“Psychology can explain what really happens inside the mind and heart of (potential) customers before they make decisions to buy products or services”
“Risks come from doing what you don’t know” ( Warren E. Buffett ). That’s why all marketers should really know who their targeted customers are. What are the behaviors of their targeted customers? What does really happen inside the mind and heart of their targeted customers before they make decisions to buy products or services? How does a marketing campaign can affect the mind and heart of targeted customers? The more we know our targeted customers psychologically, the more we can reduce the risks of failures on our marketing strategy and campaign.
Of course, data is very important for marketers to make the right marketing strategy. In computer science, it is said: “garbage in, garbage out”. In marketing, we can say “right data, right marketing strategy”. Data is the results of market research. But, data is too abundant, we can not just collect all kinds of data about our targeted customers. We also need to be very selective about what data we need to collect by market research. Knowing targeted customers psychologically can help us to define what kind of data we need to collect about our targeted customers.
Psychology is the science of the mind or of mental states and processes. Psychology is also the science of human and animal behavior. All customers are human beings. The ways their mind and heart work can be explained by psychology. What are the connecting lines between Marketing and Psychology? At least, there are three connecting lines between Marketing and Psychology.
The First Connecting Line: How Does The Mind of Human Work?
Human Mind is a set of cognitive faculties including consciousness, imagination, perception, thinking, judgment, language, and memory. It is usually defined as the faculty of an entity’s thoughts and consciousness. It holds the power of imagination, recognition, and appreciation, and is responsible for processing feelings, emotions, resulting in attitudes and actions.
Based on Sigmund Freud’s Model of the Human Mind, the human mind can be divided into three categories, conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind.
As we can see from the picture above, conscious mind only rules 10% of the human mind. Subconscious and unconscious minds rule 90% of the human mind. It means, 90% of the human decisions, behaviors, and actions come from subconscious and unconscious minds. What can we learn from it to make our marketing strategy and campaign more effective?
It means our marketing campaign should be able to gain access and touch subconscious and unconscious minds level. Just a metaphor, the human mind is just like computer hardware and software. The computer hardware is the biological brain. The computer software is all accumulated data, information, and knowledge that a human being receives from many different sources, such as education, media, social interaction, life experiences, etc. Our marketing campaign is just like new applications or software that we try to install on the computer hardware. We run those marketing campaign applications or software in the background continuously 24 hours 7 days in order to remind our Brand to the computer hardware continuously and consistently. What will happen? Yes, our brand will get the biggest control on the computer hardware.
How to make our brand being remembered in the subconscious and unconscious minds level of the targeted customers’ mind? It is repetition, consistency, and continuity on our marketing campaign that will make our brand being remembered in the subconscious and unconscious minds of the targeted customers’ mind.
What’s the benefits for your brand being remembered in the subconscious and unconscious minds level of the targeted customers mind? It can make your targeted customers to buy your products or services without thinking too much or even without thinking at all.
The Second Connecting Line: How Does The Heart of Human Work ?
The term “heart” on this context is not about a biological human body organ which pumps and circulates blood inside the biological human body. Heart on this context is about part of the biological brain of human being which controls and rules emotion and feeling of a human being.
Gaining heart share from your targeted customers by your marketing campaign will give your brand customer loyalty.
What can touch human’s heart effectively? We can use music, song, jingle, poem, brand experiences, and empowering marketing campaign by universal human values to touch the heart and gain heart share of targeted customers.
The Third Connecting Line: What Triggers Human Behavior?
It is important to know the targeted customers’ behavior, but it is more important to know the causes that trigger the behavior. There are at least six factors which influence and trigger human behavior, they are genetics, social norms, creativity, religion and spirituality, attitude, weather, and climate.
Knowing targeted customers’ behavior only by market research will only make us easier to sell and distribute our products or services, and make our marketing campaign more effective. But, knowing the causes that trigger human behavior will make our products or services can change human behavior.
In some businesses which are a game changer in the market, the products or services will change people’s lifestyle or the way businesses do business.
The First example, the invention of the first electronic computer has changed people’s lifestyle and the way businesses do business.
The Second example, Social Media. There were no social media in this world before. Social media has also changed people’s lifestyle and the way businesses do business.
Of course, there are so many other aspects and topics from Psychology which are useful and related to our marketing strategy and campaign. It is not discussed here since it is not an article about Psychology, but it is an article about Marketing.
Don’t you think, as marketers, we also need Psychologists in our marketing team?