If you’re not using psychology to appeal to your audience, marketing might feel like pushing a 200 pound boulder up the side of a mountain.
What’s Actually Wrong with Your Marketing (And How to Fix It)
Too often founders, executives, and amateur marketers fail to craft compelling messaging because of this one common mistake:
Poorly written copy (advertising speak for ad text) uses too much logic to appeal to readers. The vast majority of emails, social media posts, and ads are predicated on logos—otherwise known as appeal to reason. At a distance, this makes sense. We would like to believe that most, if not all, decisions are based on logic. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in.
Groundbreaking research from leading psychologists demonstrates that people aren’t nearly as rational as you might think, and that much of the decision-making process boils down to cognitive biases—which are essentially shortcuts hardwired into our brains. And while this may be disconcerting to some, the good news for marketers is that you can use these shortcuts to better connect with your audience than ever before!
The number one mistake in creating compelling messaging is talking too much about yourself. Writing a million ads and social posts about why your company is the greatest thing since sliced bread is not an effective content strategy. It’s the marketing equivalent of going on a first date and spending the entire three hours only talking about yourself, and it’s the quickest way to lose followers and subscribers.
Instead, create messaging specifically tailored to your audience by using cognitive psychology to appeal to their wants and desires. Using basic psychological principles in your messaging—like scarcity bias, intentionality bias, and the curiosity gap—will empower you to create scroll-stopping content that people actually want to read.
In this article we explore how cognitive biases can be used to create effective messaging and influence decision making.
Cognitive Overload
WARNING: The content described below is a danger to your readers!
Before diving into biases, we should first point out how NOT to sell:
When writing, we often feel the need to write more. We mistakenly believe that more words equals more work, and that all that extra work will somehow make your message more convincing. Yet studies show that writing fewer words actually improves email performance.
In 2016, Boomerang found that emails containing between 50-125 words received higher response rates, with rates declining as messages grew longer.
The easiest way to scare away quality leads is by overwhelming them with way too much information. Your sales email shouldn’t be a homework assignment. Long, difficult-to-read posts and emails are cognitively taxing and discourage readers from learning more. So instead of writing like Shakespeare, be like Hemingway and get to the damn point. (To understand why “damn” is such a powerful intensifier, skip ahead to the section titled “Breaking Taboos.)
When editing, try to spend less of your time adding words and more time figuring out what to delete. A punchy headline is crisp, compelling, and to the point. Too many words dilutes your message the same way that adding a million ingredients to a cocktail dilutes the taste of the top shelf whiskey you’re paying an entire hour’s wages for.
There’s a saying among creatives: “you have to kill your darlings.” This sinister quote has been attributed to both the poet Allen Ginsberg and Nobel Prize laureate William Faulkner. Simply put, it means that while you may feel a certain attachment to your work (especially after you spend hours writing and rewriting the same paragraph over and over) if any piece of writing fails to help tell your story, DELETE!
Scarcity Bias
Scarcity bias, popularly known as FOMO or Fear of Missing Out, is a sales tactic as old as time. It’s the reason that Black Friday generated $10.8 billion in online sales in 2024, and it’s the reason Starbucks sells so many pumpkin spiced lattes each fall.
If you’ve ever clicked on an offer or purchased a product because it was a “limited edition” or “only available for a short time,” then you already have an idea of how this one works. The rarer or more difficult a product is to obtain, the more valuable it seems in our brains.
If a product is always priced at $25, you’re probably in no hurry to buy it, and if it’s easily available, you won’t rush to the store to get yours before it’s gone. But by creating limited time offers, you can trigger leads’ scarcity bias to make them more likely to take action.
Input Bias
Input bias is an idea coined by behavioral scientists which asserts that people believe the amount of time or effort put into something is an indicator of its quality.
This is why so many companies are quick to point out how long they’ve been in business. You assume that because they’ve been in business for a long time, they’re somehow better—or that because a product was handcrafted over the course of days, rather than quickly produced on an assembly line, it’s somehow more valuable, even if those two products are of roughly the same quality.
(You value this article because it was written by a person who put time and research into creating it, and it’s not the lazy result of an AI prompt.)
Companies like Burger King, KFC, and Heinz use input bias to make people value their products more. Burger King, for example, puts “Flame Grilled Since 1954” on all their stores to trigger input bias.
Curiosity Gap
The curiosity gap is a cognitive bias that occurs when some information is withheld, instantly making readers more curious.
First coined by neuroeconomist George Loewenstein, the curiosity gap shows that people will take action to close the gap between what they know and what they want to know. In marketing, this bias can be used to motivate leads to take a specific action, such as buying, trying, or clicking.
It’s essential what drives people to click on headlines for clickbait articles titled “10 Celebrities Who…” or “This 5 Minute a Day Routine Could Save Your Skin From Aging.”
To get an idea of what the curiosity gap looks like in action, take a look at Tinder. This dating app uses the curiosity gap to convert 8% of its users into paying users. Tinder reels users in by showing them blurred images of people who have liked their profile and then prompting them to “upgrade to Tinder Gold to see who liked you.”
Authority Bias
Authority is something that’s imprinted on us at a very young age. We’re taught how to recognize it and how to respect it. As a result, adults are more likely to listen to what an authority figure says and follow their instructions.
Social and psychological cues that make someone appear to be an authority figure—-such as clothing, background, or credentials—can also make a person seem more trustworthy and increase their influence. In a study from Stuart Sutherland’s book “Irrationality,” nurses complied with a request from someone claiming to be a doctor, despite the request going against rules and being twice the maximum dose. In the study, 95% of nurses complied with the request.
The measurable power of authority (real or perceived) is why everyone on LinkedIn is always posting about “establishing authority through thought leadership.” People use shortcuts to make choices, not always evaluating options evenly and making snap decisions based on biases. That’s why on websites, awards and certifications serve as powerful indicators of authority and make you appear more trustworthy to visitors. (In this instance, you can talk about yourself).
Intentionality Bias
You would think that attitudes shape behaviors, but in reality behaviors are what shape attitudes. Humans have a tendency to make decisions based on emotion and then justify those decisions using logic. To avoid cognitive dissonance, we align our attitudes with our behaviors to make whatever action we took seem like it was the sort of thing we would have done.
Just look at Tesla. You would think that Tesla’s environmentally conscious drivers probably purchased their electric vehicle in a desire to reduce emissions. But as ad executive Rory Sutherland pointed out in an interview with the Nudge podcast, in reality most drivers chose to buy their Tesla because they thought it was a cool car and later rationalized the decision by zeroing in on its lower emissions. This doesn’t mean that those drivers are fake or full of hot air. In most cases, consumers genuinely adopted more environmentally conscious attitudes following their purchase.
If you want to sell more, stop relying solely on logical reasoning (logos) and start using more emotional appeal (pathos). Then, once you’ve already sold to them, use logos to sell more and get your customers so fired up about their purchase that they become return customers and brand advocates.
Breaking Taboos
Studies show that using swear words can actually improve your marketing (up to a point). That’s because swear words, when used sparingly and not directed at people, serve as powerful intensifiers to emphasize your point.
In analyzing customer reviews, research shows that reviews that contain swear words get more upvotes than those that don’t. That’s because everyone understands that swearing is taboo, and breaking that taboo indicates just how strongly a reviewer feels a particular statement.
Conversely, reviews that are filled with foul language detract from their underlying points, since readers assume that a reviewer who swears frequently does so out of habit, and not to make a point.
Including swear words in ads can also be a source of humor, and is likely to catch the eye of someone scrolling a feed filled with the same type of boring corporate content everyone expects from companies. Big brands are intimately familiar with the power of using swear words. Just look at Booking.com. They partnered with a prestigious ad agency, Wieden+Kennedy, to create “You Booking Did It”—a commercial that has garnered over 300,000 views on YouTube through the use of humorously suggestive phrases like “You got it booking right” and “You booking did it.”
Perhaps one of the most successful examples of profanity-based wordplay is the The Kmart video “Ship My Pants”. The phrase, when uttered quickly, sounds almost indistinguishable to another four-letter word. The video quickly went viral and now has over 19 million views on YouTube and is still gathering hits.
While crude humor may not be appropriate for every brand, these successes show that you shouldn’t underestimate the power of surprise and entertainment when connecting with your audience.
Habituation
Here’s another warning of what NOT to do:
When creating ads, don’t get too comfortable. Trying to replicate past successes can yield limited results.
The psychological concept of habituation suggests that when something becomes ordinary or expected, it’s less effective in capturing people’s attention and getting them to take action. Hence why stuffy, corporate-sounding LinkedIn gets so few engagements—it’s exactly what people are expecting.
Good or bad, we get used to stuff we see on a near daily basis. Things like a good job, nice house, or a good relationship doesn’t actually affect our daily happiness as much as we hope. Similarly, we quickly adjust to bad or uncomfortable things, such as a smoky room or the smell of sulphur, if their presence is constant
So, when creating content, do your best to keep your audience on their toes and give them something they aren’t expecting. That’s not to say every piece of content needs to have shock value (they don’t), but it does mean you should put effort into brainstorming out-of-the-box ideas and always be testing new types of content.
How to Get Professional Psychological Help (With Your Marketing)
These biases are just scratching the surface! For help crafting scroll-stopping content that cuts through the clutter and actually sells, turn to the experts at Pulse Marketing. We take time to get to know your business, industry, and audience to craft custom content that appeals to your audience.
Learn more: https://pulsemarketingteam.com/about/