Marketing = Psychology

It takes some knowledge of basic psychology and human behavior to succeed at marketing. It does not take a genius to figure out what makes people buy (or not buy) things. The human behavior IS psychology baby! Tap into this and you will witness wonders in your business sales

People buy things to either meet their needs or satisfy their wants and desires. As a marketer, you are looking not at what your product has to offer, but at what is motivating your target audience to buy your product or service. For example, people aren’t buying perfume because of the aroma. They are buying romance. The new exercise machine doesn’t sell because of the latest features, but because the customer is buying a healthier, perhaps thinner look. The end result of a product or service is what it does for buyers — how it makes them feel, look, or act. People buy the idea behind it, not the product per say. Therefore, you need to keep broad motivational reasons in mind when planning your marketing campaign.

I suggest you might want to do some research on your target audience to test the effectiveness of your product or service….in psychological term they call it ‘pre-test’ and ‘post-test’. Pre-test is when you conduct your research (using methods such as questionnaires) on a small sample of your target audience before you introduce your product or service and post-test is the same questionnaire given to the same sample of target audience after they tried your service or product. With this, you will roughly know if your product or service will ‘make the cut’.

There is also a psychological aspect to establishing trust and forming a relationship. Like all relationships, trust is the basis of it. Most customers have been burned, treated badly, swindled, or disenchanted at least once. They will not necessarily jump at the opportunity to buy something unless they have a sense of confidence in the seller. In an age where people are tired of receiving spam and a glut of marketing materials, the modern consumer has become savvy and somewhat cynical. Only a company with a strong proven reputation will gain their trust. You, therefore, want to always build a level of trust through quality of service, and this should be reflected in your marketing.

Finally, there are practical factors that enter into marketing. If it is simply inconvenient for a customer to purchase from you or you simply cannot satisfy their needs with the product they are seeking, then don’t attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole. Too many sales are lost by trying to do so. Just be who you are (this should apply to your business ethics too). If you don’t, you may risk ending a future relationship with the customer by losing their trust.

In the end you want to sell customers by gaining their trust and building a relationship based on customer satisfaction and by being honest and not trying to be everything to everyone.

If this article is TOO long and annoyingly tiring to read, just remember this: TRUST is everything, work hard at building trust with your customers. Everything else will flow well once you get the hang of that!