Beautiful Mind In Marketing: How Marketers Play With Our Subconscious And Boost Sales

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We buy stuff every day. Some of them we need for living, but most of them we purchase to receive a particular emotional background state. How did marketers reach this effect?

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Upgrade your Marketing Skills by Using emotional background Triggers

Purchases are made due to emotions and intuition. In other words, buyers are led by their subconscious. What does the scientific world know about this? Not much. It means that the task of marketers is to push the correct buttons to achieve the desired reaction, in particular with purchases. All the creativity, fantasy, rationality and irrationality have to work together in stride.

Due to the hit-and-miss method, we have learned a lot of known behavior which can be applied to modern marketing. These principles are used every day and everywhere. By knowing some of these, it is easier to create a promotional campaign, which will activate the right part of our subconscious mind.

Beliefs and Attitudes - how do they influence customers

Due to neuroscience research, the human subconscious can identify the possible ways to reach a certain goal, which leads to positive emotions. For example, if a person sets a goal to loose weight, he or she will pay attention to products with reduced fat and will probably buy them because this can lead to losing weight. Positive emotions are caused by the likelihood of reaching the goal.

The role of beliefs and attitudes

This system wouldn’t be possible without certain beliefs. In this case, a buyer is convinced that products with reduced fat are helpful in the way of losing weight. For every marketer, this is a sign that the fat parentage is reasonable to write in a visible place by marking a product as ‘light.' This is one example of all the convictions, which lead people to certain purchasing styles.

How to apply this to my product?

Find a product feature that can cause a strong positive reaction. For example, natural fabric will protect your skin from allergies, so it is reasonable to put something like ‘100% anti allergic cotton’ on the front. Another example is vegetarians and vegans who buy products with certain signs, characteristics, protein contents, etc. Your task as a marketer is to take one of these activating features and put it in a visible place on the label, which will increase purchases and profits.

Attention and Learning

People tend to learn from their mistakes, which is why it is crucial not to provide untruths on package labels. Once a customer experiences a negative reaction to the product, he or she will not likely buy it again and will tell others not to buy it. There is no need to lie to or trick the consumer. The desired result is reachable by influencing people’s emotions. After a negative emotion, a person will avoid your brand forever because the modern market is overwhelmed with so many other options.

There are two types of attention which cause three types of learning

Keeping one’s attention requires a full concentration on information. Passive attention allows a person to become easily distracted and concentrate on something else. Passive learning means learning or watching something in the background and remembering separate patterns. Implicit learning occurs  constantly without actually paying attention to something directly, but yet remembers. Active learning require active attention and concentration on provided material. In this state, active learning and attention are reasonable. This is what marketers call a ‘catch.' The main aim of this type of ads is to cause any reaction, whether positive or negative.

Emotional background, Ads, and Subconscious

There are promotion videos which you want to watch again and again. Not just because they are beautiful, funny, or sweet but because they give you a special blend of emotions that you haven’t exprienced. This process, unfortunately, can’t be controlled. People can have personal reactions to certain information due to personal associations or memories. There is some regularity of behavior though.

The company which provides marketing consultations called Beyond Reason performed research after which they created a comprehensive model that included general emotional influencers:

  1. Power
  2. Certainty
  3. Self-development
  4. Individuality
  5. Sexuality
  6. Belonging
  7. Physiology
  8. Recognition

Each of these influencers can be found in world known brands. If we take, for example the beer Guinness, it can be characterized with sexuality. Activia by Danone is concentrated on Physiology and Apple represents individuality with a slogan ‘think different,'. Lion candy, represents power in spite of the fact that candies have nothing in common with power in real life.

Subconsciousness

You may not be aware of the secrets of making decisions led by subconsciousness, but there are emotions, which you can influence. Using these concepts cause people to associate a strong emotional background with your product, which plays a big role in decision-making. Advertising is a platform for expressing creativity, implementing the bravest ideas, and doing whatever causes emotions to stir. The stronger emotional backgrounds you can create, the higher chances you’ll have for increasing sales.

Irrational

Another study shows that people tend to remember irrational associations better then logical ones. The best example of this is the candy Skittles, which connects candies with a rainbow and hilarious creatures.

The method of irrational association is also applied in learning languages, which is called mnemotechnics. The main idea states that the more irrational association with a new the word, the better the chances that you will remember it. Making up ridiculous and meaningless promos makes sense and has value in the marketing world.

Customer's Decision Making

Decision making is a combinations of impressions gained by learning, according to personal beliefs on site emotions experienced for the first time. The task of each marketer is to strongly tag emotions to a brand, which will  lead to increasing revenue for the corporation. The decision-making process is performed intuitively due to the associations, experience, and emotional background that we create in our minds. Marketers have to use all the known triggers to influence a potential customer for this decision. The triggers are:

  • Sight
  • Hearing
  • Taste
  • Touch
  • Smell

There are plenty of variations on how to use all these senses for commercial purposes. The prepared customer will more likely decide to buy your brand if you provide him with a rich variety of emotions.

Emotional background and its role in marketing - Conclusion

We all are victims of marketing tips and tricks. We buy stuff we don’t need because we are seeking the feelings they provide. What do you think about affecting the subconscious to sell a product? Are you willing to pay for emotions only from things you need? Leave a comment about your personal shopping experience and the emotional background it causes.

BIO:

I’m a young freelance writer specializing in psychology, education, technology and business. I have many other interests and enjoy sharing them through my written words.

I have a B.A. from New York University. When I’m not busy freelance writing or editing, I’m fishing somewhere around New York.

Article by Angela Steinman

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