Leveraging behavioural science to improve marketing

It's intriguing to realise that, despite our belief in our uniqueness, our responses to certain situations often follow common patterns. Behavioural science has been uncovering these patterns through social experimentation probably since the dawn of time and lately the behavioural science concepts have taken the spotlight.

For marketers, a solid grasp of these concepts is invaluable.

By applying these insights, we can transform our marketing by resonating with our audience on a deeper level.

In a recent episode of Mail Unleashed by Marketreach, Richard Shotton, bestselling author of The Choice Factory, sat down with resident host, Rory Sutherland. The pair uncover fascinating insight on how behavioural science can be applied to marketing to improve memorability and drive performance. And honestly, what a conversation! 

Here are 5 top take-outs from the conversation:

Be distinctive and surprising in your marketing
Aim to be distinctive or surprising to get noticed and remembered. Identify the formulaic rules of behaviour in your category and be brave enough to go against the grain. Find a way to zig when everybody else zags. Often what we consider as memorable is what’s most surprising or what we may least expect. 

Also, consider your media selection, if your competitors are advertising through social media then how can you stand out? There is relatively little competition on the door mat, so direct mail can provide a welcomed surprise factor.

Market to moments, not just demographics
Many of us understand demographic targeting but don’t necessarily think of marketing to specific moments of our audience. Think about how to reach your audience when they’re feeling happiest or most relaxed as they’re more likely to be receptive to a message at those times.

When looking at media selection, think about the context and location of where your messages are received. Direct Mail can work wonders here. Mail has the unique ability to reach people where they are happiest and most relaxed – in the home. This audience can also open your message at a time that suits them.

Embrace the power of costly signalling
Consider the medium of your message as well as the message itself. Direct mail is a perfect demonstration to your audience that you value them. It’s does this because a brand puts effort into sending something printed and personalised, addressed to them. There’s common a perception that it has taken time or money to send a piece of direct mail that doesn’t exist for email. Also, as Richard states, the greater the effort a communicator has gone to, the more believable their message. 

Use concrete language in your branded communications
Concrete language is easier to visualise and four times more likely to be remembered than abstract benefits that brands often highlight in their communications. For example, easy to visualise language like ‘muscular gentleman’ and ‘square door’ is more memorable than more abstract and difficult to visualise phrases like ‘basic truth’ or ‘subtle fact’. Brands generally use abstract language to convey their brand and product benefits, whereas it’s the simple concrete language people find much more memorable.

The advantages of tactility
It’s been proven that people tend to remember printed text over text read on a screen. Although it has been debated about why print is more memorable, a common theory is people can remember location of text on a page – for example, top left of a page, or a quote at the bottom of the page toward the end of the book. Print is easier to remember in this sense compared to a screen because screens have so many variable details like text size and screen size and scroll depth, which means the location of text is harder to pinpoint. As Richard says, ‘If you want something to be remembered, then print it.’

Fascinated? Then dig deeper. If you’re interested in exploring the background and the social experiments used to validate any of these theories, check out the full article over at Marketreach.

You can watch the full episode here.

Published on 11 July 2024. Marketreach are a partner of The Marketing Society