There’s a secret weapon that many marketers overlook: psychology. Understanding customers’ emotional connection with our products, our people, and the brand itself is not just a nice-to-have—it’s a must-have. It’s the key to drawing in more customers, decreasing costs, and increasing the return on our investment. It’s the foundation of a brand that has longevity.
But how do we tap into this secret weapon? How do we use psychology to create better ads, decrease costs, and scale our brands? The answer lies in understanding human psychology and how consumers perceive our ads. It’s about understanding the consumer’s subconscious mind, which is responsible for most of our decision-making process.
This article aims to guide you through the process of creating psychology-based ads. We’ll delve into the intricacies of the human mind, explore how the brain processes ads, and discuss how we can use this knowledge to create more effective advertisements.
Table of Contents
Understanding the Consumer
The key to effective advertising lies in understanding the consumer. More specifically, it’s about understanding customers’ emotional connection with products and brands. This connection is not just about the physical attributes of a product or a brand’s reputation. It’s about the feelings, memories, and experiences that these products and brands evoke in the minds of consumers.
Consider this: we are humans who sell stuff to other humans. Our customers, just like us, are driven by emotions, desires, and needs. They are concerned about solving problems in their lives, nurturing the people around them, and seeking comfort and validation. They don’t worry about whether or not we scale this year or if our ads are branded or ugly. They care about how our products or services can enhance their lives or solve their problems.
Now, let’s delve deeper into the subconscious mind’s role in consumer behavior and decision-making. The subconscious mind is a powerful tool that processes a vast amount of information daily. It’s estimated that consumers see anywhere between 4,000 to 10,000 ads every single day. The subconscious mind sifts through all this information, deciding what’s important and what’s not.
The subconscious mind uses a mechanism called attentional bias to filter out irrelevant information. It turns off anything that does not pertain to an already existing subconscious need. This means that most ads are completely ignored. The subconscious mind is selective, focusing only on ads that resonate with the individual’s intrinsic needs.
Understanding this, and tapping into these subconscious needs is the key to creating effective ads. We need to create ads that speak to the subconscious and resonate with our customers’ emotional needs. This is not about manipulation but about understanding and empathy. It’s about creating ads that genuinely resonate with our customers that speak to their needs, desires, and emotions.
Ultimately, understanding the consumer is about more than knowing their age, income, or location. It’s about understanding their emotional connection with our products and brands. It’s about understanding their subconscious needs and desires. Only then can we create truly effective, psychology-based ads.
The Power of Subconscious in Advertising
As we delve deeper into consumer psychology, it’s crucial to understand the subconscious mind’s role in advertising. The subconscious mind is a powerful tool that processes ads and influences purchasing decisions. It’s a sophisticated mechanism that, in many ways, is the driving force behind consumer behavior.
The subconscious mind is constantly at work, processing many ads as consumers navigate through their feeds. The average adult in the U.S. is estimated to encounter around 2 million ads yearly. That’s a staggering amount of information that the brain has to take in, process, decide whether it’s essential or not, and then push it out into the conscious mind to decide what to do with that information.
But how does the subconscious decide which ads are important and which ones to ignore? This is where the concept of attentional bias comes into play. Attentional bias is a psychological term that refers to the tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts. In advertising, attentional bias means that the brain will ignore anything it sees that does not pertain to a subconscious need that already exists.
For instance, if you’re scrolling through your feed around lunchtime and feeling hungry, your subconscious mind will be more likely to stop at an ad for a pizza place. That’s because your subconscious mind keeps track of your physical needs and is more likely to pay attention to advertisements that can fulfill those needs.
However, it’s important to note that most ads we see are ignored. Studies suggest that about nine out of ten ads are entirely overlooked. This is because the brain uses attentional bias to conserve energy. The brain is the largest consumer of glucose in the body, so it must save as much energy as possible.
Understanding the power of the subconscious mind in advertising can provide valuable insights into consumer behavior. By creating ads that speak to consumers’ subconscious needs, marketers can increase the chances of their ads being noticed and acted upon. This, in turn, can lead to more effective advertising strategies and, ultimately, higher returns on investment.
Leveraging Consumer Psychology in Advertising
1. Gathering Customer Feedback:
In advertising, understanding your customer is the key to success. Our customers’ emotional connection with our products, people, and the brand itself is crucial. We often forget that customers are humans, and emotions drive humans.
We need to gather real-time data about our customers to create effective psychology-based ads. We need to understand their current mindset, fears, desires, and motivations. This can be achieved through various methods such as conducting surveys, reading through comments and reviews, or even buying your customers a coffee to have a more personal interaction.
Remember, the goal is to understand them better than they understand themselves. We need to meet our customers where they are in life and cater to their emotional needs.
2. Analyzing Language:
Once we have gathered this data, the next step is to analyze it. This is where Natural Language Processing (NLP) comes into play. NLP is a field of artificial intelligence focusing on the interaction between computers and humans through language. It allows us to understand our customers’ language, emotional motivators, and subconscious needs.
Nine emotional motivators drive consumer behavior: acceptance, accomplishment, competence, experience, empowerment, esteem, freedom, nurturance, and safety. By analyzing the language of our customers, we can identify which of these motivators are most relevant to them and use this information to create ads that resonate on a deeper level.
3. Creating the Ads:
With a clear understanding of our customers’ emotional motivators, we can now create ads that speak to their subconscious needs. The goal is to create advertisements that catch our customers’ attention and resonate with them on an emotional level.
For example, if our analysis shows that the need for accomplishment drives our customers, our ads should reflect this. They should convey the message that our product or service can help them achieve their goals and feel a sense of accomplishment.
Similarly, if the need for nurturance drives our customers, our ads should highlight how our product or service can help them care for themselves or their loved ones.
Creating psychology-based ads is about more than just understanding the principles of psychology. It’s about understanding our customers, their emotional needs, and how we can use this understanding to create ads that resonate with them. By doing so, we can increase our ads’ effectiveness and build a stronger connection with our customers.
Recap to Getting Inside Your Customer’s Mind: Psychology-Based Ads
In advertising, understanding consumer psychology is not just a strategy. It’s a necessity. The importance of this understanding cannot be overstated. It is the key to creating effective ads that resonate with your audience on a deeper level, tapping into their subconscious needs and desires.
Throughout this article, we’ve explored the significance of customers’ emotional connection with products and brands, the role of the subconscious mind in consumer behavior, and how to leverage these insights in creating psychology-based ads.
The power of consumer psychology in advertising is immense. It allows us to create ads that capture attention and foster a deeper connection with our audience. By understanding and leveraging consumers’ subconscious needs, we can create more effective ads that ultimately drive better results.
As we move forward in the digital age, the importance of understanding consumer psychology will only continue to grow. The brands that will succeed are the ones that can effectively tap into these insights and use them to their advantage.
If you’re ready to take your advertising strategy to the next level, apply these strategies in your marketing campaigns. Remember, the key to effective advertising lies in understanding your audience on a deeper level.
Should you need help implementing these strategies or have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m here to help you navigate the complex world of consumer psychology and advertising. We can create ads that resonate with your audience and drive your brand forward.
About Bruno Jones:
Bruno Jones, based in Denver, is a seasoned digital marketing expert with over 20 years of experience. He’s renowned for his expertise in enhancing online brand presence, particularly for companies in Colorado and Utah. His educational background in electrical engineering and a transformative approach to digital marketing from Columbia Business School have shaped his unique strategy, merging technical know-how with creative flair.
Bruno excels in harnessing consumer psychology and game theory to craft compelling digital narratives. His blog is a treasure trove of advanced SEO, social media, email marketing insights, and more, catering to both industry professionals and enthusiasts. Each of his posts showcases his knack for simplifying complex ideas into practical, outcome-oriented tactics, cementing his status as a pioneer in digital marketing innovation.
