When it comes to growing your social media or marketing your products on one of the many platforms, it doesn’t just come down to chasing followers, comments and likes.
Whilst these do add a level of validity to your brand, there are other tactics you can deploy to really add legitimacy to you and your feed. Here are some of the most important psychological tactics to use for your social media marketing.
Social Proof
Possibly the most important psychological tactic is social proof. If you are marketing a lifestyle brand or yourself, this is one tactic you are going to need to read up on.
The thing with social proof is that you can build it yourself, but you need to be dedicated and you need to be collaborating with other users. Social proof is where people copy the actions of others in an attempt to undertake the same behaviour.
The idea is if that so many people behave in a certain way, it must be the correct and accepted behaviour. So how do you build social proof?
One of the best ways to build it is to use endorsements or collaborations. If you can access an influencer in your niche that has a high level of post engagement and following, then you can work with them to get them to market your product or service.
The thing about social proof is that it is so much more than just marketing, you are building a behaviour around your product or service and attempting to legitimise it and put it into the mind’s eye of the consumers. So, before you release your latest marketing strategy for your product, think if there is anything more you can do to add rigour to it.
Fear of Missing Out
Fear of missing out is a very, very real phenomenon, we’ve all heard the saying FOMO and this emotion transcends events that we are missing or the holiday with friends that we can’t go on. It also works in the marketing world.
There are multiple ways that you can leverage this emotion to your advantage. The first way would be to utilise particular pathways on social media that have a finite amount of time attached to them, such as Instagram stories. You can attach a discount code, only to your stories and make it clear that once the story has expired, the discount code will also expire.
This means that you will give your audience a sense of urgency and it is this urgency and worry of missing out that will trigger them to buy into your product.
Growthoid says, that the other way you can leverage this emotion is by releasing a product with only a limited number in the run. You are now turning your product into a sought after, exclusive item that people will want to engage with.
However, if you do start releasing single run items, you must keep them as such. Too often companies release limited edition or single run items, only to add them into their lines permanently later on.
This removes the legitimacy behind your selling tactics and could also result in consumers not buying into the initial release if they think it will be made a permanent fixture later on.
Influencers
You can sit in either the lover or hater camp, but influencers really do influence audiences and get people to invest in products and services. According to Task Ant, you should let them do what they are good at and push your product out for you down marketing channels that you may not have previously explored.
Make sure the influencer you are using matches your values and the messaging you are putting out across your brand, you don’t want to be in the situation of a mismatch of values, as this can result in your consumers walking away from both your marketing strategy and your product as a whole.
It is easy to get excited in these times, especially if you see a campaign taking off, but remember to take a step back and really evaluate the influencer you want to use to make sure they are a good fit.
Conclusion
Human emotions and behaviour are something that can be easily leveraged when you are selling a product or service.
Utilize strategies such as social proof and the emotion of fear of missing out brings to add legitimacy and urgency to your campaign. If you want to add more weight behind what you are doing, leveraging an influencer can also help you succeed in your marketing goals.