Simple yet clever marketing psychology techniques

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What if I told you that almost none of your shopping decisions were truly completely yours? In this blog post, we're going to go through 3 marketing psychology techniques that nudge the buyer towards a certain product or service. Let's go.

The Decoy Effect: get us to choose the most expensive option.

Maybe you've heard of this experiment. People at a theatre could choose from 2 options:

1. A Small popcorn for $3

2. A Large popcorn for $7

Most people chose the Small. Cause $7 is way too much for popcorn, right?

But at the second experiment they got to choose from 3 options:

1. A Small popcorn for $3

2. A Medium popcorn for $6.50

3. A Large popcorn for $7

Surprisingly, most people chose the Large now. Cause why not pay an extra 50 cents for the biggest portion, right?

Well, that's the power of the Decoy Effect: it's presenting buyers with a third option that makes the most expensive option look like a bargain. How sneaky.

The Goldilocks Effect: get us to choose the middle option.

With the Goldilocks Effect you price your three options in a way that makes the middle option just seem perfect for us.

You see this effect a lot with subscription plans. The 3 options look something like this:

1. Cheap and barely enough features and benefits

2. Reasonable price and has everything we need

3. Expensive and has everything we need plus stuff we'd want

It's clear that most people would go for the middle option, cause it's priced reasonably and it has everything they need.

The Anchoring Effect: the first price we see is crucial.

The Anchoring Effect is powerful: the first price we see affects our perception of any future prices of the same product or service. Let's look at two examples to clarify this.

Let's say you saw the same phone in two stores:

1. In the first store, you saw it being sold for $300

2. In the second store, you saw it being sold for $500

Your immediate reaction would be that the second store is ripping you off: $500 is surely way too expensive for this phone if you can get it for a bit more than half the price somewhere else?

Now, let's assume you saw the same phone in two stores but like this:

1. In the first store, you saw it being sold for $700

2. In the second store, you saw it being sold for $500

Even though the price in the second store is still $500, now your reaction would be different. You'd consider it being cheap. Cause the initial price you saw was $700.

Isn't that wild?

Got an e-commerce business and need help?

If you have an e-commerce business and you're selling everything online, it's crucial you not only price your products correctly, but you also work on establishing trust with your potential customers.

Trust comes in many forms. One of them is having reviews. Another one is using the right words to explain your product and connect with your target audience.

Want more info and/or need help with that? Send me a message and let’s get started.