How would it be, if we marketers could just speak straight to a customer’s mind, and cut across all the noise in the highly competitive market?
Just one look, and everyone in the market knows exactly what we offer, and the benefits they can drive from our products.
Some may argue that that’s exactly what B2B advertising does. But this kind of instant brand awareness goes much beyond advertising. The objective is to be present in indirect ways, at unexpected spaces- like a conversation over coffee, like a casual remark at a pub, or just a small observation in a shopping mall- everyone seems to be wearing black nowadays!
Of course, it works slightly differently for B2B brand awareness, takes a little more effort to plant the information bytes, takes a little deeper research to know where!
Psychologists have established that much of our decisions are made in the subconscious mind, through an ‘always-on’ communication stream- much like the mobile devices that are constantly broadcasting and absorbing information – without anyone realizing it! The result of this is that even when there are targeted messages, the decisions are taken on the base of subconscious data collected. So with this continuous absorption of brands’ information, the real crux comes when there is a need to decide for a solution or product. Then all these background data points come into the picture.
Interesting, right?
In this situation, the smart place for brands to stay is in the ‘grey’ zone where the consumers are still undecided, fuzzy between brands, unsure about their differentiators. This is where the siren song of an earlier psychological impact can come into play. It could be anything – something heard somewhere before, something seen they can’t remember where! That’s brand identity- and then the field is open for a great after sales service, a great brand support, a perfect UX etc.
Megan Sangha, Senior Product Marketing Manager, for workflow management company Wrike, in her talk at a recent MarTech conference has an interesting observation. She observes that psychology can be used for cementing a purchase decision through six bias categories:
- Category heuristics. A picture memory- with a small description of the product, seen even for a very short period of time.
- Scarcity bias. The message that it has limited availability- in modern terms- FOMO.
- Social norms. Customer reviews, she says, influence 95% of buying decisions.
- Authority bias. The opinion of an influencer (which is why digital media and social media pay them so handsomely), or an expert, even an impactful research data.
- The power of free. Freebies! They always, as she says, ‘sweeten the deal’.
- The power of now. An opportunity missed is lost forever, unavailability of a product lowers its value, and leads to likely discarding it.
These small insights can lead to higher customer satisfaction, lower customer turnover, churn, improve sales process, and of course, better reviews from earlier customers.
Add these tricks to your basket of strategies- mind games never lose!
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