Psychology in marketing: Not Invented Here
Marketing and psychology seem unlikely bedfellows but understanding how people think and react means that your marketing can work so much more effectively. It's a powerful tool in helping to persuade and influence your online audience. Knowing and understanding psychological bias and how they work will help you define your audience and influence them into becoming customers or clients.
A psychological bias is basically a cover-all term referring to the systematic ways in which the framing and context of information influences our judgement and decision making. As they work like instinct, we don't have to consciously think very much about it. Understanding these biases - and indeed our own cognitive biases - can help us to make our marketing decisions more effective.
A bias of interest is something termed ‘Not Invented Here’. This is a dismissive attitude towards anything that is developed by others - “it can't be a good idea as if it were, we would have thought of it” - ie if it was ‘not invented here’, it's no good. If a customer does not identify with a product or service, they are less likely to want to use it.
So how do we overcome this?
Quite simply we can align these products and services with well known brands. We can do this in many different ways - perhaps we can feature the logos and website links to larger and trusted companies. It might be to a well known supplier of an ingredient or integral part of the product we make. It can be a link to an award or press coverage that we have been associated with. A shared marketing campaign or using each others services can help to endorse both parties, helping the customer to build trust and make that all important conversion. Even having an influencer to endorse your branding can give your customers the confidence to invest in you.
You can read our other “Psychology in marketing” articles here: