Why should every marketing manager know psychology? For sure, they would not arrange sessions with customers and unravel their issues and sorrows. To answer this question, let’s see into the day-to-day tasks of a marketing professional and what they do:

1. Study the target audience and analyze changes in the customers’ behavior.
2. Design marketing campaigns to promote new products and make people remember the existing ones.
3. Strategize the work of a sales department and help its managers to become closer to the would-be customers.
4. Create TORs for merch design.
5. Find new ways to promote the company’s products and look for new areas the company can reach (in terms of both logistics and outreach).

This list is far from being all-embracing, yet it paints the picture of a professional who knows the product, the company’s specifics, and the target audience as the back of their hand. So, a marketing expert should understand the TA motives and know what triggers them to buy products. This trick requires both hard and soft skills related to psychology – in-build empathy (the ability to share people’s feelings) and a deep understanding of the psych mechanisms.

How Does It Apply in Practice?

Step 1: Product

Let us take the essay writing service as an example. Placing an essay order will be the key action expected from the customers. Knowing how to lead them to this decision is crucial.

Step 2: TA

Upon studying the product (what the company offers, website, writers’ qualifications, etc.), define the target audience. To do so, one needs to try on different social roles and select who is likely to use this service. At this stage, a marketing expert studies the competitors and their offers. By the end of this step, they have a portrait of the target audience representative – a college student.

Step 3: Pain

No, we are not going to deal pain to the students; we are going to alleviate it! But one has to define it first.

A marketing manager has to (once again) put on the shoes of an average student. There are such options as questionnaires, interviews, observations, and other ways to study the TA. And here what is clear about the main pains of the TA:

• Students have immense amounts of homework that takes up too much free time (the service aims to resolve this issue by the very fact of its existence).
• They want to skip some subjects because some classes are more relevant for the future profession. Thus, they would like to get a discount for ordering more than one essay and an option to pick the same writer for all these orders.
• They are tired because of essays and thesis papers (and some do not like writing at all). So, the service should offer writing essays from scratch.
• Students have less money than working people. So, the prices should be reasonable.

Step 4: Obstacles

Here, one needs to define what issues prevent students from ordering essays online and then develop and offer solutions.

Judging from the previous step, one knows that the students want the following:

• to be sure that their money is safe;
• to be sure about the quality of writing;
• to get their essays for a reasonable price;

So, for instance, a marketing expert can suggest reading some honest EssayHub reviews provided by nocramming.com and choosing the top-quality service.

Step 5: Support

Customers may have questions and doubts regarding the offered product or service, so they need someone to answer them. Thus, companies who care about clients, offer 24/7 customer support and a list of common questions with answers on their websites. 

Marketing and Psychology Go Hand-In-Hand

Any marketing process aims to meet the consumers’ needs with the help of a chosen product. Every marketing campaign relies on social and psychological research data to promote something to people. One should know them well enough and see what drives their decision-making.

Basic principles of marketing psychology:

• The principle of scarcity used by advertising managers is responsible for the stickers reading ONLY ONE ITEM IN STOCK in online shops and other related signs in offline ones.
• The principle of reciprocity – If you give a client a small gift, you make them feel grateful and want to do something for you in return.
• Principle of authority – the company providing useful information has a better chance of winning the target audience.
• The one of social proof – this principle is informed by the social nature of all human beings. The sold-products counters on e-marketplaces and other things that make customers a part of a bigger group are based on this very idea.
• The principle of grouping. It derives from the inability of most people to keep more than seven items in mind. To avoid overload, the brain does its HDD defragging and puts similar objects into groups. Knowing this, a marketing manager helps customers put the product in the group of those they are more likely to buy.
• The novelty principle derives from the craving for innovative and non-standard ideas.

Quick Summary

Marketing research and development borrows methodological techniques from other areas of knowledge. It has the closest connection with sociology and psychology (psychological tests, motivational analysis) since special attention focuses on the impact on consumer behavior, perception of promotional activities, the brand image, etc.

If a marketing expert wants to bring the product home to the minds of would-be customers, it is crucial to study people and analyze their behavior and anguish points. Yet, smart managers would not do such research from scratch! They would use the insights and groundwork of prominent psychologists to do the job better and faster.