by Dean Valerio WRITING copy that converts is no simple task. The good news is many of the most powerful tactics you can use to cr...
by Dean Valerio
WRITING copy that converts is no simple task.
The good news is many of the most powerful tactics you can use to create effective marketing materials come from psychology.
Once you learn the best parts of marketing psychology, like how to choose the right words or how to use color to your advantage, you’ll be able to convert users into customers – in your sleep.
Better yet, understanding how consumers think and behave not only helps you boost sales, but also gives you the upper edge on outsmarting other marketers that aren’t hip to the game.
Let’s look at some fundamental consumer psychology principles to help you increase your conversions.
Pay Attention to Color
Color psychology is the science of how color affects human behavior.
It plays a huge role in how a customer views a particular brand. If a consumer is put off by the color of your product, they won’t buy it.
In fact, color is 85% of the reason most people decide to purchase a product.
It’s important, then, to pay attention to different parts of your website such as your primary branding color, product color, CTA button color, opt-in form color, and more.
As an example, Performable was able to improve its click through rates by 21% by changing the color of their CTA button from green to red.
Typically, when you see the color green, you automatically think clean or natural, or having to do with the environment.
Red, on the other hand, excites us and is eye-catching.
Aside from looking at the color of your website, you may also want to look at the preference of your target audience.
For example, if the majority of your ideal customers are women, you might think pink is the standard favorite, but the data doesn’t back that up.
A survey revealed that 35% of women said their favorite color was blue, followed by purple and green. Orange, brown, and gray were found to be the colors least liked by women.
To put this in perspective, we can take a look a few brands. Paper Droids is a site for women that tailor to geek culture.
Their website has no pink in it. Rather, it’s mostly green.
Levo, a professional network for women, uses purple and green in their site’s design.
What about men?
If men are your target market, research has found they tend to dislike the colors purple, orange, and brown while preferring blue, green, and black.
Menprovement, a self-improvement site geared towards men, incorporates both blue and black into their design.
While these rules are not set in stone, it’s definitely something worth considering.
Going by the research, if your site is mainly using orange or brown – which apparently is equally disliked by both men and women – it might be time for a redesign. Just by changing your colors, you could see an increase in conversions.
Change Your Copy
We can use color to subtly influence behavior, but copy is what will convince people to buy.
Businesses rely on copywriters to craft compelling copy that will convert over time. Let’s look at three elements to making your copy stand out and convert.
1. Avoid Features and Hype Up Benefits
When writing about your product, what comes to mind first?
The features or the benefits? For most marketers and business owners, it’s the features.
You want everyone to know how great your product is, and to look at all the things it can do.
But you know what? Your prospects aren’t nearly as impressed with the features as you are. What they really care about is how your product can help them.
Will it make them a better business owner? Make more money? Better golfer? Lose weight quickly?
They want to know how it can solve their problems. And research indicates that most people go online specifically to research a solution to their problem.
By highlighting the benefits of your product and offering a solution to your prospects’ problems, you could boost your conversions by 28%.
2. Make Content Scannable
People don’t have time to read your content.
Instead, they scan your article, landing page or sales page.
If you want to make sure prospects are reading the important parts, make your content easy to scan by:
- Bolding words or sentences you want people to pay special attention to
- Using bullet or numbered lists
- Breaking paragraphs down into shorter sentences – perhaps two to five sentences per paragraph
- Keeping text readable – make sure the font size isn’t too small, and use dark text on a white background for easier reading
- Using pictures to break up your content
One final way is to have the layout of your site incorporate a fairly narrow content width. According to Social Triggers, the perfect content width for complete comprehension ranges between 40 and 55 characters per line.
Since the goal is for prospects to read your content, you want to make it as easy as possible for them. Nobody likes to read sentences that span the whole width of a widescreen monitor.
3. Tell A Story
Some of the biggest bloggers or most successful entrepreneurs are also great storytellers.
Storytelling can be a valuable marketing tactic for your brand and can help you not only get recognized, but improve your sales too.
For example, Dove soap moved away from their traditional marketing strategy of showing how their soap benefits the customer to focusing on real people and telling a story.
They are making their customers the heroes in their campaign and their brand is skyrocketing past other known soap companies.
When thinking of copy for your site, consider telling a story as a way to connect with your target market.
Use Scarcity to Increase Conversions
Understanding consumer psychology is an important part of increasing conversions and one method to achieve this is to use the principle of scarcity.
People act differently when they know there’s a limited supply of something or they only have a certain amount of time to access something. You can use your target market’s anxiety to help with sales.
Let’s look at three ways you can use scarcity to help sell more products or services.
1. Use a Deadline
Deadlines are an easy way to increase sales.
A great example of having effective deadlines is how Bryan Harris used them for his product launch. He launched a 10-day sequence for his course Get 10,000 Subscribers and relied heavily on the urgency factor.
He split up his launch into three distinct phases:
- Actual launch + 24 hour discount
- Live case study + mid launch bonus material
- Showcasing testimonials + end of launch sequence
Bryan sent his first email to his list that included a 10% discount, but only for 24 hours.
The results? 40% of sales came within one hour of the deadline.
Bryan used urgency again when he offered some bonus material, but only for three days. He generated $38,000 on the last day of his offer.
2. Avoid Recording Webinars
Webinars are popular with entrepreneurs and bloggers. They can help generate buzz, new subscribers and sales.
When running a webinar, it’s common practice to record it and give the replay to people that don’t or can’t attend your live event.
Since many people know this, they won’t attend your live webinar.
However, if you let them know it won’t be recorded or that there are special offers only if you attend live, you’ll likely enjoy a much higher turnout.
Here’s an example of this method in practice:
3. Create Limited Stock
You can create a sense of urgency by letting people know exactly how many items you have in stock of a particular product. Perhaps you only have four limited edition keychains left. Or there’s only three seats left in your webinar.
Retailer Torrid uses this method with some of their products.
Need a quick way to add urgency to your websites and emails? Check out this countdown timer tool!
Use Social Proof
Social proof is a strong motivator for people to take action and as marketers you can rely on this heavily throughout your website and copy.
Research has found that 92% of people trust recommendations from their peers. Usually, when someone you trust recommends a product or service, you are more likely to try it.
Let’s look at three ways you can prominently display and use social proof in your marketing.
1. Use Testimonials
By having someone praise your product or service, it not only increases trust, but also credibility that your product or service is of value.
2. Ratings and Reviews
Amazon is known for their rating system when giving a review of one of their products.
By checking out what other people are saying, you start to feel more confident about your decision.
On your site, or in your emails be sure to encourage user feedback!
3. Social Media Proof
Displaying how many people have joined your mailing list or showing how many people are already signed up for your class are all methods that can help build your trust and credibility.
Social Media Examiner has on their right sidebar a list of different social media channels that shows how many people have liked or followed them.
Coming full circle
The goal of creating effective marketing campaigns is to understand what your customer might be thinking before, during and after your sales funnel – and when they land on your site.
You can use the power of psychology to create strategies that will hit your target market’s “hot buttons,” provide benefits and solutions to preemptively counter many objections, and as a result, dramatically increase your conversions.
Any time you decide to make a change – whether it’s color, copy, adding social proof or perceived scarcity – make sure you’re doing A/B testing.
It gives you a greater sense of what is and what isn’t working, and will allow you to further refine any improvements to conversions.
Not familiar with A/B testing just yet? Take a few minutes and learn how to use it to improve your business.
A necessary component of any marketing strategy, it can help you learn more about the way customers view your brand.
Have you delved into the fascinating world of marketing psychology yet? What tactics have you used to help your sales?
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