Trends

Posted on

The Sound of a Number Affects Your Perception of Its Size

In an experiment involving prices for an ice cream scoop, people perceived $7.66 as representing a larger discount from the original $10 price than it actually was (estimating, on average, that it represented a 28.7% reduction, when in reality the difference was 23.4%), and they perceived a price of $7.22 as a smaller discount than it really was, say Keith S. Coulter of Clark University and Robin A. Coulter of the University of Connecticut.

 

People unconsciously associate certain letter sounds, such as the “s” and “i” in “sixty-six,” with smallness and the “t” and “oo” of “twenty-two” with largeness, and these associations interfere with the accuracy of their quantitative perceptions.

 

Source: Small Sounds, Big Deals: Phonetic Symbolism Effects in Pricing

Posted on

The power of birthday marketing campaigns

Birthday Marketing  and New Mover Marketing Campaigns

Remember your last birthday? Remember what made it special? That’s easy- it’s the fact that other people remembered, and recognized the occasion. Now your restaurant can employ this simple direct mail marketing strategy into a sophisticated campaign that will help you win new customers and forge that precious relationship with your customer!

A Proven Way to Create Huge Response Rates

Studies have conclusively shown that a direct mail marketing program tied to birthdays provides one of the highest response rates of any form of advertising. As a business owner, you already know that the biggest challenge you face is getting first time customers in the door and forging a relationship with them. Birthday marketing makes it easy and affordable to drive new business to you and keep them coming back. In fact, combined with your free offer, most of our customers enjoy add on sales that offset the entire cost of the campaign! We are frequently informed of double-digit redemption rates that exceed the expectations of nearly all of our birthday program customers.

 

Target New Movers with Your Direct Mail Marketing Campaign

Each year about 16% of the population in the United States Moves, which creates a slew of potential new homeowners who could be your next customers? This group of people will need a lot of services and are going to be looking into new businesses and services for the new location that they have relocated to. They will also have their eyes and ears opened to trial offers that will allow them to save money while trying new business and services.

In the first 6 months of relocating, a new resident will spend more than any other consumer spends in 3 years. New residents are also more likely to become long term customers that existing residents. During the first year of their move, new movers will spend around 52% more on home furnishings and home décor. One in five new movers will create new relationships for their home phone, internet, cable and insurance.

To help your business become for successful, this could be the perfect audience for you to target with your Direct Mail Marketing Campaign. By creating special offers that will entice the new residents to try your business, you may be giving your business the new clientele that it needs in order to become stronger and more successful.

New residents will be looking for restaurants, home security systems, and entertainment items that they can explore. They’ll also need a new dry cleaners, bakery, coffee house and the list goes on and on.

The sooner that you make contact with the new residents of your area, the sooner they will check into your products or services. When a new resident plants his roots in your area, he will be quickly developing new routines and it should be your goal to make your business or service a part of his everyday routine so that you have a customer for many years to come. It won’t take a new resident long to form his opinions about the local businesses that he and his family enjoy.

Check how we can take care of your birthday marketing campaign

Posted on

Pricing mistakes and consumer behavior

A new study by researchers from Singapore and Yale revealed a pricing surprise: if two similar items were priced the same, subjects were much less likely to buy one than if their prices were slightly different!

A tiny price difference seems to make the similar products more alike, and increases the probability that a decision will be made and not deferred.

In one experiment, the researchers presented two groups of subjects with a choice. They gave all subjects a dollar with the option to buy gum or keep the money. Two similar types of gum were offered. One group saw both gum options priced at 63 cents, while the other saw one gum priced at 62 cents and the other at 64. This trivial difference caused 77% of the second group to buy vs. just 46% for the first group – a 67% boost!

In retail settings, similar products may be offered at the same price. But, rather than simplifying the choice for the consumer, doing so may actually increase the probability that the consumer will buy nothing at all.

different-prices

Posted on

The liking factor- NeuroMarketing

Create a “liking” effect with your audience.

What can you do to create a sense of commonality between you (or your company) and the customer?

What are your hobbies, values and beliefs? What about your ideal customer?

This is something easy to do if you really know who your ideal customer is.

Petsmart did this really well by posting pictures of their executives with their pets. I like them more now!

With this simple step they created a connection with their ideal clients.

neuro liking

The more we understand our customer’s brains and how they’re wired, the better we will be able to market to them and achieve success

Posted on

Neuro Nudges

neuro persuasionNeuro Nudges

Certain principles are shown to drive positive consumer responses in the brain. Here’s a healthy handful of Neuro nudges that Roger Dooley shared with the crowd of around 250 at Mima:

  • Liking – Establishing affinity with your customer is a sure-fire way to get them to like you. If your customers have dogs, consider pictures of happy people at your company with dogs.
  • Setting Expectations – People enjoy a product more if they’re given a realistic expectation of what their experience will contain. Set lofty, yet realistic expectations for people and they’ll likely enjoy your product more.
  • Fairness – Roger asked two audience members to make a deal to split $10. He pointed out that the fairness of the deal carried a lot of weight with each participant, and that socializing before making a deal increases the fairness. Tip: if you’re negotiating business, go out to dinner first and then talk business.
  • Doppelgänger Effect – One of the best ways to get someone to buy something is to help them envision themselves using the product. Roger used the example of taking an opt-in social profile picture and inserting it into a dynamic ad. Mirror neurons vicariously enjoy what they see, and nudge your brain to purchase what it sees as possible.
  • Rudeness – Just like in real life, rudeness sparks revenge. As we’ve seen from countless brands, a quick and sincere apology is often all it takes to insulate a brand against social backlashes.
  • Scarcity – People are more likely to act if they think a deal won’t be available in the future. Scarcity drives conversion — limited quantities, time frames or offers all induce the scarcity effect.
  • Gender – Men think more short term and grow impatient when shown a picture of an attractive woman. They also show riskier behavior. These “mating triggers” can be very effective on men but not so much with women.
  • Cognitive Fluency – This means that you associate difficulty of tasks with the difficulty of the instructions. Make your fonts and explanations simple of you’re asking for a simple action from your customers. Conversely, use a more complex font if you have an expensive or complex product to convey higher value and/or importance.
Posted on

Marketing to the brain

Look at these pictures:

consumer behavior

clever marketing

They are both examples of good marketing. Why?

Because they both talk to emotions, to the brain of the consumer.

The first asks you to take a stand about your values. The other allows you to solve a problem.

Simple, effective marketing. You don’t need to be a NeurMarketer to see that this works.

Remember: People buy with the heart and justify with the brain. Not the opposite. 95% of our purchase decisions are made on a unconscious level.

The question is why homeless people can see this while entrepreneurs miss this point quite often. They get stuck in old ways of marketing an selling.

Maybe because they stay inside 4 walls or just in front of the computer and forget to really observe consumer behavior?

Posted on

Credit card or cash when marketing?

neuromarketingHow you pay – credit card vs. cash – actually affects how you think about the products you are buying, according to new research published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

That, in turn, means that marketers need to review how they are marketing to credit and cash customers.

Spending money is always painful.

NeuroMarketing suggests that Cash customers pay more attention to price while credit card customers pay more attention to benefits.

This means the if you sell to credit card customers your marketing need to make clear what will be the benefits while if you are selling to cash customers compare how cost competitive is your product and show it as a bargain.

Posted on

The business of Experience

kidnappingA few weeks ago I watched a film called The Game. In the film the character gets a special gift from his brother: He will participate in a game that offers real life experiences.

The film was good and I thought that I could see people buying this type of experience.

 

We buy experiences, much more so when we are boomers. (Actually one of the reasons restaurants are seeing less and less boomers is due to the fact that dining out many times lack any special experience).

Well, now there is a company that offers something similar:

Extreme Kidnapping is a company operated by Adam Thick, an entrepreneur and convicted counterfeiter from Oakland County, Michigan. For $500, Adam and his crew will abduct you at gunpoint and hold you hostage for four hours. A thousand bucks gets you ten hours, along with a bit of customized sadism.

Experiences are the newest, hottest luxury items.

 As with any pricey upscale service, you have many choices for your Extreme Kidnapping. You can even select your kidnapper.

You can choose to have sexy kidnappers, be tortured etc.

 For $500, Adam and his crew will abduct you at gunpoint and hold you hostage for four hours. A thousand bucks gets you ten hours, along with a bit of customized sadism.

After the kidnapping is over, you will get a customer satisfaction survey.

Now, I have a very hard time understanding why someone would ever want to be kidnapped but I get spending money to have a special experience.

We talked before about another company, Nexpedition selling experience in the travel industry.

There are some studies around this fact:

  • Contrary to what people predict, it’s not young and impulsive people who want to pay so much for these crazy experiences. It’s actually people who plan and are obsessed with being productive,” says Anat Keinan, who now teaches marketing at Harvard Business School.

 

  • Consumers buy into these unusual experiences because they are considered “collectible,” not because they’re pleasurable. The following five experiments confirmed that it is those who are fixated on productivity that tend to desire these collectible experiences.

  • A new study suggests that those who spend money to do things are happier than those who spend their money on possessions.

We could add to that routine, loneliness, less social interactions due to technology and a lot more reasons.

The fact is that people today buy experiences and we need to provide experiences.

 Customer experience is fundamental to the success of every business. For most companies, in fact, customer experience is the single greatest predictor of whether customers will return — or defect to a competitor.

 Every interaction with customers can be an experience. It can also incorporate some mystery and rituals as we talk in our irresistible business.

It does not have to be as radical as the example above, but you should pay attention to these types of businesses.

Posted on

Make Customers Happier by Helping Them Accept Their Decisions

Research participants who covered a tray with a transparent lid after choosing a single chocolate from a large selection on the tray were more satisfied with their choices (6.03 versus 4.78 on a 7-point scale, on average) than people who didn’t cover the tray, says a team led by doctoral student Yangjie Gu of London Business School. Acts of “closure,” such as covering rejected alternatives, induce people to stop pondering missed opportunities. Companies might be able to increase satisfaction by taking simple steps to allow consumers to make peace with their decisions, the researchers say.

 

decision