thought then: marketing is for research, it's closer to selling. But little by little marketing activity, as a definition and concept, becomes more important and closer to enterprise management.

At first, the marketing manager was a product manager: he accompanied him from birth to death. Now this person looks from above and tries to analyze the situation. Its task is no longer to promote a single product, but to achieve its growth with the help of all the company's products. In other words, marketing is moving almost into the area of ​​strategic management.

The main task of a marketer is to create a growth device, look ahead, follow the market changes. It is necessary to find the "blue sky". A survey was conducted among heads of companies in Japan: what they expect from marketing, what they mean by this word, what they would like to get from marketing activities. Dreaming about the future was the most popular answer.

In Japan, a project was recently implemented, which was abbreviated as MI21 - "Marketing Innovation of the XXI Century". The main objective of this study was to find out what goals Japanese managers set for themselves and what tasks are the main ones in the field of management in Japan. The questionnaires were sent to the presidents of Japanese companies, and approximately four hundred presidents received responses.

After analyzing the content of the responses, the researchers concluded that there are three main topics of concern to Japanese managers. Probably the first topic that our managers in the 21st century ponder over is speed. The second topic is customer satisfaction. And the third topic is ambition.

Almost ninety-eight percent of those who answered the questionnaire mentioned speed, or efficiency, as the main theme of the 21st century. In the field of management, it can be divided into two sub-themes: the first is the efficiency, or the speed of making strategic decisions, the second is the speed, efficiency in the implementation of the decisions made.

Japan's achievements in the field of efficiency in the implementation of processes, especially implementation processes, have always been highly appreciated in the world, especially if we are talking about an era of high rates of economic development. A little more than thirty years ago, a book by French journalist Hubert Goran was published "Japan as a third empire", in which the author tries to find out the reasons why Japan in the second half of the twentieth century became the world's third economic power. And the author sees the main reason for the economic success of Japan precisely in the efficiency, in the speed of development of processes.

In support of this idea, the author recalls several episodes. One of them is Japan's preparation for the 1960 Tokyo Olympics. Prior to that, Japan did not have a well-developed transport infrastructure. When the decision to host the Olympic Games in Tokyo was made, the Japanese Minister of Construction announced the following goal: within three years to create a whole network of highways, expressways and a wider metro network.

Now, from the point of view of an era in which construction technologies were highly developed, perhaps this is not a big task. In Japan, they do not see any particular difficulties in building a network of highways and creating new metro lines in such a short period of time. But at that time, given the high population density of Japan, this was a really serious problem.

In an instant, highways spread their wings over the roofs of small Japanese houses, and work on the laying of subway lines was carried out at night. All this testifies to the fact that any decision made in Japan is implemented very quickly. The same cannot be said about the speed of decision-making itself. This process is very long in Japan. And, apparently, Japanese managers see acceleration of the decision-making process as the main task of the 21st century. It seems that now, in the age of even higher speeds, it is necessary to make the decision-making process, directed towards the future, associated with risk, much faster.

As for the second topic of concern for managers - customer satisfaction, it seems that Japanese companies should not have any particular problems here.

When comparing companies with good and not-so-good performance, the result is that low-performing companies tend to claim more market share as their primary goal. And companies with good results are emphatically focused on the fullest possible satisfaction of consumer needs.

One gets the impression that it is very important for all companies to secure their competitive advantage, since everyone is faced with the issues of competition in their area to one degree or another. How to overcome the competition, how to win - the solution of these issues takes an important place in marketing activities. In the past, competition was akin to war. Taking market share from competitors, gaining it, and thus winning is an outdated marketing concept. Modern marketing is not a war. It is love for its consumers, satisfaction of their needs. And the whole concept of the company's development is based on winning this love, not punishing a competitor.

The principle shift of the Japanese emphasis is not to fight a competitor, trying to worsen his situation in the market, but to fight for the client and thereby increase their positions, satisfying the client's request.

In light of this, the main task for marketing activities is not tough competition aimed at defeating your opponent, but bringing into the company's activities the best examples from competitors' practice and the increasing dissemination of benchmarking methods, setting the bar focused on the activities of competitors.

Thus, the study of foreign theory and practice of marketing activities, and especially Japanese, is of great importance for modern Russian enterprises, and marketing developments using foreign experience can become an effective tool for finding competitive advantages of enterprises.

Let's summarize the results of the first chapter. Marketing activity is a set of measures for the study of all issues related to the process of selling products: research of a product (service, work); analysis of the volume of the company's turnover; study of the market, forms and channels of commodity circulation; competitiveness of the product; research of the motives of the buyer's behavior, advertising activities; development of effective ways to promote products.

The market in marketing activities is a collection of existing or potential sellers and buyers of some products, this is the place where transactions are made. It is on the market that the product produced and the labor expended on it prove their social significance, gain recognition from consumers.

The concept of marketing activity is a relatively new in the historical sense approach to organizing entrepreneurial activity. She argues that the key to achieving organizational goals is to identify the needs and requirements of target markets and to provide the desired satisfaction in ways that are more productive and effective than the competition. In the marketing concept, the main object is the target customers of the company with their needs and requirements.

The emergence of marketing is closely related to the emergence of exchange and the emergence of the market. Marketing activity is working with the market in order to carry out exchanges, the purpose of which is to satisfy human needs and requirements. Marketing activities are based on activities such as product development, research, communication, distribution, pricing, and service deployment.

The marketing activity program is a set of practical measures to influence the market or adjust the company's activities to the market situation, as well as timely flexible response to its changes. A set of marketing activities is a set of controllable functions of marketing activities, the aggregate of which a firm uses to achieve the desired changes in the parameters of the target market.

Russian specialists, who have recently been actively introducing marketing approaches into the sphere of activities of both commercial and non-commercial companies, are also adding their own new elements.

Psychological research to subtly convince your leads to become customers.

How often do entrepreneurs want to get into the heads of their clients and find out how they think? How often do you want to know the best methods to convince someone to do something?

As the science of human mind and behavior, psychology can answer these questions. Psychology is applicable to a wide range of areas, from everyday life to human resource counseling.

But the readers of this article, who are planning to make money, are probably most interested in psychology in advertising and psychology in marketing.

1. Establish communication with the client

Goldstein, Cialdini and Grishkevicius (2008) conducted a study on the use of social norms to motivate environmental protection in hotels. Specifically, they tried to determine which message would cause hotel guests to reuse towels. They used three options below:

• Standard message: 'Help save the environment'
• 75% of guests at this hotel reuse their towels
• 75% of hotel guests in this room reuse their towels

Messages that were directly related to the participant - other guests using towels - increased the number of participants reusing towels by 10-15%.

This phenomenon of people looking at people like them more favorably is called intragroup favoritism.

In general, the best way to motivate your customers to do something is to say that customers in their situation do so. It is necessary to find common features of customers and points of contact between them, as well as between the company and customers.

2. Start small

This is commonly known as the foot-in-the-door technique.

Friedman and Fraser (1966) knocked on doors and asked residents if they could do something insignificant, such as sign a petition or stick a sticker on a window. To create a control group, they missed some houses and did not go there at all.

A little later, Friedman and Fraser went to the same houses with a larger request (for example, to place a large sign on their lawn), which was either related to the same problem as the previous request, or related to a different issue.

They found that the people they had already approached were more willing to accept a large request: almost 3 times more if the request was about a different issue, and more than 4 times more if the request related to the same issue!

How to use this psychological trick in advertising and marketing?

Starting small and then gradually scaling up your requests is an effective way to convince customers to do something. Such examples can be seen everywhere. At first, the nonprofit just asks for an email address. It then keeps the user informed of their events and progress. Before he can blink an eye, the company will ask him to make a donation.

The opposite method of "foot in the door" - "door in the face", where everything starts with a big one.

The company first makes a big, perhaps even ludicrous, request that the client would expect to reject. This is followed by a lesser request. In this case, the customer is more likely to settle for the smaller request because it's not as ridiculous as the big request that started it all.

3. Use the random reward mode

Some restaurants and cafes issue cards that allow you to get a free drink on your 10th visit.

In fact, such cards can be effective, but they are not the most effective way to encourage customers to return. Instead of a fixed-schedule reinforcement mode where customers are rewarded every 10th visit, it's better to give out rewards randomly.

This comes from a concept called operant learning in psychology, when a person learns to associate their behavior with events, for example, returning to a restaurant to receive a free drink. Operant learning usually involves rewarding a behavior in order to achieve repetition of that behavior.

Skinner proved this in experiments in which mice were rewarded with food in two different ways:

• reward every 5th time she pressed the lever (fixed schedule mode)
• the reward was given randomly (variable reinforcement).

He found the second option was longer and required less reinforcement (less food)!

How does this apply to marketing?

While humans and animals differ in many ways, they are also very similar.

What if the restaurant doesn't tell you exactly when they're going to give out the free drink? People would probably return as often as they could to maximize their chances!

Cereal brands and Willy Wonka's chocolate factory use this method by placing golden tickets in some cereal boxes or chocolate bars, making consumers want to buy more in order to win.

4. Present your business proposals in an attractive way

Two different situations are discussed below.

The initial price of the jacket is $ 125; $ 23 for a hanger. We are doing a promotion with a discount of $ 11.5. There are two different ways to present this:

• $ 113.50 per jacket $ 23 per hanger
• $ 125 for a jacket; 50% DISCOUNT - $ 11.50 per hanger

Which of these options will make consumers more willing to buy?

This adapted example is based on research by Kahneman and Tversky (1984). They found that 68% of respondents were willing to buy a coat hanger, while only 29% were willing to buy a jacket. Despite the fact that in both cases, consumers save the same amount: $ 11.50!

The bottom line is that people think of gains and losses in relative terms, not absolute terms. In other words, they think in percentages, not dollars. The $ 11.50 discount for the hanger is a larger percentage than the $ 11.50 discount for the jacket.

When you create your sales pitch and marketing message, be sure to take this into account and think about more attractive ways to style your messages - even if they have the same content.

5 reach out to consumers' feelings

Vision. Vision comes first because it is the most important and informative sense. Brady, Conkle, Alvarez, and Oliva (2008) conducted an experiment in which they showed images of objects to participants. The images below are examples they showed.

After showing a certain number of images, the researchers presented the participants with two similar images. One of them was actually shown before, and the other just looked similar. The participants were then asked which of these two images did they actually see?

They found that they were very accurate in identifying the images shown in reality, and were not led to images that were incredibly similar. In other words, people memorized visual details and were able to notice even subtle differences.

Among the 2500 images shown, the detection accuracy was about 90%!

Use visuals! As often as possible! Make all your promotional materials (ads, brochures, flyers, websites, emails, blog posts, social media pages, etc.) visually appealing and colorful.

Don't overwhelm your audience with a lot of text when you can include images, videos, and other media to make your content more animated.

Hearing. Commercial ads are great for creating ringtones that will make your brand memorable.

Take the Go Compare website, for example, which featured an annoying opera singer that many complained about in 2012, but still remembered the song. These tunes are easy to remember and get stuck in your head thanks to great marketing!

On top of that, the famous experiment with Pavlov's dogs showed the phenomenon of the classical conditioned reflex.

Pavlov rang the bell, gave the dog meat, measured the volume of salivation and repeated it. After several tests, he found that even if the dog was not given meat after the call, saliva was still produced vigorously.

Thus, the dog had a learned association between ringing and meat.

Conditioned reflexes can also occur in humans. If a marketer manages to create an advertising melody that stuck in everyone's head for a long time and creates an association with the brand, that will be great.

Who doesn't remember a McDonald's tune?

6. Grab the audience's attention

Castel, Vendetti and Holloac (2012) interviewed employees in the building. Although the average time employees worked in this building was 4.5 years, only 1 in 4 people knew where the nearest fire extinguisher was. Not paying attention to these things can be very dangerous!

You need to make sure that the audience's attention is received and directed in the right direction. If someone is blogging and wants the audience to pay attention to an important call to action, photo, video, or link, they need to directly draw the audience's attention to it, through an explicit mention in the text or highlighting on the screen.

Also, you can't clutter your pages! Everyone has probably stumbled upon pages with a huge amount of ads and content, which can be incredibly overwhelming and make it difficult to focus on something in particular.

In such cases, if a person reads an article, for example, he scrolls by and ignores everything except the text. But sometimes it turns out that there was an image or a table that he missed, actually related to the article.

Nobody wants this to happen with his great content! Especially during this time of information overload, which led to poor attention span among consumers. You must strive to engage your audience and grab their attention completely. Acting on the senses also helps here.

7. Use eye contact

How to use eye contact in marketing without making customers feel uncomfortable?

When communicating with a client or investor, of course, you need to maintain eye contact with them. But you can include this in your ads and promotional material as well. I wonder why Trix the rabbit and the Cap'n Crunch captain are looking down? To make eye contact with kids who want cereal!

8. Anchor your clients

Customers not very knowledgeable about a particular area or product price range may need landmarks or anchors to feel more confident. If you provide this guideline in the question, the client's mind will unconsciously revolve around it.

In psychology, this phenomenon, "the activation of special representations or associations in memory immediately before the performance of an action or task," is called priming, which is one of the variants of the anchor.

This method may sound questionable from a decency standpoint, but it can be used in an ethical way to increase your income.

For example, a company representative is on the phone with a potential customer. This customer is not very knowledgeable about the appropriate price range for the product they are looking for. He may not be aware of the prices of competing products or the perceived value of the product.

If the communication took place by email, the client would have time to do their own research and think about prices, but when they are on the phone, time is limited and it is necessary to think and respond quickly.

This would be an ideal situation to use an anchor. What's the best tactic? Perhaps start by offering a relatively high price (but not overly high) that sets an anchor on which the customer will base further.

Without prior information, he would use this price as the only data point.

Further thought and discussion will likely revolve around this landmark.

This overlaps with the door-to-face method, where negotiations start at a high point and then go a little lower.

Warning: One has to be very careful in determining how knowledgeable the client is. Don't risk making a knowledgeable customer angry by assuming they are not knowledgeable enough and overpricing. Some clients may understand this, some will not forgive. Ultimately, starting with a relatively high price is just an offer. Anchoring is supported by empirical evidence, and one can use one's own judgment to decide how best to adapt and apply it to certain situations.

9. Make the audience work hard

If you want someone to remember something for a long time, Craik and Tulving (1975) proved that you need to get that person to work and put in more effort. In other words, the main thing is the depth of the study.

Craik and Tulving showed subjects a list of words and asked them to compose a problem for each word. Then they were asked to remember as many words as possible.

The more work the subjects put into composing the problems (the greater the depth of study), the more words they remembered.

But how can you make your audience work, but not in a terrible way? Now is the time to recall the content in the news feed on Facebook or Vkontakte, which arouses the most interest.

Are these ads mixed with pictures of puppies in the feed? Or are they polls like "What kind of Disney princess are you?"

Perhaps the last one! However, you need to think about how to incorporate such surveys and activities into your marketing campaigns. If a company sells laptops, you can create a survey "What laptop are you?" In fact, in any company that sells a range of products, you can create a survey like "What _____ are you?" to help customers with their purchasing decisions.

Another way to apply this psychological research is to ask your audience rhetorical questions. Why are rhetorical questions so effective in announcements, presentations, etc.?

Because they make the audience think actively and not passively observe. This increases the depth of treatment.
Dale's Cone of Experience sums up this idea well visually.

The moral of the story is that people are better at remembering what they put their hand or brain to.

10. Invite your friends

From a marketing standpoint, why are so many marketing campaigns based on “invite your friends”? The bottom line is that friends have a big impact on a person. One has only to remember all those times when people try something new simply because friends did it and encouraged them to do the same!

Harnessing the power of social groups in marketing can drive new trends.

11. Asking your customers to pay in advance

In a study by Quoidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson (2013), people were asked to recall their favorite band 5 years ago and indicate the maximum amount they would pay to see them now. Then they had to think about their current favorite band and name the maximum amount they are willing to pay to see them in 5 years.

The answer to the second question turned out to be a higher amount than the first, even though it does not make sense from a rational point of view.

The average for the first question was $ 80, and for the second question $ 129.

The researchers concluded that "the participants overpaid for a future opportunity substantially in order to satisfy their current preference."

This can potentially be used to your advantage by asking customers to pay in advance for what they want before they have time to change their preferences.