Sales psychology is nothing new. There are some philosophers & scientists who will tell you that marketing & advertising is 20 million years old. When flowers emerged from the gloomy forests & grasslands that populated the Earth way before we did, they used their bright colours to advertise & promote themselves to bees and other insects that could help them to pollinate.
There are many psychological tricks used in nature and the marketing world, as we know it. Relating to the flower example, behavioural scientist Rory Sutherland states that:
"The extent to which you spend money on 'petals', is proof in your confidence of the long term value of what you have to offer...people use advertising as a heuristic to know whom to trust".
This is why many companies are willing to spend millions on SuperBowl adverts and adverts in magazines, despite the lack of immediate return on investment. We'll look at more neuromarketing techniques that top marketing consultants probably don't want you to know about....
The Impact of Subconscious on Buying Decisions - Neuromarketing
Music can impact your buying decisions. In 2000, scientists tested the impact of German & French music upon sales of German & French wine. On the days that they played French music, the French wine outsold the German wine by 3 to 1, but over 90% of consumers stated that the music had no impact on their buying decisions. The opposite was true - German music dramatically increased sales of German wine, but still, consumers stated the music had no impact on their buying decisions.
This suggests we make purchases based on emotions, feelings and intuition rather than logical, conscious decisions.
Coca Cola was losing marketing share to Pepsi in 1985. Coca Cola created a new formula to make it taste nicer than Pepsi - which it did in taste tests. The original Coca Cola performed worse than Pepsi in blind taste tests, however, the new Coca Cola performed much better than Pepsi in these same tests. They rolled out the new formula to shops & consumers expecting it to perform well in terms of sales & feedback - sales plummeted & complaints increased exponentially!
Coca Cola went back to the lab to find out what had happened. Coca Cola researches did a blind taste test with Pepsi and Coca Cola. Over 50% of volunteers preferred Pepsi. They redid the taste challenge - but this time, instead of a blind taste test - consumers were told what they were drinking before they took a sip of Pepsi and before they drunk the 'original' Coca Cola.
Branding The Limbic System
In the "Non-Blind" taste test, 75% of volunteers preferred Coca Cola to Pepsi. Whether or not the volunteers knew what they were drinking, made a huge difference in terms of how 'good' the drink seemed to taste.
In the Non-Blind tests - whilst drinking Coca Cola, the emotional & memory part of the volunteers' brains became more activated than in the blind taste test. The thoughts & memories tied to Coca Cola advertising and the volunteers' own experiences with the drink, appeared to improve the taste of the drink.
The emotional part of the brain, also known as the "limbic system" is extremely important when it comes to making decisions. Individuals who have suffered damage to this part of the brain, suddenly have terrible difficulty in making trivial decisions. A trip to the food store could take hours of agonising over each purchase decision from cereal to teabags.
This is possibly why Coca Cola always appear to push advertising around Christmas time and in many countries do a tour with the Coca Cola Truck. By getting children to associate Coca Cola with memories of Christmas, they are having a long term impact upon the limbic system, effectively manipulating their emotions and a lifelong association of Christmas with Coca Cola. This is possibly one of the reasons that Coca Cola appears to taste better in non-blind taste tests, compared to blind-tests where the volunteers don't know what type of coke they are drinking.
The Scarcity Effect
Limited time offers, deals that won't be around for long and "this weekend only" are all marketing slogans and promotional phrases that we are aware of. Marketers want us to feel that we have an opportunity, and it ensures that we make a yes/no choice immediately, rather than procrastinating. Humans are procrastinators by nature and we are often happy with thinking "maybe I'll buy that later" and passing buy an item or service. Limited time offers force some kind of a decision.
Amazon has utilised the scarcity effect by using a widget that shows users how long is left on an offer, and how much/how many items are left. Their "Lightning Sales" have been shown in some instances to increase sales by up to %1000, albeit with a discounted price.
The psychology behind this is still being debated. Some psychologist attributes the effect to Reactant Theory, others to Commodity Theory.
Reactant Theory, states that when an individuals' freedom to participate or choose a certain behaviour is threatened, the threatened behaviour becomes much more appealing. For example, ammunition sales increase significantly, any time there is a news story related to gun control.
Commodity Theory - goods that appear to be scare, are considered to be more valuable. Diamonds, for example, are not actually scarce, but the supply is controlled in a very strict way to make it appear that way. It is possible that both Commodity and Reactant theory are at work when we see the significant impact that 'limited time offers' have on consumer behaviour.
Increasing Sales with Psychology
Start with some of the fundamentals. All the neuroscience and sales theories are fantastic, but you probably already know of several psychological factors that you should already be utilising and capitalising upon. For example, If you work in digital marketing and your aim is to generate leads for a business, you will no doubt be fully aware that phone calls, convert much more efficiently than form completions or live chats. People who make a phone call are usually further down the 'sales funnel' and past the research stage.
In fact, Google themselves state that pay-per-call mobile campaigns have 6-8% higher conversion rates than pay-per-click mobile ad campaigns. If you are a small business this may mean hiring a phone answering service or outsourcing to a virtual assistant who can provide 24/7 cover for your phone inquiries.
Many marketing campaigns fail because they don't address the subconscious brain and the neuroscience behind how people make decisions. In the digital age of testing and data-driven-decisions, this may soon be a thing of the past.
In 1 year, Google tested over 50 shades of blue to see which one would generate more clicks on their adverts. By doing this, they choose the optimal colour, which in turn increased their annual revenue by over 200 million dollars (source).
Google also uses "website page speed" as a ranking factor. A site which is quick to load also creates a better user experience - nobody wants to wait around for a website to load. However, even an undetectable increase in site speed can have a dramatic impact on consumer behaviour. Amazon improved its site speed by 0.1 seconds and saw a $1.7 billion increase in sales that they directly attributed to this improvement. They stated later that a 0.1 increase in speed, can increase sales by 1% - for a company as big as Amazon, the impact of this can be huge.
Whether you choose to push sales using these techniques or you use them to be aware of how sales & marketing consultants may be trying to manipulate your behaviour, the fact that many sales techniques are subconscious opens a whole new element to the ever-evolving consumer world we live in!
