How To Use Consumer Psychology To Improve Your Conversion Rates

You may consider yourself a rational person. And you may think most of the decisions you make are informed by rational thought.

Your emotions, however, may tell a different story.

Emotions play a significant role when it comes to many of the everyday decisions people make, including the products they use, the foods they eat, and the companies they choose to do business with.

In other words, emotions are an important factor when it comes to driving conversions. And if you want to improve your results, fueling your conversion rate optimization with consumer psychology is the way to go.

This is easier said than done, of course. And while many marketers understand that consumer psychology and CRO go together like peanut butter and jelly, they have a harder time putting theory into practice.

Below, you’ll find three tips on how to harness the power of psychology and take your conversions to the next level. 

Focus On Your Audience, Not Your Offer

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“People actually don’t care about products or features; they care about the value that products and features provide,” reports Liza Perstneva. “Marketers should ask themselves what kind of actual value their product or service can offer their customers.”

Accordingly, one of your biggest assets is the ability to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and develop a keen understanding of your customers’ hopes, goals, and pain points. This understanding should then be what informs the bulk of your content and marketing strategies.

It doesn’t matter if your offers are all top-of-the-line and include the latest and greatest features. If your customers can’t see the value that your offers bring to their lives, they won’t feel motivated to purchase.

You should also evaluate your website, sales funnel, and support options from your customers’ point of view to make sure your UX is meeting their needs.

For example, if you have either a customer support line or a live-chat feature (or both), you should test these features yourself to assess the effectiveness of your customer support agents. Additionally, you should have an impartial viewer visit your website to gauge how easy it is to navigate. You might also contact your customers and followers via social media or through your list to get their feedback directly.

Create Triggers Based On Your Audience’s Empathies

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If you understand your customers’ pain points, you can tailor your offers and marketing to ease this suffering.
Consequently, you don’t want yourself or anyone on your team to come across like a “crocodile salesperson” (small ears, big mouth). In other words, someone who talks way more than they actively listen.

You want to start by researching your customers, going deeper than just surface-level demographics, like age, gender, and income bracket. You want to establish a much more intimate template for your ideal customer’s persona.

Asking open-ended questions is a great way to tease out customers’ pain points without being too direct and giving the impression that you have one thing only on your mind: figuring out how to make more sales. You can contact customers via social media, you can survey your list, or you can ask people face-to-face at meetings.
Take notes and really listen.

Then, once you know what your customers’ pain points are, what they empathize with, and what motivates them, you can implement customized triggers into your copy and campaigns, positioning your offer as one that can enhance your customers’ lives.

Establish Trust

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Trust is one of the most important elements when it comes to increasing sales and conversion rates. If people don’t trust you, they won’t do business with you.

Social proof is a great way of establishing trust. Customers typically trust and act on recommendations from people they know, as these recommendations provide a sense of comfort and reliability about making a purchasing.

This mindset extends to recommendations and endorsements from people customers don’t necessarily know as well, because as long as the recommendations come from people without any skin in the game, so to speak, their testimonials feel unbiased and therefore trustworthy.

So showcase any customer reviews you have on your website and post about them on social media. The more reviews you have, the better. Each positive review you get helps further instill the trustworthiness of your company and offer to your customers.

What do you think about infusing psychology into your CRO efforts? Do you think this strategy could help improve your results?