It’s common for elite athletes to say that their secret to success is that they “take what the defense gives them”.
What does this have to do with inbound marketing?
Well, first of all, let’s look at what it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean that inbound marketing is about triumphing over customers – because the relationship has to be win-win or else it’s lose-lose. After all, the goal with inbound marketing is never just to make a sale, but to inspire and cultivate “brand ambassadors”. This outcome is impossible if customers feel like they’ve been taken advantage of or were somehow manipulated into making a purchase.
With that being said, let’s focus on what this does have to do with inbound marketing – and the answer is rooted in customer psychology. That is, just like elite athletes playing off their teammates, inbound marketing takes what customers naturally bring to the relationship and uses that momentum to usher them forward along the customer journey.
To make this clearer, here are the 3 ways that inbound marketing is uniquely rooted in customer psychology – and why it works so astonishingly well:
How Inound Marketing is Influenced by Behavioral Psychology
1. Customers Want Contextualized Information
Today’s customers are overloaded with an incomprehensible volume of information and data. Yet at the same time, they have a healthy suspicion of marketing and sales claims and definitely want more than product descriptions and web copy snippets to decide if a business is trustworthy and its offerings are credible.
As a result of these opposing forces – information overload on one side, and the need to gather information on another side — customers greatly appreciate being offered contextualized information, or what in an inbound marketing context is called “thought leadership content”.
This information – which is perceived by customers as credible, objective, and relevant to the problems they need to solve and/or the goals they want to achieve – is affordably and automatically distributed through an inbound marketing system.
2. Customers Want Free Stuff
We all want free stuff – whether it’s a cup of coffee or a new car. However, the customer psychology behind this is rather interesting, because it’s not so much about the cost: it’s about the risk.
That is, customers – even ambitious and excited ones – are inherently risk adverse, in the sense that they don’t want to make a mistake. This is perfectly understandable and quite rational as well; especially since we can all recall a purchase, either professionally or personally, that didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to.
Inbound marketing assets – again, we’re talking ebook, blog posts, Infographics and so on – are all FREE. As such, customers don’t have to worry about any risk whatsoever, which makes them feel safe and secure. And that’s great news for businesses, since it’s the mindset they need to create in order to build trust, and grow the relationship.
3. Customers Want to Reciprocate
In his seminal book Influence, Dr. Robert B. Cialdini scientifically verified what elite marketing and sales professionals had known for decades: customers who receive free items that they perceive as helpful or valuable, are naturally inclined to reciprocate.
That is, customers feel a certain fundamental indebtedness towards businesses that help them in some way. No, this gratitude doesn’t necessarily (or even usually) mean that customers will whip out their credit card or send through a purchase order. If that were the case, then every car salesperson who took a customer out for a test drive would be writing up a sale 5 minutes after getting back to the dealership!
Rather, it means that customers are categorically more inclined to engage a business that has offered them something of value – which is what inbound marketing is fundamentally designed to do. This engagement could be expressed as agreeing to speak with a sales professional, trying a demo, downloading an eBook, and so on. Regardless of the conversion metric, it’s a win for customers and businesses alike.
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As you can see, inbound marketing is not an invention: it’s an innovation. It doesn’t re-invent the sales relationship, but supports and strengthens it, because it taps into and aligns with the framework and mindset that customers bring to the relationship.
To learn more about making inbound marketing work for you and your customers, contact Leap Clixx today.
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