The 3 Essential Laws of Psychology Every Marketer Should Use
Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, and despite our perceived external differences, our brains are remarkably similar.
This shared cognitive capacity has allowed us as a species to create timeless structures such as the pyramids or the Louvre, and more recently send the youngest and the oldest individuals to space at the same time, accompanied by a certain cowboy hat-wearing entrepreneur.
Our collective cognitive heritage is similar in other ways, too. Like our distant cousins the primates, we have an inborn sense of empathy and a shared aversion to loss. We process visuals 60,000 times faster than text and 90% of our buying decisions we make without even knowing why. In the event of something good happening we will almost certainly assign ourselves the credit, whereas if something bad occurs we will find something outside of ourselves to blame.
Neuroplasticity and our remarkable ability to learn things at an advanced age aside, at the basic level, our brains are a similar jumble of levers and chemicals that respond to certain stimuli in similar ways.
As marketers, we can learn taiwan email list and use these predictable responses to create more impactful messaging and more effective products. By knowing how the mind works, and how to use these psychological principles in a responsible way, we can empower our customers to make the best buying decisions and add the most value to their lives.
Using the three essential psychological laws below you can make any product or project more impactful, more pleasurable and more useful.
The Law of Simplicity
The celebrated American architect, systems theorist and futurist Buckminster Fuller was once quoted as saying “clarity is power.”
In the bestselling book Made to Stick, academics Chip and Dan Heath say that in order to win at whatever game we are playing “we must create ideas that are both simple and profound.”
The law of simplicity is incontrovertible. Whether we are creating a new tagline or designing a new website, in order to cut through the noise our creations must have singular focus and purpose. Like the electronic pulses that carry our voices on the telephone, an indecisive marketing choice is perceived as an incoherent offering when it reaches the end consumer. Lack of clarity has consequences all the way down.
Our strong affinity for the simple and clear is explained by the psychological concept of ‘cognitive load’, which relates to the amount of information that working memory can hold at one time. Since working memory only has limited capacity, we should avoid things that directly overload and overwhelm it, like dual messages or busy web pages.
When designing your next website or marketing campaign, use Chekov’s gun to see if you have obeyed the law of simplicity. Chekhov's gun is a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed. Do not make ‘false promises’ in your marketing or design by introducing an element that will never be seen again. If, for example, a certain word or image is present, make sure it has a purpose. Your customers won’t know it consciously, but they will find this neat efficiency extremely pleasing and reassuring.
The Law of Social Proof
What do Justin Bieber, Tik Tok and Pokemon Go all have in common?
No, it’s not how annoying they are. It’s that they have all reached critical mass in their respective markets.
The concept of critical mass first originated in physics. It refers to the volume of a nuclear product required to sustain a chain reaction in a nuclear explosion.
In marketing, however, it means gaining enough users or ‘fans’ that you will ensure a chain reaction of sales, downloads, or attention.