For better communication, making more sales, and making a fantastic impression on everybody you speak to, sometimes you have to dig deep into psychology. A large part of marketing is psychology and appealing to as many people as possible. In the same way you want to appeal to a potential friend or long-term partner, you want to gain the trust and admiration of your prospective and existing customers. For that, Alessandro Calzonari, a consumer psychology consultant, has three tips that will help you with your business.
Can I Target EVERYONE With My Business?
The short answer is no. It might seem like a given to target as many people as possible for your new product or service, even if it’s incredible, but that can have detrimental effects. When you try to target EVERYONE, your message can become diluted and you may end up not helping the same number of people you initially thought. For example, if you do business consulting, it’s very difficult to have a message so broad that you attract a multi-billion dollar private jet company and a small shoelace business at the same time.
You need to leverage your existing knowledge, build new engagement and loyalty, and achieve brand advocacy through your clients. Your marketing message becomes a game of chess where you need to move the correct piece to target a specific one on the other end.
Three Things You NEED to Know About Consumer Psychology
1. Finding Leverage
A major mistake that many businesses make is competing on price rather than value and results. To avoid this, you need to acknowledge three stages in any customer or client: past, present, and future. Every customer has past experiences that influence their interaction with you now which would lead to future aspirations with your business. Understanding a customer’s past makes it easier to guarantee them a better future experience with you.
The fact of the matter is that most prospects will think about postponing their decision to purchase a product or service. Think about how many times you’ve thought about changing your TV or smartphone and kept postponing it when you think about how much you NEED to change them. This leads into the two types of any consumer’s needs: deficiency needs and being needs.
Deficiency needs are immediate needs, like taking a painkiller because you have a headache that you need to get rid of now. Think of basic needs like food and drink. They need immediate action to solve their problem. The same goes for services like mechanical or repair services.
On the other hand, being needs are closer to aspirations that you can live without for a bit, like changing your TV or even buying a new house. This becomes tricky because the majority of business owners’ needs are being needs, not deficiency ones. For example, a business owner wants to increase his sales, but he can wait a few months for that to happen. How often does a business need to make a 1000% profit overnight?
This means that we need to always determine whether the service or product we’re selling is an immediate “deficiency” need or a long-term “being” need. This distinction helps reduce the gap of inaction and the “Hmm, let me think about it” phase. Ultimately, your goal is to have your prospects take action today rather than later.
When it comes to past experiences, it’s essential that you acknowledge them. One mistake many business owners make is assuming that the person being communicated to is brand new with no prejudices or negative experiences. It’s very possible that your prospect has had a negative experience with the same product or service you’re offering from another business and that might make them refrain from working with you. Yet, they might have a positive experience with a similar product or service and that would make them want to try yours.
The Halo vs Horn Effect of Consumer Psychology
It’s much easier to communicate if your prospect has had a positive past experience. For example, if you’re selling a kind of software that makes people more productive, and your prospect has had success with a similar product in the past, even if it wasn’t exactly what they were expecting, this will positively influence their communication with you. This is called the Halo Effect.
On the opposite side, there is the Horn Effect: when an unpleasant past experience negatively influences the conversation in the present, even if you are a completely different company or business from the one your prospects had worked with in the past. So, it’s all about understanding and acknowledging those experiences. You may say something like “I understand that you may have had an experience with this company or this person, but we offer something different.” You can’t delete a consumer’s past experience, but you can steer them into trying out a more positive one.
A tricky road to navigate is when people immediately share their negative experiences, especially for niches like SEO. You might hear a lot of “Oh, I tried this and it didn’t work” or “It was expensive and I didn’t understand it” and it’s even trickier when they don’t reveal their past experiences at all. For this, you need to ask neutral questions that guarantee you get the positive past experiences without waking up dormant, negative ones. Questions like “Have you already done something in the past that helped with X?” are good, or “Tell me more”, but never steer the conversation toward the negative experiences with questions like “Have you had a bad experience with X?”
PRO TIP: Don’t Ask Yes or No Questions
The goal of any conversation with a prospect is to get THEM talking. You accomplish this by either asking a lot or by listening a lot but never talk too much. If the conversation starts drying up, use the magical Why, When, Where, What, and Why questions. Something like “When did you do this?” or “What were the results?” will help you keep the conversation going. Be careful with the Why questions, though, because you don’t want it to feel like an interrogation.
Make Your Prospect the Hero of the Conversation
You need to make your prospective client or customer feel important. Your instinct might be to talk about what you’re doing now or what you’ll do in the future, but it’s better to ask THEM. In a conversation like this, you’re not the hero, THEY are. Making your clients or prospects feel important and letting them share their experience allows them to share more information and ultimately set up a collaboration, rather than a sale. This is especially important for anyone new to client interactions like customer service.
2. Comment Marketing
Ironically, the least used marketing activity might just be the most powerful one: comment marketing. Comment marketing has to do with engaging comments through LinkedIn, YouTube, or any social media platform. In a way, comments might just be the most important marketing asset because of their longevity. A good comment made a few hours ago helps your business today, but it will continue to help you a year from now.
Because comments are direct human interactions and experiences, they have a lot of emotion in them. Once you read the positive comments from a passionate business or client, you can understand their psychology and form a better relationship with them. Understanding the current emotion and responding empathetically fosters loyalty.
In psychology, the more we are exposed to external stimuli like comments, the more likely we are to become familiar with the person commenting and trust them. Frequent positive interactions build a strong connection and trust, turning satisfied clients into loyal ones.
Not all comments were created equal, though, because a simple comment like “Well done!” or “Amazing!” adds no value, similar to a thumbs-up reaction. Good comments are all about triggering a conversation through questions, discussions, etc. Statistically, it also helps because platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn prioritise posts or videos with high engagement compared to those without comments or interactions.
Another Pro Tip: Add Value to Conversations
Good conversations involve different perspectives. It’s all about neutral questions that can help you learn from the other person. For example, a good question isn’t “Do you think this is black or white?” It’s more when something is white and you ask “Do you think this is black?” Then you ask how they came to their conclusion and now you have a conversation going. This approach not only increases engagement but also demonstrates open-mindedness, making others more likely to engage with you. It’s not just about algorithm, but the value refines your service or product.
3. Go Beyond Client Expectations
As humans, we have two moments right after purchasing a product or service: the actual experience and the expected experience. We will always compare both experiences because after all, you always want your purchase to meet your expectations. With that in mind, there are three levels to this:
- Level One: If the actual experience falls short, the client will be unhappy and won’t recommend the product or service.
- Level Two: The experience meets their expectations and they are satisfied but not motivated to promote it as it was just what they were expecting.
- Level Three: The actual experience exceeds their expectations and they promote it to others, doing marketing for you through recommendations and word of mouth.
Impressing your clients to the point of them recommending the product or service to others is how you win the game; it creates trust and ultimately reduces your marketing costs as the clients will be doing most of the prominent marketing for you. The majority of businesses struggle with building trust as it takes time but when the client recommends the service, we are beyond the trust building stage.
The Triad of Marketing: Testimonials, case studies, and referrals
Testimonials, case studies and referrals are your public guarantee that your clients have enjoyed your services. It’s very simple: you finish the work, ask for testimonials, and from the video testimonials you build a case study where you highlight where your client was beforehand (point A), where they are now (point B), the obstacles you faced, how you helped your client move from point A to point B, etc.
The main goal of a case study is to show a transformation because after all, your client relationship should be a transformational relationship rather than a transactional one.
Lastly is referrals where your client suggests you to other people because now they trust you. Understanding these points makes you see patterns in your audience and once you know your target market, you can serve it much, much better.
Takeaway
Mastering the different elements of consumer psychology is a golden ticket to growing your business. Finding leverage, using comments, and going beyond your clients’ expectations are keys to genuine human interactions that will ultimately build the required transformational relationship with your clients.
Last Updated on December 20, 2024
