A basic advertisement involves a lot of thought and strategy, and more planning than you may assume. From the words used to the visuals and color schemes, every part of an advert is designed to attract a consumer differently.
Advertising psychology is used to develop the aspects of advertising with the aim of generating the desired response or reaction. Some of the elements incorporated in advertising psychology include the use of authority and persuasion, emotions, memories, color selection, use of catch phrases and mottos, duplication, cartoon personas and catchy tunes.
Advertising psychology is an essential component in assisting marketing techniques to achieve the goals they are intended to meet. Not many people realize it, but a good advert utilizes psychological techniques to lure the target audience to purchase the product.
Any business advertising its products services should always incorporate advertising psychology into its strategy. A good way of understanding how to incorporate psychology into advertising is studying the techniques implemented by other companies, and then implementing these techniques in your business.
Psychology plays a major role in making adverts more effective, and for that to happen, the ad must accomplish the following:
Draw your attention;
Make you focus on the message;
Make you remember the message in the advert; and
Persuade you to buy the product or service.
Some examples of advertising psychology are:
Positive feelings – one psychological trick in advertising is taking a product you are trying to sell, and then putting the product in an advert next to other items that your target audience feels positive about. When the viewers see these items together, they might transfer their positive feelings about the other product to your product. This method is also known as effective conditioning.
Making memories – some advertisers rely on the fact that people’s memory can be influenced and what people remember about a certain event/item can be changed over time, so they make commercials that cause viewers to feel like they have had positive memories of the product.
Child targets – psychological research has revealed that children usually require extreme visual stimulation. Advertisers targeting children can rely on this research to make adverts that are more colorful, bigger and in the case of TV adverts that are faster and noisier. Adverts for children’s products should be extra bright as well as have attention-grabbing graphics.
Buzzwords – research has shown that some buzzwords have an emotional effect on readers as well as viewers, and thus increase the chances of them buying a product. The words comprise of phrases that suggest getting a good deal, phrases that give a sense of urgency and phrases that generate excitement.
