Unwilling to rest on our laurels and just accept the status quo, forward-thinking marketers constantly research, experiment, and pull from different fields of study. Psychology has taught us while all brains are different and all humans think independently, patterns emerge in collective studies. Let’s say we’re all faced with the following choice:
Would you take a chance or play it safe? If research shows that 72% of us would take a chance, can we infer more about our personalities and likelihood of taking other chances?
In today’s digital age, customers have more choices than ever, particularly when it comes to choosing which e-commerce site to buy from or which website to visit for specific information. Maybe it’s to stay up to date with graphic design trends. Maybe it’s our the Instagram feed for our favorite celebrity. After all, at the time of this writing, there are more than 1 billion live websites, a number which we can expect to increase every second.
You get where I’m going; the Internet is a crowded place, attention spans are that of a goldfish, there are just too many cat pictures competing for mind-share!
Today we’ll call upon psychology to reclaim this mind-share and increase user retention.
We’ll focus on two concepts: isolation and polarization.
Isolation and How You Can Use it to Enhance Retention Rates
When presented with options, customers might begin to feel differently about your particular product or service, even though they may like it very much to begin with. For example, I love to drink Sprite but if I have the option of Sprite or water, half the time I’ll go with water. This is because water has a different branding message – a healthier one. We can’t really control the message/impact of the products we compete with.
Let’s say you run a microbrewery and have just launched a new website. You specialize in making robust India Pale Ales, and are certain that your IPAs are head and shoulders above many made by your competitors, even though you’re willing to admit that those beers are similarly tasty on their own.
For the sake of our argument, let’s say you’re advertising a beer called Isolation IPA, and you’re claiming that it’s tastier than Dogfish Head 90 Minute Imperial IPA, Victory’s HopDevil, Goose Island IPA and Harpoon IPA.
You’re so confident that your product is tastier that you decide to create a makeshift standings podium, similar to the one Olympians stand on when they’re awarded the gold, silver and bronze. You place your product at the top of the podium, placing the four other beers on its other levels.
Expert beer judges may very well agree with you. Heck, even some of your customers might.
But let’s say your customers like Dogfish Head 90 Minute Imperial IPA – a lot. Just merely seeing a picture of that beer might make them think back to a fun memory from last summer where they drank a few and had a great time at a bar-be-que with their friends and family. Inspiration and thirst strike at the same time, and rather than picking up a case of Isolation IPA, they head to the liquor store and grab some Dogfish instead.
Embracing the concept of isolation, rather than doing anything that makes your customers think about alternatives to your product, means you need to evangelize on behalf of your product, acting as though your competitors don’t really exist. Why encourage your IPA-drinking fans to even notice another brand’s beer when you are proclaiming that yours is the best?
You can still keep the concept. Rather than putting those competitors’ beers on the podium in their fully labeled glory, you can instead peel those labels off and make your own: “Other Guy’s IPA,” for example. That way, you’re not encouraging your customers to reach some sort of epiphany and think, “gee, I wonder what Dogfish Head is up to, let me head over to their website.”
You’re showing your customers that your product is a new experience – an original stalwart that can fend for itself without having to make comparisons. If you make a comparison, your customer makes a comparison. This works for some industries like computers or Internet service providers, but the craft beer scene is a much friendlier place.
Isolation can take other, more extreme forms of manipulation. This involves catering to “good” and “bad” values and making users feel either mildly ashamed or mildly pleased. They might feel ashamed because of how you relate news or a recent story – even an award:
Sometimes things are simply put into perspective – a quick user reflection and they immediately feel ashamed or upset:
We look at this ad and it’s hard to feel anything positive. We’re isolated because we’ve been subconsciously put in a mental state of unease. It’s up to the website/advertiser to lead us in a direction that “corrects” our discomfort, such as donating or helping spread awareness. The fact is: marketers have created this mental state. When you know where someone will step, go, click, think, you have a better chance of holding their attention and influencing actions.
Polarization and How it Multiplies Retention Rates
Perhaps nowhere else in society is the concept of polarization more evident than in the world of politics, the world of “you’re either with us, or you’re against us.”
Even for those who follow politics the most tangentially, spotting Republicans and Democrats is unfathomably clear.
Growing up, we’re told there are many issues that aren’t black and white. But for some reason, our society has collectively embraced the notion that when it comes to politics, everything two-sided. You’re either on the right side of the aisle or the left side. The result? Stereotypes:
If you’re on the right side, you are extremely socially conservative, love wars and hate the size and scope of the government.
If you’re on the left side, you don’t think the Federal Reserve can print money fast enough to throw at the less fortunate, you want all drugs to be legalized and your religion is atheism.
Obviously these are exaggerations and can not realistically be applied. The world is a complicated place, and just because someone identifies as a Republican doesn’t mean he or she doesn’t support gay marriage, for example. Just because someone identifies as a Democrat doesn’t mean he or she doesn’t think the United States should reign in spending.
Still, for a very evident reason, politicos castigate those who don’t fall nicely onto their same side of the aisle. This is an extreme form of polarization.
Polarization, essentially, is the notion that there are only two sides to every issue, and if you’re not on the side that we agree with, you’re in the wrong and thus should be ostracized.
A great place to look at for an example of polarization in marketing is that of the electric car, let’s say the Toyota Prius. Regardless of your personal opinions on climate change, it’s safe to say that most people – for reasons of protecting the earth or protecting their wallets – are of the opinion that they’d like to drive cars that burn less gasoline.
But many of those who drive Priuses might be of the opinion that those who drive “regular” cars don’t care enough about the environment. Prius drivers, by extension, are in a sort of exclusive club, and those who aren’t in it don’t deserve the time of day.
So let’s apply this concept to your website and continue the example of the microbrewery. In addition to Isolation IPA, you make Organic Polarization Pale Ale.
You create a branding experience focused on the organic movement – similar to the “green” movement of the Prius – and subtly show how your ingredients are 100% organic. Alternatively, you could run a campaign showing gross or unhealthy statistics associated with domestic beer ingredients, leaving viewers with a reminder of the organic nature of Polarization Pale Ale.
It may sound silly, but it works.
You might be scratching your head and telling yourself that humans can’t be this predictable. We’re not children, we’re not swayed by things as simple as a numbers and colorful words…but we are.
As aforementioned, there’s a reason why the school of psychology exists. These notions – including those of isolation and polarization – are measurable in the sense that they have been proven in research settings.
When it comes to isolation, convincing your customers that your brand is all that matters and all that is important, can go a long way to building customer loyalty. And that’s important, because your loyal customers can account for as much as 70 percent of your revenue.
When it comes to polarization, when you’ve convinced some of your strongest fans to embrace an “us vs. them” mentality, they will evangelize on your behalf. Sure, there will be those who are on the other side of the spectrum, those who dislike your brand. But those who support your brand can convince at least some of those in the middle to join your team, and as such, you won’t have to spend money directly trying to target them.
At the end of the day, many marketers might simply go through, doing their jobs and hoping that they maintain the level of sales that allow them to remain comfortably employed. They’ve found and settled on methods that work for them but have lost the passion to keep testing.
But we haven’t and we’ll continue learning about consumers: emotions, mental processes, and dispositions.
