Brain on the Internet: Meet our new series

Every small business owner has one big question: how do I better influence customer behavior? Contrary to what clickbait advertising would have us believe, there’s no one (weird) trick to get users to click on your call to action, opt-in to your email newsletter, or increase page views. However, you can drive user behavior more effectively by learning how to incorporate psychological principles into your online marketing strategy.

Have you ever wondered why you and a friend can seem to have radically different interpretations of the same event? It’s probably due to a difference in social conditioning or psychological biases. This simple curiosity can lead you down the road to marketing genius.

One key to developing great marketing is understanding how (and why) people behave the way they do. This is essentially what psychologists spend their time doing. Understanding a bit about principles of psychology can take your marketing from fine to fabulous because you will be better equipped to reach the right audience and influence their behavior.

Here at Spring Insight, we love geeking out on this stuff (in a former life, I must have had a PhD in Psychology), so I’ll be doing a feature blog post every month or so.

Don’t worry, this mini Psych 101 course doesn’t require you to buy a textbook as big as a phonebook, listen to boring lectures (though this could become a fun webinar), or watch rats running through mazes.

Here’s a sampling of topics we’ll be digging into:

• The Anchoring Effect and Your Website: Anchoring can do so much more than increase sales
• Color Strategy: (Surprise) Your favorite color might not be the best choice for your website
• Twitter and the Endowment Effect: How to use social media to make your clients feel invested in your brand
• Don’t Take a Gamble on your Business: Learning to recognize and overcome the trap of the Gamblers’ Fallacy

Sound like fun? Make sure to check back in with us to find feature posts chock-full of neuromarketing (yeah, it’s a thing) tips you can put to use immediately. (See how I just used the Framing Effect there?)