Marketing Using The Powers Of Psychology

I have just listened to Jay Conrad Levinson's latest broadcast on the Guerrilla Marketing Association - Guerrilla Marketing with Psychology.

This is an area that I am very interested in and have bought and started to read Jay's book co-written with Paul Hanley called "The Guerrilla Marketing Revolution" which I understand is being launched in the US as "Guerrilla Marketing For The Unconscious Mind" although it is available under the original title at the moment.

You can buy at Amazon UK or USA or read my review on my Business Books blog The Guerrilla Marketing Revolution   

People Buy Emotionally

Jay reiterated a message I first learnt from Michael Gerber's E Myth Mastery book - people buy emotionally (with their unconscious or subconscious minds - I am not too certain of the difference) but justify their purchase with logic.

This means that to be successful we have to market to both the unconscious mind so that people feel good about the idea of buying as well as marketing to the rational mind so that they can build reasons to justify the purchase to themselves.

E Myth & Psychographics

The E Myth Mastery book goes into a quite a lot of detail about how people seek emotional gratification and the art and science of psychographics. It is highly recommended (Amazon UK or USA). In fact I was disappointed when I bought the expensive E Myth Mastery coaching modules that the book contained the full story in this area.

I have been there.

I want something (a want is emotional) and then I search around for reasons to justify why my intended purchase makes sense.

Marketing With Psychology

Coming back to the Guerrilla Marketing with Psychology call, Jay Levinson didn't head off into that direction as I thought he might and nor did he move into Robert Cialdini's thoughts on influence and persuasion.

Instead Jay discussed the importance of repetition to get through to the unconscious mind. It is why TV advertisements are repeated again and again.

You may have already read or heard that it takes about nine exposures to a message to move someone from total apathy to being ready to buy.

Does that make you stop and think about that one-shot direct mail campaign that didn't seem to do as well as you'd hoped? If marketing is the process of moving someone from cold to hot, you will have only moved them by a few degrees - from icy cold to cold.

It gets worse.

Jay Levinson says that on average people only see one in three of your messages.

If someone is exposed to your advert three times, they will have only registered it once. So the nine sightings need to create a buyer require about twenty seven exposures.

With direct marketing techniques you may hope to do better although with a long sales letter, it takes some familiarity to move from "Looks interesting. I will read sometime." to "Looks just what I need. I will read right now."

You know that I am not going to spill the beans on the whole call. That wouldn't be respectful of the Guerrilla Marketing Association's intellectual property and remember you can sign up for a free trial (I think its 30 days).

It is important to remember that you are marketing to the logical and emotional parts of the mind.

Does It Feel Right Emotionally?

The stated message has to make sense but what's known as the meta message has to feel right.

I am sure that you have experienced the situation where what the salesman says or what a sales letter says makes sense but you get an uncomfortable feeling that everything is not as it should be.

Effective marketing is making sure that your stated message and meta message are consistent.

Freudian Marketing v Skinnerian Marketing

Jay Levinson also talked about the difference between Freudian marketing based around changing attitudes to buying (based on repeated exposure to a sales message) and Skinnerian marketing which aims at modifying purchase behaviour through special incentives.

This is definitely an area of marketing where people will go much further. The more we understand about the laws of human behaviours as applied to buying - the what, the how, the when and in particular the why, the more successful we can be at using those factors to influence our target customers.

At least we can if we understand the psychology of buying of marketing and buying but what if your competitors find out and you don't?

You can find out more about the Guerrilla Marketing Association and how it helps to keep Guerrilla Marketers up-to-date with all the latest marketing ideas and technologies by following this link.

Update

Since I wrote this blog, Mark Joyner has re-released his infamous Mind Control Marketing book which was previously withdrawn "because the world wasn't ready."

Mind Control Marketing

This link also includes a free report to download "Secret Hot Buttons Which Make Customers Spend Like Crazy." It's not Mind Control Marketing but it is free.

Comments

[Joy]

Nice.. I believe everything in this blog. it's really the way to go when marketing anything, you have to market as consumers would want to have it right away..