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Studying how our brains make decisions can be incredibly useful for gaining prospects and new customers
Telepathy or Neuroscience? What is a Bias?
If you’re a marketer or involved in corporate communication, I’m sure you’ve thought about it at least once: how great would it be to get inside the minds of prospects to understand what they’re thinking, so you can be more persuasive in selling your services and products!
The good news is that you don’t need to kidnap customers, take them to an improvised operating room in your office, and start dissecting them (at that point, violating privacy policies wouldn’t be the only crime you’d be committing).
Fortunately, over the last few decades, cognitive sciences have made huge strides, discovering many ways our brain processes information and makes decisions.
A very interesting (and increasingly popular) topic is that of cognitive biases: perhaps you’ve heard of them. In simple terms, biases are mental patterns through which we make judgments quickly, efficiently, and… a bit irrationally!
Yes, irrational: because decisions made through biases aren’t the result of slow, thoughtful thinking based on statistical analysis, well-formatted case studies, and careful studies. They are caused by instinctive and partly uncontrollable dynamics.
Due to this characteristic, psychology often studies biases by focusing on the evaluation errors they can lead to (in this regard, the work of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman remains essential).
However, it would be wrong to simply talk about “biases” as a source of gross errors.
Throughout our days, we make hundreds and hundreds of decisions (“Turn right or left?”; “Plain coffee or macchiato?”; “Wear the red sweater or the green one?”). If we had to analytically and rigorously reason for each of them, considering all factors at play, the advantages and risks of each option, we’d end up with a major headache by evening. These mental shortcuts, therefore, aren’t always an enemy to fight against.
Especially for those working in marketing, studying cognitive biases is a huge opportunity to understand how to craft content based on concrete thought patterns. It’s a way to deeply understand why a customer completed a purchase, how they processed information, why they are attracted to one brand over another.
Below, we list some of the main cognitive biases you should consider next time you redefine your marketing strategy!
Framing: It’s Not About the Picture, but the Frame.
In an episode of “Dove vai in vacanza?” (Where Are You Going on Vacation?), from the much-missed Alberto Sordi, there’s a scene that has become more famous than the movie itself: visiting a contemporary art exhibit she doesn’t understand the value or meaning of, the protagonist’s wife falls asleep in the showroom. When she wakes up, she finds herself surrounded by visitors taking photos of her, mistaking her for an exhibit piece.
This scene perfectly illustrates the framing effect: this bias teaches us that our brain evaluates received information differently depending on the context in which this information is presented.
How can this be applied to marketing? Just as a urinal can take on very different value in a retrospective on Duchamp or in a restroom at a train station, the same applies to products and services sold on the web. This bias teaches us how critical it is to build a storytelling narrative around the brand, for example, through a well-crafted editorial plan. It tells us how important it is to choose the right platforms for advertising, the best position for a banner, and much more.
Anchoring, or: The Importance of Being First.
If you’re looking for a pizza recipe and the first result you find lists 100 grams of flour, it doesn’t matter if the next ten recipes list 150: in your mind, the right data will be the first one. This is the anchoring bias. And it applies to online communication as well. Regarding any topic, our brains tend to anchor to the first received information, giving it much more value than others.
The first brand we encounter gains a particular significance in our brains, and we are more inclined to choose it. That’s why it’s important to take care of the positioning of your site on search engines, be present on social media, and in general, create as much buzz as possible.
Social Proof: The Importance of Not Being Alone.
Imagine having to choose between two chalets for your ski vacation. You look online: the first one seems amazing, but it only has 2 reviews. The second one seems slightly worse, but it has hundreds of enthusiastic reviews. Which one would you choose? Many would opt for the second one without hesitation.
Aristotle figured this out centuries ago: we are social animals. This means, among other things, that we tend to seek confirmation from others. Social proof teaches us that we’re more encouraged to make a decision when it’s shared by a large number of people.
This applies when booking vacations, but it also applies to digital marketing. It teaches us the importance of building a strong (and possibly numerous) online community: planning awareness campaigns on your Facebook account, requesting reviews from satisfied customers, adding a section to your website dedicated to partnerships or collaborations—these are all tools that will help establish your brand on the web.
Ease Bias: When It’s Easy, We Often Take It.
Apologies to all subscribers of “Settimana Enigmistica” (an Italian puzzle magazine): our brains like things to be simple. Difficult decisions require attention, concentration, time, effort—things our gray matter isn’t very inclined to grant. For this reason, between two possible options, we will always choose the simpler one.
Ease puts us at ease, complexity scares us and keeps us away from taking action. How can we translate this principle into web marketing?
For example: avoiding including too many fields to fill out in contact forms; choosing a minimal design for our website; writing shorter, easily understandable copy, without too much technical jargon or syntactic acrobatics.
The Quokka, the Pug, and the Ostrich
We’ll finish this list with some animals: we know that cute puppies are a hit on the web!
Do you know the quokka? It’s a small Australian marsupial that has become incredibly popular due to its features that make it look always smiling and happy (just Google it to believe it). The exact opposite of the pug: a dog breed with a perpetually grumpy and sad expression.
Yet, there are good reasons to believe that the pug, one of the most pampered domestic animals in the world, is actually much happier than the quokka, whose population is confined and at risk of extinction.
And we, who are not biologists but marketers, what lesson can we draw from this? That beyond how things really are, people will judge us (and decide whether to choose us) based on the emotions we can convey.
And biases teach us that we are much more inclined toward those who convey positive emotions. If we only communicate negative emotions, if we focus on the audience’s fear without providing solutions, our prospects will act like another famous animal: the ostrich. They’ll bury their heads in the sand.
We’re Full of Biases
Our brains are full of patterns like these, teaching us a lot about how we reason: about how we tend to trust celebrities, authorities, or those who confirm our opinions; about the power of freebies, scarcity, immediacy, and much, much more.
In a blog article, there’s not enough space to delve even deeper into this topic, but we hope we’ve provided you with some useful insights.
If you’re looking for a way to make your online communication more effective, contact us!
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