Five Research Findings That Can Jumpstart Your Marketing Strategy
As small-business owners, you most likely write your own advertising.
And, if you have no formal training or experience in copywriting, I’m willing to wager that you use what is referred to as a “heuristic” approach – or, in other words, trial and error. You write it and hope it works.
Sound familiar?
Unfortunately, hope is for bystanders and wishes don’t do dishes when it comes to developing advertising copy. Therefore, why not use recent scientific research findings from the fields of psychology, behavioral economics and neuromarketing to significantly improve your chances of copywriting success?
Doing so can greatly reduce the dreaded cost-of-being-wrong jitters when composing your own ads and help you to become the super successful marketer you always hoped to be.
In the last decade, scientists (social and other types) have uncovered more information than during any time in history supporting the idea that 95 percent of brain activity – such as our decision making, the actions we take, emotions we feel and display, and the behaviors we exhibit – are actually programmed into the neurological architecture of our brains.
In traditional marketing, we are encouraged to follow the age-old formula of promoting attractive benefits to guarantee total satisfaction and provide a strong call to action.
That is, until now.
Let’s examine five of the most compelling, actionable research findings from the scientific arena to which you should give serious consideration when developing your marketing programs – including, of course, your advertising campaigns.
The Dopamine Effect
Dopamine is a brain chemical technically called a neurotransmitter. We all have it in our brains. Research has demonstrated that – when we are exposed to things we like or anticipate we will like – our dopamine level rises and we experience blissful, euphoric and happy feelings. In fact, it’s called the “feel-good neurotransmitter.”
It also enables us to see rewards and to take action toward them. Food samples you’re offered as you enter your local supermarket get your dopamine neurons fired up – grabbing your attention and making you feel happy. When we are rewarded, we feel good.
And, if the reward is unexpected, the feeling of pleasure will soar. When people experience this, they feel positive and attracted to the environment or event that caused it.
Dopamine research findings can be utilized within your laundry marketing programs in a number of ways. Here are a few examples:
Humans love novelty. It’s been demonstrated that exposure to something new increases the release of dopamine in the brain. Therefore, perhaps change your loyalty programs fairly often to freshen up the novelty.
You also can create a common enemy. By that I mean you can develop advertising copy using what is called “the reverse.” Here’s a simplified example of such an ad:
You Won’t Like Aunt Matilda’s Coin Laundry
If you like broken machines, rude attendants, a poorly lit parking lot, empty snack and beverage vending machines, no air conditioning and dirty floors, you’re going to absolutely hate Aunt Matilda’s Coin Laundry. We’re very sorry, but we have none of those items!
The Colors of Our Minds
A lot of research has been done on the psychology of color. In essence, studying how people perceive color, as well as the emotions, opinions and thoughts that various colors evoke in us.
Color enters into your laundry business in many ways. It begins with your exterior sign and extends to your store’s interior décor. And don’t forget about the colors you use on your website and in your promotional materials. In fact, the colors you use transmit the personality of your laundry.
For example, research has demonstrated that blue conveys honesty, family orientation, sincerity, dependability and friendliness. Blue is used by Dell, Lowe’s, Facebook, Walmart and Oreo cookies.
Psychologically, yellow is by far the happiest color within the spectrum. It’s no wonder that 75 percent of all the pencils sold in the United States are yellow – because they’re competing with pens, which typically aren’t yellow.
Popular companies that use yellow in their logos and advertising include Hertz, McDonald’s, Yellow Pages, Best Buy, Pennzoil and Shell Oil.
The conclusion here is to use the proper colors in your store, within your marketing materials and on your exterior signage that will transmit the intended message to customers and potential customers.
Displaying Trust
Research has shown that our brain’s first impressions of people and things (such as your self-service laundry) are created extremely quickly.
You and your attendants may have official titles, but what should appear on all of your name badges is “Director of First Impressions,” because that is exactly what you are.
Scientists have found that our amygdala – an area of the brain associated with emotions and decision making – actually makes a judgement about the trustworthiness of a face after just 33 milliseconds of exposure. That is much less than half a second!
This research goes well beyond faces. It applies to whatever the customer sees first when coming into contact with your vended laundry or its advertising messages. As a result, if you’re using photos of you or your staff on your website or within printed ads, be sure everyone is smiling, relaxed and demonstrating what are called “facial trust characteristics.”
In addition, beyond encountering you or your staff, be certain that when customers enter your laundry they immediately see the neurologically correct décor color (perhaps comprising your internal signage) to evoke the desired emotional/visual responses.
Creating Customer Reciprocity
Research also has clearly demonstrated that a small favor, provided by a business owner, can trigger a much bigger return favor from the customers – such as regularly patronizing that business.
In general, doctors in the U.S. are very highly compensated. Therefore, one would hardly expect an occasional free lunch, provided by a pharmaceutical company, to influence which drugs a physician prescribes to his or her patients. However, the conclusion of a recent study may surprise you.
A team of researchers examined the prescribing behavior of 279,669 physicians and found that even inexpensive meals (less than $20) occasionally gifted to them by pharmaceutical salespeople were positively correlated with more of those sales reps’ brand name prescriptions being written by the doctors.
Of course, the medical world is an extreme example, with perhaps some ethical implications that certainly don’t apply to your laundry business. However, it does demonstrate the point that, if you do your customers a favor, they likely will feel the need to respond in kind.
And you can ethically utilize reciprocity in your marketing program in many ways. For example, you can hand out a free laundry bag to each new customer who signs up for your “frequent washer”or “frequent comforter cleaning”programs. I’m sure you can come up with endless campaigns that are similar and effective. The idea is to offer something to customers that will make them want to reciprocate by using your facility on a regular basis.
This behavior is due to the fact that people for whom you’ve done something nice have a tendency to want to do something for you in return. For instance, the next time you receive a solicitation for a donation from a charitable fundraiser in the mail, you’ll likely notice that they’ve included some sort of gift in the envelope, such as personalized address labels, a calendar or a dollar bill.
How Your Customers View Your Business
Your self-service laundry is what it is, but more importantly it’s what the customer thinks it is. Recent research in perception has determined that small-level design modifications to advertisements, websites or interior signage can have a huge impact on how your business is perceived.
One of the advantages of neuromarketing research is that it can accurately measure and quantify the differences of relatively small visual changes to any advertisement or website design.
For example, research has demonstrated that ad designs that place images to the left of the written content perform better. This effect is technically called “processing fluency,” which is perhaps one of the most important neuromarketing concepts of all.
The fact is that consumers have a preference for simple, easy-to-understand ads and websites. Our brains typically confuse things that are easy to understand with being familiar, and we have a bias toward the familiar.
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Due to a built-in physiological quirk in our visual system, we find decoding images easier when they are on the left side of our visual field and the text is on the right. Although not huge, this effect is significant enough to create an impact.
Many marketers in several industries are currently leveraging the benefits of scientific research in the behavioral sciences. And more data to help us better understand the neurological basis of thought is being uncovered all the time.
In the long run, the outcome of all of this research will very likely be an increase in your laundry business’ income – if you know how to use it.
