When it comes to marketing, there are a lot of dos and don’ts. Generally, industry practitioners know what works and what doesn’t. But do they know why (and do you)?
Knowing why some things work and others don’t is as important as knowing what works and what doesn’t, because if you don’t know why it works, you’ll never be able to apply that knowledge to anything new. You’ll just do the same things over and over again, following a formula. How will you do anything different? How will you stand out?
With behavioural economics shifting towards the realms of popular psychology in recent years, research is more accessible and understanding why people do what they do is easier than it ever has been. Yet, as an industry, we could still be much better informed.
With that in mind, here are a few of the subconscious behaviours that impact marketing and advertising, starting with heuristics and cognitive biases.
Heuristics are mental shortcuts that we all use on a day-to-day basis. They’re beneficial in most situations because they help us to make decisions quickly, but they can sometimes be maladaptive, causing us to make decisions for the wrong reasons, without realising it.
Attribute substitution
What is it?
When you’re asked a difficult question to which you don’t know the answer, you’ll often subconsciously substitute it for a question that’s easier to answer, based on the information that you do know.
Take the following question as an example: Which is the best car for me?
That’s a tough question. There are lots of variables: cost, size, safety, speed, comfort, fuel efficiency, carbon footprint and so on. You couldn’t possibly know all the answers and it would take a lot of time and effort to find them out for every model of every brand. So instead, your brain draws up a shortlist by answering a different, but related, question that’s much easier to answer:
“Which cars do I like?”
That’s a much simpler question that requires no intimate knowledge to answer.
Its role in ads and marketing
Our tendency to turn complicated questions into simpler, emotional ones makes life a lot easier for brands with products and services that can be difficult to communicate: the many factors that influence car purchases or the fact that you can’t smell a perfume brand through your TV, for example.
This is why communications are often emotionally-led (think the John Lewis Christmas ad) to form a connection with prospects without having to explain everything, or anything, about its offerings. Alternatively, marketing can be benefit-led, to actually make the prospect think: “Oh, that’s good.”
Either way, if your marketing can help you make the shortlist in the mind of the prospect, then you’re already halfway there.
The availability heuristic
What is it?
This is when you place greater importance on information that’s more easily accessible in your mind – or in other words, easier to remember.
Usually, experiences that are more recent are naturally easier to remember, but sometimes your brain tells you that because it’s easy to remember, it must be important. You must have stored it for a reason.
Its role in ads and marketing
The availability heuristic plays a role in brand marketing. Every brand wants to be at the forefront of your mind – and the more recently you experienced it, the more weight you’ll lend to it. So when brands bombard media channels with communications and you see or hear them more frequently, this heuristic can enhance the effect the marketing has on prospects.
Anchoring
What is it?
This is your tendency to allow the first piece of information you receive to affect your judgement. You use it as an anchor for making future decisions.
If I asked: is Apple worth more or less than $1bn? Regardless of how you responded, your answer to the next question, “how much is Apple worth?” would be influenced by the $1bn figure. Whether you valued it higher or lower, you would most likely value it closer to $1bn than if you hadn’t been asked the first question.
Its role in ads and marketing
The obvious application with regards to numerical anchors is pricing. This is why discount offers are so effective, because your base value of the product or service is anchored by its original price, which conveys better value in the discounted one.
But the effects of anchoring are not limited to facts and figures. Perception of a brand can be anchored by your experience of it. As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Paul Bond is a copywriter at BURN
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