Being a marketer is not easy. You need to wear several hats to create that perfect selling proposition – you need to have the understanding of the product manager, the content team, your sales guys, and even the data people to add that new perspective in positioning, pricing and placement. A good marketer is always on the lookout for a spark of insight about their target audience that can help them create the right messaging for the product. This insight comes from a deep understanding of their psyche – knowing which statement is most likely to tug their heartstrings and push them off an indecisive fence and become a customer. While you may already be applying a lot of psychology lessons to connect with your target audience, here are a few that we found comes in handy: 1. Emotional marketing Has an ad left you feeling so emotional that it has affected the way you perceive the brand? Sometimes these emotions are powerful enough to make a consumer spur the buying decision before the rational brain kicks in to understand the product features or price. If such an emotional buy is then ratified with a good product, it results in winning over a loyal customer. A great example is the Nike Dream Crazier women ad. That and several in the genre that tugs on an emotion. The ad never once tries to sell Nike or explain the product features or mention the price. The intent of the ad is to appeal to the emotions of women athletes. The brand demonstrates that it ‘knows’ you. It ‘feels’ you. And it is one standing by as a silent supporter in your struggles. Of course, women will try out the shoes and buy them for the quality they offer. Not that rival brands may be any less in quality. That’s where the emotional marketing works and creates a differentiator pull of brand affinity. 2. Provide social proof Social selling is new-age marketing. From using influencers to sell your wares to providing the opportunity for reviews, testimonials and other user-generated content, the awareness and selling proposition brought out via social proof is more powerful than a brand peddling its value proposition. The case from social proof comes from the fact that we want to emulate the behaviours of the people we trust and follow. View this post on Instagram my daily essentials. what are yours? #madedifferently @smartwaterind A post shared by Radhika (@radhikaofficial) on Oct 10, 2019 at 1:06am PDT Although many industries have adopted social selling, it works really well for travel and fashion. Having an influencer or customer wear your label and tag you often becomes a more powerful reason to buy than other factors. Seeing beautiful destinations visited by someone in your peer group gives better validation to your own choices. Check out the top 10 travel influencers of India in this piece, their brand marketing tie-ups and how they have benefited the advertisers. 3. Grounded Cognition Before we continue, take a minute to watch this Nescafe Gold video. We have to admit it left us with goosebumps. Would I buy the coffee because of this ad? Probably not. When the decision making happens on the supermarket shelf, we will look at blend and aroma than the emotional appeal. Then why did Nescafe decide to create this ad? That’s because this ad takes the storytelling approach that almost makes you feel standing in place of the man in the stadium. You’ll feel the anxiety of the protagonist almost imagining who in your friends and loved ones will be left standing if you were to ask these questions. This coupled with the product cut ads did the trick for the brand. 4. Paradox of Choice The common experiment quoted to demonstrate this marketing psychology is the one conducted by Sheena Iyengar, a professor of business at the University of Colombia and the author of ‘The art of choosing’. In a California gourmet market, the professor and her assistants set up a booth of jams and switched from a selection of 24 to 6 jams every hour. Here’s the math: No. of people who sampled the larger assortment: 60% No. of people who bought after sampling the larger assortment: 3% No. of people who sampled the smaller assortment: 40% No. of people who bought after sampling the smaller assortment: 30% The other appending factor is the lack of information in the choices. If one variety of jam gave out information on being from an organic source or having more nutrient value for children, it could easily tip the scales of choice. Choices can also be used to tip the scale to your advantage. Check out the choices offered below for a women’s magazine: 1 year subscription: INR 399 1 year subscription with a monthly mystery box of make-up from leading brands: INR 1499 The difference in the values are too high to make the decision easy. What if you now introduced something that could tip the scales in the favour of one choice? 1 year subscription: INR 399 1 year subscription and a bi-monthly mystery box of makeup from leading brands: INR 1299 1 year subscription with a monthly mystery box of make-up from leading brands: INR 1499 You’ll notice that the 2nd choice is a dummy one introduced by marketers to simplify the choice. No one will go for it when the difference between the two is just INR 200 and you get an additional 6 mystery boxes for it. That’s how you can use the paradox of choice to your advantage. 5. Loss Aversion Theory FOMO or Fear of missing out is real. It is one of the most common psychology theories put out by marketers. Other people are thinner, more beautiful, have happier families, travel to exotic destinations, have instagrammable food and in general live a better life because of the brands they choose. The fear of
Month: October 2019
How to Write Content That is Future-Proofed for Google Algorithm Updates
Did you know that Google made 3234 algorithm updates in 2018? That’s an average of 9 updates a day! Savvy SEO executives who keep a watch on their keywords’ ranking every day notice the subtle changes. A website that was lost in the depths of page 5 suddenly starts ranking on page 1. Another great link suddenly disappears from page 1 causing a flutter. What we don’t get an immediate answer is to the ‘why’ as we don’t know what’s changing in the algorithm.Even then, Google shares visibility to the bigger updates – also called core updates, like Penguin and Panda. The last confirmed update happened in June 2019 which revolved around quality and site diversity. With so many changes happening every day, SEO specialists need to future-proof their site to possible updates that can have a big impact. Although this sounds difficult, we have some insights on predicting the future based on our past experiences with Google updates. After all, there is no point in looking at Google’s update with trepidation. It’ll be great to instead be prepared with content that can only rank higher with every update. When Google algorithm updates can work better for you than some of your competitors Google wants to constantly improve its search experience. Most people want to take the shortcut to rankings and end up creating bot-pleasing content piles that may get them going in the short run. If you have competitors who follow this strategy, it is likely that they may outrank you in the short run but with every Google update they are going to find it harder to sustain their rankings until they switch to white hat practice. Google is looking for ‘useful’ content. As long as you can access the utility of your content from a user perspective on an ongoing basis, your rankings should change only marginally How to access your content’s utility With hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages in a website, many of them being dynamic, it can be a daunting task for anyone to evaluate content periodically. Content cannot be the SEO manager or Content manager’s sole responsibility. In fact, everyone in the organisation should be vested in ensuring that the content is accurate and updated. Create a Content responsibility Google sheet Let us assume that your website has 20 products and related pages, a blog and standard pages about the organization. In addition to this, there are some technical functionalities built within the site. The site may also have campaign banners and content from the HR team promoting company initiatives. Each page identified within a function should be assigned to the functional head to ratify its content. If there are hundreds of products, the ratification group will have to be expanded. While the marketing team would be in charge of the blog pages, the HR in the company will be responsible for showcasing the latest updates from the organization. The performance content marketing services team will be the best to evaluate which campaign banners will show. Democratizing the responsibility of the content now gives both SEO content and Content mangers better ways to handle constantly evolving content. Make yourself unique Most marketers do a keyword evaluation, pick the relevant keywords with high search volumes and begin to write a blog. Often such keywords are also competitive and there is existing content available. Do a detailed analysis of content that is currently ranking high for the keyword. Think of ways how your content cannot be incrementally better but exponentially useful for readers. a. Here are a few things that can make your content unique Data or case studies from campaigns you’ve run: A campaign will generally give you access to a treasure trove of data and learnings that is unique. You can leverage some open information from such campaigns to build a unique case for your brand Your own research/surveys: While a survey and its result is generally good fodder for creating original content, you can cut various slices of this content to make it snackable or even build infographics and image visuals A quote from the relevant people in the company: A company quote and a PR angle is a great way to ensure your content is original Create new forms of content: Content need not be limited to text. From ads to blogs to gifs to social stories to infographics, modifying the type of content can give it a unique twist in perspective. b. Make it meaty The crux of the content and the summary should be interesting enough to drive high click-through rates. If you are talking about the one secret strategy to getting your keywords right, the secret strategy should be something that is really worth the readers 7 minutes of reading time. c. Build trust by showcasing expertise Think of all the industry blogs that you go to check often when you need detailed information on a topic. If the topic you are researching is on improving click-through rates on organic rankings, you know that you are likely to find answers on backlinko.com or Neilpatel.com or Moz.com All of these sites present convincing data from self experiments, in depth analysis and detailed screenshots on how-tos to help you solve your problem. They automatically qualify as the industry expert on the related topics over a period of time. It is not easy to gain expertise and showcase it with content. But the hard work definitely pays off. d. Let the devil lie in the details Content with typos and grammatical errors is simply unacceptable. It brings down the credibility of the website as a whole. It is simple to use tools like Grammarly to get your content house in order. Make sure that anything that is published is of optimum quality. The exception here only lies for UGC. User-generated content is generally full of short forms and sometimes riddled with mistakes. But that goes to show its authenticity that it is not written by a professional but a