Interesting cognitive biases that impact the effectiveness of your marketing and how to apply them

So this week on my CXL institute digital psychology and persuasion class, I focused a ton of my learning on cognitive biases because I find them interesting, especially in showing us how to use different human behaviours and biases to influence buying decisions and judgement. First,

What is cognitive bias?

Simply psychology defines cognitive bias as “unconscious errors in thinking that arise from problems related to memory, attention, and other mental mistakes.These biases result from our brain’s efforts to simplify the incredibly complex world in which we live. Cognitive biases have direct implications on our safety, our interactions with others, and the way we make judgments and decisions in our daily lives.”

But how what exactly does this have to do with people buying my product/service?

Because most cognitive bias decisions are made unconsciously and and are in themselves errors, you can apply those errors to your website, pricing pages, product or service itself to help prospects take the actions you need them to take.

Here are 10 cognitive biases I think to be aware of and how to apply them while building your product or website.

1. Curse of knowledge: Many technical startups today suffer the curse of knowledge and it’s fascinating to see that the people who claim to be solving problems and making everyone’s life easier cannot communicate what and how exactly they do so to their customers or client, too much big words and technical words kill content marketing in tech startups, if you cannot explain to my 7 year old niece how your product can make her better at school, with friends or get her more money then you might be wasting your time.

Being self aware helps you put yourself in your customers shoe,

As a content creator or writer, always ask yourself , how would this be explained to me like I’m 7.

Always think in terms of your customer; what’s in it for them? What do they stand to gain, how will their lives be any better? Not how you do what you do.

2. The decoy effect: Now this is an interesting bias you can apply to your pricing. The decoy effect is an irrelevant or less attractive offer that makes the more expensive product or quality one seem much more valuable.

3. Declinism; the tendency to look at the past as more glorious and better than the future, declinism depends on present conditions to thrive. E.g Americans voting in Donald Trump after Barack Obama to take help them revamp their lost glory and Americanism. To effectively use declinism, let your web or sales copies show your prospects just how bad things were before your product stepped on or how bad things will continue to be if they don’t use your product. The most important factor in declinism is nostalgia. That’s why you hear older generation like our parents paint their young days as more exciting or way better while the reality is it was just as bad then. But somehow, how brain just tends to blur out unpleasant moments in our past as a coping mechanism. So use your sales copy or landing page copies to describe in vivid details, just how gloroius or better products like yours used to be until maybe people or companies like your past/existing competitors destroyed it but now, you’re here to take them to the old days.

4. Endowment effect: People place more value on things they own or have already experienced, let your customers try or touch your product or try to use vivid images to invoke a use case for your customers. Best examples of this effect are free trials, rentals, or even allowing customers try on jewelries or clothes while they shop.

5. The Ikea effect: when we participate in assembling something, it becomes more valuable. Let your customers finish your product in some way or let them customise your product in some way. Co-creation invokes unity. If you sell branded merch for instance or even fashion items, you can create a space where your customers can customize their merch or assemble an outfit to see how an outfit would look on them. It also doubles as gamification.

6. Illusory superiority: we often think better of ourselves, oversell our good qualities and undersell our bad qualities. Use flattering language where it is appropriate. If you say nice things about your prospects, they’ll believe you because they believe them to be true. For instance you can add a prompt on your add to cart page where whenever a customer adds an item to their cart, you use words like “awesome, we see you’ve got great taste”. Try not to use the same compliment for each item though.

7. The mere exposure effect: Somethings that are familiar are thought of as good. The perception of goodness increases when people continue to see a thing or person. Even when there’s absolutely no difference in preference for these things. Use your logo and brand name in multiple places, it makes a subconscious exposure in peoples minds. If your brand sounds familiar too, people will trust it more than a brand that’s fairly new or odd.

8. Paradox of choice: Avoid giving your customers or prospects choice overload, when there’s a smaller number of choices, sales are higher. But if you’ve to offer too much choice, you can try focusing on different products daily by using things like product of the day” adding a sorting option, using star ratings to differentiate what other people love the most, different product photos and detailed info.

9. The bandwagon/cheerleader effect: the bias that drives social proof, when we see other people doing something, we pretty much want to do the same or be involved in some way. So use social proof as much as you can and try to include more honest and even descriptive testimonials that talk about ways your product specifically worked for them. While the cheerleader effect works in a way that individuals appear more attractive in a group than when they’re alone. So if you’re doing team photo’s on your website, consider grouping your team as opposed to using single stand alone photos, it communicates appeal and a bit of trust and people generally tend to buy from people they find attractive.

10. Bizzarness effect: Things that are really weird, unfamiliar or unsual stand out or are easy to recall. When your brain is suprised, it tends to to pay attention more to what’s going on. The bizzarness effect works well on copies and landing page designs when you use words your customers would find unexpected. Consider the eleven yellows landing page, I’ll never forget it myself because when I found it, it wans’t like other landing pages or websites my brain was used to seeing. It also made me think of them as cool and a team I’d definetly love to be a part of.

There are are a lot more cognitive biases, you can find the full list here and how to apply them to your product design or marketing.