5 Sales Triggers through Psychology
Customers are human, just like you, and, as such, they often appear to be – and are – very complex creatures, with difficult wants and needs to meet. It can seem like an impossible task to predict what they want; what will sway them this way, and make them want to buy this? It seems almost random, or at least unique to every individual, which should make marketing a thankless and scarily redundant task, but it isn’t. Why? Humans have psychological triggers, which many people don’t even know about, which influences their decisions in everyday life. This includes sales triggers. For you, this means no more blind marketing and more targeted ‘triggers’ within the resources that you put out there for customers to see. But what exactly are these triggers?
Center
If you’ve got a visual aid – anything from a poster to packaging – then try to place large, bold images or text in the center. A customer will immediately look to the center when seeing a new item, and this will ensure that any key messages or ideas that you want to put across to the customer are quickly found and understood. This ‘center-piece’ should set the tone for your marketing campaign, and immediately make a customer understand what they’re looking at, and who it’s by. Don’t be afraid to put your branding in the center, because it will make sure that loyal customers see it and buy immediately, and unfamiliar customers learn your name.
Left
But customers will look elsewhere if there’s nothing noticeable in the center, and the first place they’ll check will be the left. “No one is quite sure why, but our brains love going from left to right when checking over an item or screen,” Elisha Jensen, a marketing expert at Paper Fellows and Eliteassignmenthelp, says, “so make sure you take advantage of this! If your key message or image isn’t in the middle of your marketing resource, then make sure that it’s on the left.” Otherwise, the customer is liable to get bored of searching for it. She adds that an immediate reaction is always best, so keep to the left for a reliable method of getting a positive reaction by customers.
Simple
Yes, your product is amazing, and yes, you have to sell it as best you can, but that doesn’t mean clogging up the packaging with reviews and features or creating posters that are spewing out deals and numbers left and right. If someone is overwhelmed by the sheer amount of elements on your marketing, then you’re doing something wrong. Keep it simple! A few core messages or features, generally no more than 1-3 images (exceptions are obviously tiled backgrounds or designs that are meant to be noisy and cartoonishly over the top) and a clean color scheme which doesn’t switch every few centimeters is all you need for excellent design. Your customers will appreciate simple, and their eyes certainly will!
“New”
“Why do you think people flock to buy every single new iPhone, despite the ridiculous price?” Rebecca Ortiz, a marketing manager at Academized and Australian help, asks. “It’s not because Apple has brainwashed us all – well, not exactly. It’s more the novelty of a ‘new’ item. They’re shinier and flashier, and they advertise as being better and next generation and all of this and that, which just means it’s the next product in the range but customers don’t see that. They see ‘new’, and they buy. We want the newest, best products, and those of us who can afford them will buy, buy, buy, no matter how similar they are to the last product. In marketing, the mere word ‘new’ is like gold dust.”
Trust
Sometimes, it can be hard to create trusting relationships between your brand and the customer, when you’re just a screen or design on a box, and they’re an unknown person. But one surefire way to get people to trust your brand is to use reviews, specifically from experts but also from general surveys. This is one of the most important sales triggers. People might not trust a brand they’ve never heard of, but they’ll trust ‘nine out of ten dentists’ or ‘eight seven percent of surveyed women’. It’s an instinct, just like asking your friends and close acquaintances for recommendations for products that they’ve used, or services that they’ve paid for. People trust people, so use this to your advantage to make people trust you.
