By: Ashley Prewitt, VP of Account Services
Growing brand awareness through strategic content has not only become an integral part of marketing strategies today, but it is also something consumers have come to expect from brands. In fact, most marketers see content marketing as too valuable to both consumers and brands to ever go away. Approached strategically, content can create business leads, build customer loyalty and establish trust with your audience.
Some best practices of sharing content with your audiences include always staying true to your brand message, committing to a high level of quality when it comes to developing your content and analyzing the content to which your audience responds. Through a solid plan, these practices tighten any gap between brand and consumer and foster a successful community.
Ready to take your content to the next level? Put yourself in your consumer’s shoes and shape your content through a psychological lens.
Understanding and using the principles of psychology to shape brands and influence consumers is a key practice of Intermark Group. It may seem that those principles come into play mostly when talking about bigger communication strategies, such as a television commercial or broad digital campaign, but, that’s not the case.
Applying psychological insights to all of your marketing activities, especially your content – be it a website, crafting an Instagram post or writing a blog post – is a successful practice and can produce great results. And the more you know about consumer behavior and how our minds work, the stronger your campaign will be.
Consider your own habits for a second. As a consumer, aren’t we all more likely to engage and consume content that is welcoming and easy to understand, instead of complex? As humans, we prefer simplistic content and avoid information that appears complicated – the psychological principle of cognitive fluency.
One of the more recognizable insights – and one you’re probably already practicing as a consumer yourself – is social proof. Think about how persuasive a testimonial given by an admired spokesperson can be when making a purchase decision, the amount of power a posted review by a fellow consumer has or an action taken by a peer or friend on a brand’s Facebook page. Whether it’s reading a post or making a purchase, people prefer to follow in the footsteps of others like them. The power of social proof.
These are just a few of the principles that shape human behavior and guide consumer decisions every day. For brands, these can be the pillars of success in connecting with our audiences and converting them into customers.
