Six Consumer Psychology Principles that you Should‘NOT’ Ignore to Gain New Customers

blog.dlvrit.com /2015/08/6-consumer-behaviors-to-drive-customers/

Debra Garber

Steve Jobs famously said, “ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them ”. Thisconsumer behavior is why great marketing is critical. The best marketers understand what makes peopleact, and how to use that understanding in campaigns, email marketing, social media content, and evengraphic design.

Consumer psychology is all about getting into that unconscious territory where people arebeing directed to make purchases for reasons they are not clear about, states consumerpsychology expert, Michael Fishman.

Let’s examine Econsultancy’s six consumer psychology principles and the social media actions you cantake to leverage these principles to build up a larger and more loyal audience. These include:

1. Reciprocity

2. Information Gap Theory

3. Social Proof

4. Fear of Missing Out

5. Loss Aversion

6. Paradox of Choice

Principal #1 – Reciprocity. Feels good, doesn’t it?

Reciprocity – meaning mutual exchange.

Reciprocity is a psychological principle regarding a positive action that takes place in response to anotherpositive action. This principle suggests that one will return an act of friendship made by another.

How to use reciprocity in social media:

1 – Follow to be followed.

From Ryan Hanley’s post on just be awesome social media strategy :

Find ten to twenty blogs of thought leaders in your niche and connect with those people on the twoto three social media platforms you use the most. Then just participate.

Show interest in what they are saying by commenting on their post.

Add value to the discussion by sharing your personal experiences.

Be part of the solution that leads to achievement of their goals.

2 – Share great content, not just your own.

Share the content of other people BEFORE you ever share your own. Use social media to give value firstand build trust with others and in return they will help you spread your message

In general by being Awesome and sharing the awesome content of other people first you willgarner the attention of appreciation of these individuals who will RECIPROCATE!

Principal #2 -The secret to creating curiosity: Information Gap Theory.

Curiosity – a strong desire to know or learn something.

In psychology, the Information Gap Theory refers to the curiosity that humans develop if there is a gapbetween the information they already know and the information they wish to know.

Developed by George Loewenstein back in the early 1990s, this theory suggests that when there is a gapin knowledge, humans are triggered to take action to find what they want to know.

Loewenstein believes that curiosity proceeds in two basic steps:

First, a situation reveals a painful gap in our knowledge (that’s the headline)

Second, then we feel an urge to fill this gap and ease that pain (that’s the click)

How to use this curiosity in social media:

1 – The easiest way to do this is by creating eye-catching, attention-grabbing headlines.

Your headline and image grab attention. Curiosity, on the other hand, helps you keep attention! It’simportant to spark an interest that already exists within your audience:

Choosing the right topics to write about is essential.

Find something that your audience will want to know more about, and hand them the answer on aplate.

Draw them in with the right headline and you have given them something great for free, taking us back tothe Reciprocity Theory.

Here’s a great article on why curiosity based headlines hook us in: Upworthy’s Headlines Are Insufferable.Here’s Why You Click Anyway

Upworthy headlines are wildly effective. A recent web traffic chart reveals that Upworthy generated about75,000 Facebook likes for each article. If that sounds impressive, get this: The second-best performing

site produced fewer than 10,000 likes.

Whatever you think of Upworthy, the power of curiosity-gap headlines is, possibly, peerless.

Principal #3 – Use social proof to encourage readership and downloads.

Content marketing and social proof work hand in hand. This theory proposes that people naturallygravitate to a product that they know others already like and trust.

How to use social proof in social media:

1 – If you’re trying to grow your blog subscriber list, encourage them to subscribe:

“Join the 13,648 content marketers who subscribe to our blog!”

2 – Use social share counters on your blog posts.

Show readers and prospective readers how many people have already read and shared your article.

3 – Embed tweets from readers and share customer testimonials within your landing pages.

Principal #4 – Keeping up with the fear of missing out.

Fear of Missing Out (or FOMO, for short) is a part of the scarcity marketing theory. The thought is –humans tend to put more value on things they feel are scarce and a lower value on anything that you caneasily obtain.

When people worry they can’t have something due to limited time or quantity, psychologically they will startwanting it more. Also, in today’s world of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and the like, we are all instantlyaware of the stuff we are missing out on.

How to use FOMO in social media:

1 – Show your customers that your content is rare and therefore, valuable.

If you have an e-book, make it free to download for a limited amount of time

If you have a newsletter, tell your customers that there is new content on your site that they havethe opportunity to see before anyone else.

When people worry they can’t have something due to limited time or quantity, psychologically they will startwanting it more.

Principal #5 – Aversion to loss is more powerful than acquiring gains.

In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to the way people tend to prefer avoiding lossesthan acquiring gains. Most studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.

Whether a transaction is framed as a loss or as a gain is very important: would yourather get a $5 discount, or avoid a $5 surcharge?

How to use loss aversion to your advantage in social media:

The best way to apply the loss aversion principle to your content marketing is to work out what exactlymakes your audience tick.

1 – Taylor your blog content to show your customers why your service or product will prevent them fromlosing something important to them, like time or money.

2 –Use trial periods and rebates to takeadvantage of the buyer’s tendency to bewary of new things.

Principal #6 – Paradox of too manychoices – why less is more.

In the book The Paradox of Choice – WhyMore Is Less, psychologist Barry Schwartzargues that you can significantly reduce anxiety in a consumer by limiting the number of choices available.

Autonomy and Freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical tofreedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice thanany group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy,we don’t seem to be benefiting from it psychologically. —quoted from Ch.5, The Paradox ofChoice, 2004

The Paradox of Choice principle proposes that humans become less satisfied if they have too manychoices. People often struggle with important decisions, and when given too many choices, we often worrylater that a different option may have been better for us.

How to use the paradox of choice in social media:

1 – Keep your social media content clear and concise and don’t overwhelm your audience with toomany choices. When someone reads your content, ideally, you want the reader to take a further action.

Offer them two different options:

Share it

Read something similar (or related, popular or trending)

Goal: Avoid giving your audience too many options that result in them leaving your site.

For example, at the end of all our dlvr.it blog posts, we offer our audience two choices: ‘Share this’ or‘Related’.

There are many factors to take into consideration when creating and implementing a successful socialmedia marketing strategy. Keeping these six consumer psychology principles in mind will help you focuson your audiences’ thoughts and behavior, and most importantly, help you to stand out in a crowdedworld of online marketing.