When supermarket owner Sylvan Goldman invented the first shopping cart in 1937, customers didn’t want to use them.
Thinking they looked effeminate, men preferred to stick to handbaskets. And women, tired of pushing baby carriages, didn’t like how the carts resembled strollers.
So Goldman did a few things:
Within a decade, shopping carts became a supermarket staple. In fact, new grocery stores were built with wider aisles to accommodate them.
But it’s hard to imagine shopping carts taking off on their own without Goldman’s intervention.
The tactics he used to normalize the shopping cart demonstrate the power of marketing psychology.
Marketing psychology describes all the cognitive biases that influence how people behave toward brands and products. You’re probably already familiar with some, like scarcity and social proof.
Using these psychological principles, we know that we can grab people’s attention by telling them our products are rare or limited edition. And that seeing other people buy something can convince even more to do the same.
Applied to your marketing campaigns, these insights can skyrocket your results.
But scarcity and social proof aren’t the only biases that affect buying behavior. There are dozens more—way too many for the average marketer to remember. So we’ve focused on 12 of the highest leverage ones, the research-backed principles that are relatively easy to act on so you can make a tangible difference in your marketing campaigns.
In this playbook, we’ll explain how you can apply each of these psychological principles to your business and also give examples of how real companies use them to their advantage.
To make better sense of how each might fit into your marketing strategy, we’ve categorized them based on different points of the customer journey. Of course, many of these cognitive biases can be applied to multiple stages.
How we perceive products affects how much we value them and in turn, whether we decide to buy them. Use these cognitive biases to enhance customers’ first impressions of your brand and product.
Ever notice how minimalist Apple stores are? They carry less inventory than other major retailers and carefully space out their products on display for a light, airy feel—a design choice that actually contributes to our perceptions of Apple as a luxury brand.
This is because of the space-to-product ratio effect. Whenever we check out a new store, spacing subconsciously shapes our first impressions.
In fact, we tend to like and value products more when they’re spaced further apart. Close together, the same products somehow appear less prestigious or attractive.
Note: New brands benefit from this effect more than established brands that are already considered high-value. So if Apple decided to revamp its store design to display products closely together, it probably wouldn’t drastically change perceptions of its brand. For new companies, though, space-to-product ratio may make a bigger difference.
If you run a brick-and-mortar shop, give your products on display some breathing room. Instead of setting items close together, space them apart. This might mean investing in larger display tables and shelves so that you can increase the space between products, or removing some items from display.
While the original study behind this effect was done on physical retail stores, you can aim for a high space-to-product ratio in your site design as well.
A few tips:
Many luxury brands take advantage of the the space-to-product ratio effect in their physical store locations, including Hermès and Tiffany and Co.
Off-brand fashion retailers often take the opposite approach, with product-filled racks and shelves. Consider the luxury department store chain Nordstrom and its off-price counterpart Nordstrom Rack. Whether intentional or not, their different product display styles correspond with their price points.
You can also see the space-to-product ratio effect used online. For example, take a look at the difference between Everlane and Shein, two online fashion retailers.
Everlane’s site feels a lot less cluttered than Shein’s, which subconsciously makes shoppers perceive it as more luxurious.
Imagine this: You’re in the market for a new vacuum cleaner.
When you ask around for recommendations, one friend mentions Dyson, a brand you’ve heard of and also seen commercials for in the past. The name comes up again when you do your own research online, and then you start getting retargeting ads for Dyson.
Finally, when you make it to the store to buy a vacuum cleaner, you see ones from Dyson as well as other brands that you haven’t heard of. Which do you buy?
Thanks to the mere exposure effect, you’d probably buy a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
According to this effect, we prefer products that we know and recognize. Why? We find comfort in familiarity—buying something from a brand we’ve heard of feels less risky than taking a chance on one we’ve never seen before. This happens even when we can’t remember how or where we’ve come across a product before.
On a macro level, you can leverage the mere exposure effect through a variety of marketing strategies:
On a smaller scale, you can take advantage of the mere exposure effect by using consistent visuals and messaging in your marketing campaigns. Doing so makes it easier for consumers to recognize your brand, even when its name isn’t mentioned anywhere.
Katelyn Bourgoin, founder of the Why We Buy newsletter, promotes her newsletter every week with two reminders on Twitter: the first the day before the newsletter is sent; and the second three hours before.
As a result, her 65,000+ followers are regularly reminded of the newsletter. Katelyn credits this tactic and the mere exposure effect for helping quickly grow her newsletter subscribers by more than 4,000 subscribers over nine weeks.
We also use the mere exposure effect with our Growth Newsletter. Instead of writing unique subject lines for each issue, as many other newsletters do, we stick to a standard numerical format.
Our logic: A predictable subject line reinforces our name and newsletter. This way, in a crowded inbox, loyal readers will prioritize reading our content over messages from names they don’t easily recognize.
You’ve probably been asked before whether the glass is half empty or half full. No matter your answer, this question is a good example of how something can be presented—or “framed”—in two different yet simultaneously accurate ways.
In marketing psychology, the framing effect happens when you present information about a product to make it more attractive to customers. Consider the difference between these two descriptions for an imaginary cleaning product:
They make the same point, but one version is more appealing than the other. Can you guess which one?
The winner is the first description. Why? It highlights a positive attribute (the percentage of germs killed), which feels a lot more reassuring of the product’s effectiveness than the second description about germs surviving.
We see framing all the time because it’s a matter of how companies present information about their brand and product. The key is using it to make your messaging more persuasive and as a result, maximize conversions.
There’s a lot more to framing than simply highlighting your product’s positive attributes. In fact, there are times when negative framing can be more effective. Here’s the difference between these two types of framing:
Positive framing tends to inspire hope and optimism while negative framing reminds people of their fears and pain points. For instance, if you were selling motion sickness pills, here’s how you could apply the two types of framing to your copy:
The best type of framing to use ultimately depends on your product as well as what customers are looking for. So even if your product seems more obviously suited for one kind of framing, it’s still worth running A/B tests. You may be surprised to find which style of messaging stirs more users into action.
For starters, here are a few phrases to try testing:
