There are many strategies for copywriting. Copywriting aims to appeal to your audience’s emotions and get them to take the action you need them to. Feelings and emotions influence many purchase decisions. Psychological strategies can trigger these emotions. Some of them comprise reframing, social proofing, and testing what works, to continuously improve conversion.
Reframing
This is quite a simple psychological strategy that has huge effects on consumers.
It is synonymous with calling six chairs “half a dozen chairs” when, in reality, they mean the same thing, although they are interpreted differently in the mind of the reader for different reasons.
One popular Reframing method for companies is to reduce a product’s price by a penny. Rather than call a product $10, they call it $9.99.
Of course, the difference is infinitesimal, but consumers have a psychological sense of viewing $9.99 as cheaper than $10.
Hence, reducing the amount by a penny or two to call your prices “.99” or “.98” appeals to the user that the item is cheaper.
Crazy right? But it works crazy, too; many stores had reported a significant increase in sales when they reframed their pricing as such.
Reframing is a very effective strategy that allows you to manipulate an item’s actual value without telling a lie. Instead, it focuses on the reader’s mentality.
There are other ways by which businesses reframe their products. Many companies would set prices for their annual packages at $480, which may seem to people a huge amount to pay at once.
But it looks much more comfortable to pay $40 per month because you have made it look cheaper.
Asking the buyer to pay $480 will come with a bit of reluctance, unlike $40, which is quite easily affordable, but they are the same.
Some may even prefer to pay $1.50 daily because it is incredibly cheap and affordable.
Therefore, the business known to produce a yearly service subscription of $480 may come up with a newsletter with a headline that says, “GREAT NEWS! You can now gain VIP access to our XYZ product for as low as $1.50.”
This will make a lot of sense to people and generate a lot of clicks and conversions because it seems “cheaper,” whereas it is more expensive than buying at $480.
After all, after 365 days, a daily subscriber would have paid $547.50, $67.50 more than the person who made a one-time yearly subscription at $480.
But who cares?
You have reframed and made your profits on the Psychological loophole in your audience.
This website has a weekly and monthly package, but they choose to make their daily option the front of the advert.
Looking at it, 8 cents is a super great deal. But in reality, nothing has changed. It’ll, however, help boost conversion.
Social Proof
Social proof is another thing that propels the purchase decision of consumers.
People often want to learn from other people’s mistakes; hence, they resort to using social proof when unsure what to do next.
Social proof is handy when a potential customer is on the fence.
You have convinced the reader about your unique value and the benefits you offer, but you have not succeeded in overcoming his objections.
Hence he needs proof from others.
If you sell a product on a third-party platform like Amazon, your potential customers will easily get social proof by combing through your reviews.
But in cases where everything happens on your website or domain, you must include social proof yourself.
Many social media networks, instant messaging apps, dating sites, and the likes utilize social proof to pin down skeptics.
They may write on their homepage, “We have 1,002,785 registered users; 347,238 are online now”.
This is to convert the skeptic to complete his registration and be a part of their community, and the good news is that it works like magic because the social proof available helps overcome objections.
The potential subscriber may be skeptical because it is not a popular dating site yet, but seeing those numbers, he is more than encouraged to join up and even chat with one of the 300,000+ users online.
Many other businesses also include their results and testimonials in their copy.
As you often see them leave featured comments and testimonials in a section of their home pages, they pull over to themselves the skeptics on the fence.
However, Social proof is paradoxical because you need to have made sales to have evidence to show your audience.
If you are a new business owner, ensure that your items are cheap at the start to generate sales.
Speak nicely to your customers to leave a written review to select the best of the bunch as your social proof.
If you offer a service rather than a product, you could make the basic service free for a select number of people at the start, and the premium service at a substantial discount, maybe 50%.
This will give you a considerable sample space of people to provide testimonials about your service, and boom! Social proof stands.
You could create a list of potential objections; this makes you think ahead of your audience. Create the objections he could probably have before he does and squash them. I call this “The First Attack Approach.”
Rather than deceive yourself that you are good to go and there are no objections, identify the objections before your audience because if you don’t do that, your readers will eventually identify complaints.
Your conversion won’t hit its peak.
The objections could be “Price,” “Season,” “Personal doubts, i.e., will this work for someone like me,” “I already have a product I am loyal to, and I’m not willing to switch,” and many more.
Bring everything up, remove these concerns yourself, and you have your customers on lock.
Use Irregular Numbers
Another way of exploiting the mentality of an audience is to use irregular numbers. Irregular numbers are numbers that aren’t round figures.
“50% increase” is a round figure, and “100 subscribers” is a round figure. One proven way of exploiting the human mentality from experience is to use irregular numbers, which are more believable than rounded figures.
Well, I also agree that it is easier to believe that 978 people subscribed to your premium package offer than when you say 1,000 people.
This is because it is quite common to get irregular figures than rounded ones.
As I have mentioned, numbers help give specifics, which is very important for a copy, but you should ensure that you use irregular numbers rather than rounded figures.
From the dating site example that I gave in the last subtopic, we can see the use of irregular numbers.
“We have 1,002,785 registered users; 347,238 are online now”.
This is a lot more believable than saying,
“We have over 1,000,000 registered users; about 350,000 are online now”.
Although both statements are correct, one looks more honest than the other.
And this loophole is a great one in appealing to the psychology of humans.
Reduce Price Objections: Another psychological approach to convincing your audience is to reduce price objections.
This simply means you want to reassure them that they are not overpaying for a product.
You must often have seen a business’ copy that says, “Get Access to this product for a small amount of $5”.
You might see that it is an unnecessary repetition because it is quite clear that $5 is small.
But it doesn’t work that way in copywriting. It would be best to emphasize that the amount you have called is cheap and help them overcome their objections.
A headline example is: “Get lifetime access to eBooks and learning materials on graphics designing at a bargain $59.95.”
The word bargain removes the price objection from the buyer at this point because, in his mind, bargain signifies to him that if he wants to get that lifetime access, he would be paying much more.
Beyond the headline, in the copy, you could emphasize the cheapness by reminding the user that a monthly fee is $3.49, which means that the reader could have lifetime access to the product rather than paying $3.49 for 18 months.
This sounds like a steal and will make the reader inclined to purchase the product.
Testing
After combining knowledge with strategy, the next thing you need to do is to test. There is no rigid or hard and fast rule to copywriting.
Test your strategy with different leads, different psychological approaches, and even mix strategies to get your copy’s best possible performance.
This is an example of a headline that has mixed three strategies! “Hurry now; register with Us And Boost Your Website Impressions by 14%”.
This example has added the strategy of urgency and a specific number while using an irregular number.
You can even mix more strategies in the content of your copy, depending on your creativity.
Testing will also make you understand what design makes your copy convert better, the emotional words your audience seems to key into, and even the point at which you lose your readers.
This can make you tweak and improve your copy till you get the best. It could be strenuous, but once you get a hold of your perfect strategy, you will enjoy the best conversions and better revenue for life.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
