Psychology and marketing go together like cookies and milk; you can have one without the other, but it’s just not as good.
However, when it comes to social media marketing, finding a tool that incorporates psychology has been like finding the Higgs—nearly impossible. That is, until now.
There is a new tool on the market that is changing how marketing departments publish Facebook ads. But why is this so important?
Humans are extremely impressionable, and once we’ve established a pattern, it becomes extremely difficult to change our behavior. In psychology, this hardwiring turns into schemas, which help us to open a door without thinking and take a drink of water without walking through all the mechanics. Schemas can even be extended to how people search on Google Google. Once our brain has established a pattern, it can use association to make a decision faster.
Here is a quick example of how schemas and your behavior work together. In your head, say the following word five times, then answer the question below as fast as possible.
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What do cows drink?
How many of you said milk? You may be shocked to hear you are all wrong; the answer is water. Every time I have an audience do this activity, about 98 percent of the room says “milk.” Of course there are always people that say, “But, baby cows drink milk.” To which the answer is simple: baby cows are called calves.
With a little conditioning and some association, you were trained to give a specific answer even though it was the wrong answer. That’s powerful, dangerous, and useful, and it should have an impact on how you use networks, like Facebook, for advertising. Getting people to wrongly answer a simple question is one thing; getting them to interact with your brand is a little more difficult. This takes an understanding of your target personas as well as having valuable content and a mechanism for creating engagement.
Facebook is a great environment for hosting engagement. One major issue is that it is extremely difficult to maintain lots of psychographs to market to your specific target personas quickly.