Psychological Marketing: The Mind Games You Need To Master
Psychology plays an enormous part in marketing, as companies utilize behavior tactics to increase revenue and influence decisions. Being able to create positive emotional responses from prospects is the key to operational success. At the 14th Annual Apartment Innovation and Marketing Conference (AIM 2019), which took place at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach on May 5-8, a diverse panel of marketers revealed insights into what part psychology plays in today’s leasing strategies. Moderated by Kristi Fickert, Vice President of Marketing and Training, 30 Lines, panelists
- Kenneth Kasee, Director of Marketing, JVM Realty Corporation
- Megan Mahoney, Marketing Director, East, LMC
explained how the following marketing techniques informed by psychology
- Priming - eliciting information about the prospect
- Reciprocity and operant conditioning - giving something for answering the CTA
- Sensory marketing - how the prospect receives the message
- Social influence - recommendations through trusted social channels
- Frequency illusion, or retargeting
- Clustering - categorizing subjects for better reach
are being used to engage prospects and residents while building a resonant brand reputation.
In her introduction, Fickert observed that knowing psychology (the study of the way the brain works) is important to marketers because “the brain controls the money. That’s where people decide what they’re going to spend money on and if they’re going to do business with you.”
The first four techniques listed are used to attract cold leads. “Priming,” said JVM’s Kasee, “is probably something you do every day.” Kasee uses unique benefits like a luxury gym, live Facebook apartment tours and YouTube to engage prospects. (Video, which markets through images and sound, is expected to dominate the Internet this year.)
He also recommends reciprocity to make the prospect actively participate in building the relationship. Both he and LMC’s Mahoney have rewards programs in place that engage both residents and community businesses. “A kind of ‘I’ll scratch your back, you’ll scratch mine,” said Kasee. For Mahoney, “It’s been a way of increasing the amounts of reviews we have online.”
Instagram curation is a mainstream method of social influence; and, while it’s not an approach for every community, said Mahoney, she has also deployed a social influencer with success. “We had a community where one side faced a building that was going up. We brought in an influencer and her husband (who is a musician) to live on property, in a vacant apartment facing the construction. We were charging the rent to vacancy loss, but we worked out how her posts and the concerts he would do on-site would cover the cost.” As a result of this campaign, there was an uptick in the number of tours since “people wanted to see where she lived.”
Once a prospect has opted in to a program, the other techniques come into play. “Email addresses are golden,” noted Fickert. “When someone gives us their email address, we can run email drip campaigns and retarget them.” Rentals, in fact, are perfect for frequency, since prospects run so many searches, they become exhausted. “Sending them an email reminds them: ‘We’re still here.’”
Kasee agreed: “I think email is hugely important. I see a lot of conversion out of email, particularly when it’s in-bound. I still have 80% of my people in the funnel even after they’ve gone through all the campaigns.”
To prospects, Kasee sends emails with questions crafted to elicit more information. For residents, he is currently testing a new approach that employs clustering: “If we know someone is working from home, we serve them content about our coworking space. If we know someone has a pet, we serve them content about a pet. And there’s a stream that personalizes within that. We’re seeing a lot of conversion from that behavior.”
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