How the Psychology of Liking Can Increase Sales
Understanding the principle of liking and knowing how to use it in your marketing and on your website can give you an unfair advantage over the competition.
As a psychological principle, commitment and consistency refer to the choices people make to believe more strongly in the decisions we’ve already made in order to avoid cognitive dissonance (a situation where you have conflicting beliefs or behaviors).
The best way to earn the loyalty of customers and prospects is to make them commit to something. That’s because people prefer to be loyal and consistent with a choice they previously made. This is known as the principle of commitment and consistency. This happens because we use mental shortcuts to simplify the way we make decisions. And because we make so many decisions every day, we subconsciously (and sometimes, consciously) look for ways to reduce the number of decisions we have to make.
One way to accomplish this is called 'foot in the door.' The premise is simple: someone will agree to a larger request after they have first agreed to a smaller request.
Another way to accomplish this is cross-selling. Often incorrectly confused with the term up-selling (selling of a different, high-end product), cross-selling is selling items in addition to the item already in hand.
Cross-selling has a greater chance of follow-through because the consumer has already purchased or committed to one product in their shopping cart.
Let’’s say a customer has decided to purchase a new iPhone. After selecting which iPhone is right for them (with some shiny up-selling techniques), they are greeted with AppleCare warranty options, accessories that are designed for the chosen iPhone, and lastly other products Apple offers that integrate seamlessly with iPhones.
Yet another effective way to use commitment and consistency in your business is wishlists, similar to what Amazon does. With more than 12 million products available, Amazon wish lists allow customers to create and organize lists of products they desire and/or intend to buy.Amazon allows customers to create multiple lists and share them with others and on social media. Price drop alerts sent to customers are also integrated into this well-oiled machine.
When a customer puts an item in a wish list — psychologically they are committing to purchase it at a later time. Wish lists serve as a midpoint between forgetting about an item in a shopping cart and completing a purchase. The reach they provide goes beyond just improving the customer experience. Wishlists provide an inside look into consumer preferences, drive customer engagement and reduce shopping cart abandonment. And here’s another benefit: wish lists require a customer account or profile to be set up, which in turn adds their e-mail (assuming they opt-in) to future marketing drip campaigns.
There are many important principles, theories, and concepts used in marketing psychology. These include:
You can research each of these principles, plus dozens of other key principles of marketing psychology, via the links below.
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There’s a strong link connecting marketing and psychology. In order to build proper connections with customers and prospects, marketers must understand how people behave and what motivates them to make purchasing decisions. Most consumer behavior scientists and economists agree that people do not make decisions in a vacuum.
There are many psychological factors that influence consumer behavior. Four of the most important factors are motivation, perception, learning, and the consumer's belief system.
Marketing psychologists study consumers and how different factors such as age, education, personal habits, personal beliefs, and others factors, lead consumers to make purchasing decisions.
Psychographics is the qualitative methodology of studying consumers based on psychological characteristics and traits. These include values, desires, goals, interests, and lifestyle choices. The goal of psychographics is to understand peoples' emotions and values so that a business can market more effectively.
The four types of market segmentation include: demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral.
Behavioral characteristics in marketing include a customer's age, gender, income, location, and occupation. These characteristics frequently correlate to behavioral data and the aggregated data can often be used to derive certain conclusions about other segmentation data.
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