18+ Marketing Tactics, Cognitive Bias That will Make You a Better Marketer Backed By Harvard & McKinsey Reports
1. Occam’s Razors
When you are faced with two explanations or offers, The simpler Option is one of the most likely to be chosen.
Samsung: Samsung Galaxy Buds Live, Wireless Bluetooth Headphones with Noise Cancelling (ANC), Long-Lasting Battery, Sound by AKG, Comfortable Fit, Black (German Version)
Bose: Bose Sport Earbuds - Fully Wireless In-Ear Headphones
Apple’s Legendary Ad: 1,000 Songs in 1 Pocket!
2. Attentional Bias
We focus on certain elements while ignoring others. This can be your favourite design element or key solution mentioned that distracts you from other options.
Link-in-Bio Tools in 2022 use this cognitive bias:
- Linktree : Most people use this tool due to easy integration.
- Beacons AI: New Link-in-bio tool grew because of the Gen-Z Design Element.
- Link-pop: This link-in-bio tool is in-use due to its integration with Shopify.
Another Example is that we tend to capture visual elements first on social media and then Text.
3. Congruence Bias
Most people over-rely on their hypothesis and beliefs about a problem, they fear going outside of their beliefs.
Tune into people’s beliefs to connect better!
It’s Pride Month and you will see brands tuning into the communities beliefs to build trust and community.
4. Gambler’s Fallacy
Most human belief that because something happened more frequently than usual, the new belief in my mind is it’s less likely to happen or occur again.
It’s a false and manipulative marketing act used by brands related to Lotto and gambling.
Only few brands, have achieved success using this Bias. This bias is actually heavily used by Big Corporate Brands like Meta and others during stock market down times by releasing statements that fool investors that it’s not going down more than this and it’s going back up.
This fallacy is pretty much in use now due to Crypto boom!
5. Harvard Business Research Proves Mentioning Your Competitor is Good!
Cola Vs Pepsi and Mac Vs PC are the best Rivalries and the campaigns on these rivalries resulted in huge success for both side of brands.
Harvard recently did a experiment on 4,000 consumers and found out that Viewers find brands more trustworthy and develop a positive approach when Brands mention their competitors and support them.
It’s better to not go against your competitor and show the love to gain the positive impact from audience’s of both side.
6. Value-Based Buying is Growing
During the Covid, Human behaviour changes occurred all around the world and how we choose products or brands to buy from is changed!
A recent McKinsey Report proves there is a change in US consumer behaviour and Most Gen-Z and Millennials care about a brand’s role in society and how the brand value matches their own personality.
Which means A company with branding that speaks to people and informs them what they stand for! It will do better than other brands in eyes of Gen-Z and Millennials.
7. Integration of BNPL can change your Conversions
Apple just announced Buy now pay later (BNPL). This tactic doesn’t apply to every single business but BNPL improves conversion rate of Business owners by 3 times and it’s great for Upsell.
According to Recent TRC survey, Millennials and Gen X are the biggest users of BNPL and the usage of this Payment format is increasing among Gen-Z per year.
Currently You can Integrate BNPL through Apple and PayPal, Klarna and many other small options.
8. Don’t Hire 5-10 UGC Content Creators for Your Advertising Campaigns
According to YouTube, 65 Percent of Gen-Z says the content that’s personally relevant to them is more important than content that other people talk about.
In the world of UGC, A Regular Face representing your products in the Ad can impact your campaigns more and build the personal connections between you and the viewers. Constantly increasing conversions!
9. Buyers want Sellers to Guide Them!
Last month, LinkedIn sales report 2022 which states that “89% of Buyers say they are more likely to consider a brand if a seller changes buyer’s way of thinking.
Using Hindsight Bias, sellers control Buyers through this cognitive Bias.
What’s Hindsight Bias? It’s a human belief in a upcoming event, decision that we think is going to be true or is correct in our belief.
Sellers tune into your belief in the product trying to remind again and again that you know it solves the problem and he (consumer) Is having that problem and it’s solution.
Sellers make buyers feel better and correct to make them buy and it works.
10. Baader Meinhof - Phenomenon
After the first encounter with a product or something, there’s a probability to notice it more often. This phenomena makes people believe it’s actually occurring frequently in that targeted space.
Brands on Social media like McDonald’s are using this phenomenon by not actually focusing on products but memes because that content formats brings constant brand awareness for them. Keeping the word of mouth growing.
Advertisers use Retargeting to create this phenomenon and with personalised Ads growing everyday on most of the platforms. It’s easier to see similar brands on your feeds due to the personal data.
11. Storytelling
Marketing Storytelling can help you to elevate your Brand and increase product value.
But most marketers do it wrong, Best Stories don’t provide contexts full of pages. They fuel your imagination to connect with stories.
Ernest Hemingway is a legendary storyteller, His shortest art of storytelling was
Baby shoes for sale. Never Worn!
Two lines representing the whole story. Make people connect with your story not context of it.
12. Zeigarnik Effect
This bias proves that Humans are not good at having track of incomplete tasks and when reminded about that tasks. They develop a form of anxiety and stress to complete the task!
In Referral Marketing, Brands remind you of your incomplete referrals and provide you a reward to stress over. This develops a feeling of losing out and that’s why you refer someone when shown your progress of referrals.
13. Hyperbolic Discounting
Humans are tend to be less impatient and this Bias proves it. People are tend to choose immediate rewards over large rewards that come in future, despite the lower value of current price!
But this bias is different in many cases, Here’s what a study of Harvard states!
“Thaler argues that consumers have different marginal propensities to consume for different categories of assets. For ex- ample, he presents evidence that an unexpected increase in the value of an equity portfolio will have a very small effect on con- sumption, while an unexpected job-related bonus will be immedi- ately consumed.”
For Marketers, It’s not like you can offer a discount before Black Friday to make people buy before. It’s about how your offer aligns with consumer behaviour in your industry. Track your competitors to see if this bias is in works!
14. Build In Public
Transparency can increase your Perceived Value and how customers see your brand story.
At certain points, Customer can feel like “What’s taking so long?” Engaging in operational transparency like providing customer more details about the behind the scenes through website can be a great tactic.
If you are not a big business, SMBs are building this transparency through Tiktok and Instagram sharing their behind the scenes.
15. Goal Gradient Effect or Animal Behaviour
This effect was practiced on Animals first to see how the behaviour changes when they are rewarded with a goal. According to study by American Marketing Association, Involvement of a reward can make people and most animals more oriented towards the process to achieve that!
Marketers and Businesses are adapting this marketing tactic pretty frequently. Apparently, Every Local Bubble Tea shop in my area gives out a card with stamping my purchases until 10th Drink which rewards me with A Free 11th one!
Also, Netflix show 100 Humans did an experiment too about this effect and the results were same. Most human with a reward took the game more seriously than people without reward.
16. It’s not just Price Anchoring
Most Marketers talk about how Price Anchoring can change how people perceive the current price.
It’s more about the overall anchoring effect. In this cognitive bias, Human’s rely too much on first piece of information offered to them.
To change this scenario and their thoughts, Brands And businesses try to adjust the current anchor by providing more new information about the anchor to make it sound different and reasonable.
That’s what Brands like Apple and Amazon do providing a standard or higher price that people already have an enough or a piece of information about in the first place and then showing a price that’s more reasonable to them.
Through Price Anchoring online, Virtual negotiations take place and anchored price + your product Copy is the key to get better results with this bias.
17. Twitter & LinkedIn Reach Drops With Links
Major Social Media Management Tools related to Twitter and LinkedIn have found that both platforms demote posts with links.
That’s why the best tactic is to put link in the first comment or second tweet.
18. Decoy Effect
This phenomenon occurs when Consumer is offered 3 different options and the context given for the first Two Option to consumer makes him/her think Third is the decoy and it’s the best decision they can make!
This marketing tactic is going all over the place but the most important part is missed which is working on providing context in your first two offerings. If you do it wrong, you may leave people with option of moving on and not buying as you devalued your whole catalogue.
That’s why use Decoy effect Precisely!
19. Halo Effect
We use First Impressions and Our personal Traits to paint a bigger picture about someone or something. This phenomenon shows how we can biased toward someone through our judgments
How Brands Use this:
When a brand delivers a powerful myth that customers find useful in augmenting their identities, this identity value casts a halo on other aspects of the brand. Great myths enhance the brand’s quality reputation, distinctive benefits, and status value.”
—Doug Holt
20. Loss Aversion
When Consumers have to make the buying choice highly based on the context provided not just product. That’s where Brands use Loss Aversion to make people buy.
Providing price differences and inflation rates over the time that can effect the price in upcoming months. Brands make people think if they buy now. They will not lose the money in next few months because they bought it at a lower price.
This cognitive bias proves We are more afraid of losing the assets or things we own than gaining new assets.
21. IKEA Effect or Endowment Effect
This cognitive Bias states that most consumers value products they own or have involvement in creating more than other products.
According to Harvard Business Review, IKEA effect is so effective that 63% of consumers are willing to pay more for furniture or products they had involvement in creating.
Labour done by the consumer increases the value of product for consumers. Brands like IKEA and Harry’s (Razor Brand) have provided consumers with data that they love DIY products.
This bias is not applicable to many brands but you should work on making your product DIY process simplified for consumers.
22. What You don’t know about Cognitive Bias?
Brands like Microsoft, Starbucks and nearly most big brands train their employees to learn these biases not only to make them better sellers but to make them less biased toward customers.
Starbucks did a Cognitive Bias Experiment in US to understand Employees behaviour with different situations. One of the experiment was on a dedicated day where two people of different races sit in Starbucks without ordering. The results were 1000s of Starbucks calling 911 to report the encounter.
Don’t use Cognitive Bias just to market your product by manipulating your consumers. Learn how you can build a better product or customer service with this knowledge like Starbucks and other brands.
These were the marketing lessons, Cognitive biases and few tactics I learned over the years. This took me a while to write down, using “Build In Public” Bias I can be transparent and say more than 7 hours. That’s why I would appreciate you subscribing to my newsletter to receive marketing content that matters every Sunday!
