If you want to attract more opportunities, convert clients and grow your business, there’s one thing you can’t forget:-
It’s all in the mind.
And we mean that quite literally. Psychology and marketing are inextricably linked.
Because to capture someone’s attention, gain their trust, and eventually sell to them, you have to understand the psychology of decisions.
Otherwise, your marketing will only ever succeed by accident.
For businesses in the crypto space, marketing is more complicated than in other sectors—and therefore, so are the thought processes involved.
Whether it’s the decision to invest in a crypto coin or in the support of relevant data and analytics—the choices your customers make are significant.
They take a lot of time, care and thought. For your client, it’s a long mental journey, with several key stops along the way.
By understanding the journey they go on before they can arrive at the decision to work with you, you can be much more strategic with your marketing efforts.
Over time, this will help you earn more loyalty, trust, and business from your ideal customers.
5 psychological principles to be aware of
1. The Reciprocity Principle
If you know about inbound marketing, you might already be applying this principle without realizing.
As the name implies, it’s all about reciprocation—you scratch our backs, we’ll scratch yours.
If you give your audience something, they’re much more likely to trust you and invest in your service.
Content strategy is key here. Use it to help your clients solve their problems. Put out high-value content that answers their burning questions.
Whether you do this across social content, paid ads, podcasts, eGuides, or an email newsletter—the principle remains the same.
Put yourself out there, keep demonstrating your expertise, and keep showing people why your knowledge is what they need.
This isn’t easy, but if you commit for the long run it will pay dividends, by attracting loyal clients that trust you.
2. The Information Gap Theory
People don’t like uncertainty. Psychologists believe this is due to the “information gap”.
When we’re making a big decision—like a significant business investment for example—the “information gap” is the blind spot between what someone knows, and what they want to know.
The theory goes that when someone has a gap in their knowledge on a topic they deem important, they will take significant action to fill this gap.
For crypto businesses, the information gap is a powerful way to capture the attention of your ideal client.
The key to using it effectively is knowing what your prospects and clients want to know, and positioning your brand as the source of the answers.
So study up. Get to know the problems, frustrations and roadblocks your clients face.
Once you’re clear on those, creating marketing content is just like completing a jigsaw puzzle.
Get it right, and your clients will scramble to get their hands on the missing piece of the puzzle, and fill that information gap.
This works especially well in titles (now you know this, you’ll see it everywhere).
So be mindful of it for every single blog, podcast, webinar, eGuide, lead magnet (the list goes on).
Your title should:-
1) highlight an information gap
2) promise to fill it.
3. Loss Aversion
This one is especially important in markets as competitive and volatile as crypto.
Loss aversion refers to how people would rather avoid a loss than access an equivalent gain.
Let’s test this theory right now. Which do you feel more compelled to read:-
How to make thousands of pounds on your investment
OR
How to avoid losing thousands of pounds on your investment
Incorporating this into your marketing can be incredibly powerful, but it should be applied sparingly.
Firstly, because it treads that fine line between persuasion and manipulation.
And secondly, because when you use it too much, you risk developing a brand message that’s more about the problem than the solution.
This can erode the integrity and trustworthiness of your brand over time. So be careful.
Audiences in the crypto space are naturally wary. Lose their trust or arouse their suspicions, and you’ll find yourself in a tough spot to crawl back from.
4. The commitment and consistency bias
According to the commitment and consistency bias, we’re inclined to act in line with our previous actions.
So once we’ve performed a small request for one individual, we’re more likely to comply with similar requests from that same person. Even if we wouldn’t do a similar-sized favour for someone else.
This is the exact principle marketing and sales funnels are built around.
A well-put-together inbound funnel will gradually ramp up over time, progressively asking more of the prospect or customer with each step.
Because of the commitment and consistency bias, your audience is more likely to continue engaging with what you have to offer after they’ve made the first step.
So once you’ve managed to inspire a small action—like downloading your eGuide, or using a free tool on your website—you’re on the right path.
What starts as downloading a one-off asset leads to them subscribing to your email newsletter, which leads to regular conversations in the inbox, which leads to them booking a free consultation with you, and so on.
A free consultation off the bat is too big a leap. But build up to it using this psychological principle, and watch your calendar fill up.
5. The mere exposure effect
This last one is a big one.
In the 1960s, social psychologist Robert Zajonc performed several experiments. Through his research, he found:
“mere repeated exposure of an individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of [their] attitude toward it”
In short, when we see something a lot, it grows on us. So the more familiar a prospect is with your USP, the more appealing it becomes.
There are two strategic ideas to take from this last principle:-
1) be everywhere at once
2) don’t shy away from repetition.
If you want to market and grow as much as possible, you need a cross-channel marketing strategy, and you need to keep talking about your service offering, and showing the value it can bring to people.
Again, and again, and again, and again…
And if it ever looks like your marketing is losing its effect, repurpose it, reuse it, and relaunch it.
Bonus point
Don’t be afraid of follow ups. Ad retargeting works—in fact, data show that while the average CTR for display ads is 0.07%, the average for retargeting ads is 0.7%
5 psychological principles to be aware of : Key Takeaways
By strategically framing your marketing activities around the principles of buyer psychology, you can make a much bigger impact for your efforts.
And, with a solid grasp of these psychological principles, you can align your approach so it mirrors the decision-making journey of your prospects.
To recap, here are 5 aspects of buyer psychology that crypto businesses should know-
- The Reciprocity Principle; give your audience value up front, and they’ll be more likely to trust you enough to invest.
- The Information Gap; your prospects have questions. Show them you have the answer, and they’ll rush to fill the gap in their knowledge.
- Loss aversion; people value avoiding loss more than achieving gain. This is a powerful technique, but apply it responsibly and sparingly.
- Commitment and consistency bias; by asking for small actions first, you can ramp up your interactions with your audience over time, gradually nurturing them into a sales conversation.
- The mere exposure effect; be everywhere at once and lean into repetition, and you’ll slowly change your audience’s attitude towards you for the better.
Need help with your marketing strategy? Contact The Realization Group today, and we’ll help you deliver the right message to the right target audience.