The Basic Principles of Marketing Manipulations
In one way or another, each of us is part of the global market system, in which there are multilevel models of relationships between sellers and buyers. Marketing campaigns help organize them from the former point of view – marketing means both a complex approach to production management and a set of business actions aimed at selling products and essential work with the audience: attraction, retention, and return.
Naturally, the precise organization of the processes of making a product is paramount in marketing. Still, the writing paper service will concentrate on the second part of the definition and, consequently, identify psychological marketing techniques that can benefit the business and the average person’s life if adequately understood and applied.
What is manipulation, and what is it based on?
A little history
This concept, if I may say so, originated before our era: the Romans used manipulators – tactical units of the legion – to conduct highly organized, effective combat at short and long-range. Such units were highly mobile and easily controlled. It also sheds light on the concept of psychological manipulation as a type of socio-psychological influence when one person seeks to influence and control the actions and behavior of others.
The meaning of the technology of manipulation is simple: there is a subject requesting the performance of any action; and the object, which is the executor of the request. And the implementation of the request can carry both conscious and completely thoughtless, illogical, and even ridiculous nature.
The Principle of Manipulation
Nowadays, it is not enough to possess the power of a Roman general to induce an object to action; first of all, it is necessary to understand and skillfully apply social psychology in practice, which is a reliable tool of the modern marketer.
The basic tier of practical social psychology is human needs, or to be more honest, fears of not fulfilling them. In the mid-twentieth century, the American psychologist Abraham Maslow introduced the needs diagram, arranged in a specific hierarchical order. It is also studied in marketing to understand people’s motivation, the diversity of needs, and their complex internal relationships.
What Maslow’s diagram looks like:
- Physiology: food, sex, rest;
- Safety: stability, permanence, comfort, security;
- Sociality: support from others, their attention, and care;
- Social standing: esteem and recognition, self-esteem, the importance of the functions I carry out;
- Creativity: invention, learning, discovery;
- Aesthetics: love, beauty, the harmony of all spheres of life;
- Spirituality: personal growth, self-knowledge, cognition of the world on a subtle level, the definition of the meaning of life, dreams, and higher goals.
The main marketing manipulations
Herd instinct or a sense of security
Suppose a person does not know what actions to take in a situation. In that case, he models the results based on another person’s behavior, often looking for a leader and imitating him.
Experiments have been repeatedly conducted on this subject with animals and humans, which have proved beyond any doubt the power of the influence of the crowd on human opinion and have shown that the herd instinct effect is due to human insecurity and fear of standing out in front of others.
A natural or imaginary leader can act as friends, relatives, colleagues at work, Internet resources, bloggers. Their actions and actions are not always objective, so you first need to think for yourself over the problem and then listen to extraneous positions.
Time Limit
Deadlines, all modern merchants use time limits to create sales pitches. This move has become popular because it engages a common human fear of missing out on a suitable opportunity.
In everyday life, this technique can be used just as successfully in a variety of areas: studies and work (the Tomato method), in goal-setting (SMART technology with the definition of precise limits to achieve results), to bring out the subconscious (free rating).
Emphasis on innermost desires and complexes
As a rule, the customer has enough pain points: the person is afraid to be called a failure, not to find friends or a soul mate, to be worse than others, and not be realized in life.
A classic example of manipulation focused on deep intimate desires is the Bounty candy bar commercial. In it, we are shown an ideal life. We see the unearthly pleasure experienced by the character from vacationing on a warm tropical island. But then, because of the associative effect, we, as consumers, think reactively, standing in line at the same checkout counter in a store.
Or think, for example, of products directly related to the safety of our lives and health, especially the appearance of our bodies. Issues of appearance are an apparent stumbling block to realizing one’s potential: healthy, good-looking people are somewhat easier to achieve their goals. That is why advertising says veiledly that an unhealthy person is unlikely to have love and success, frightening him with unfortunate bacteria in the mouth.
Understanding human desires and complexes are fundamental in ordinary life; it can be applied everywhere for different purposes: family relationships, business communication, or self-reflection.
Idols
Man tends to imitate successful, successful in life sympathetic personalities. The effectiveness of this manipulation is evident because it can be seen everywhere, for example, in such an essential layer of media as the press. You can see with the naked eye that magazines are riddled with useless news about stars’ personal lives, yet they effectively allow you to manipulate your audience.
The repetition effect
Repeated repetition of a company or brand name or showing the same item from different angles is a typical feature of the modern advertising landscape, allowing multiple marketing goals to be met: it is both an excellent way to establish a fresh product and a wonderful reminder of the value of a long-established brand.
Such a marketing move allows the advertised item to go deep into a consumer’s subconscious and stay in their memory for a long time.
Of course, we can use the effect of repetition for our benefit: to effectively remember the material or to form a helpful habit.
Demonstration of the result of using a product
In marketing, they love visibility: showing the consumer the effect that he will eventually find, making a purchase, a line is drawn: “product-effect.” For example, a membership to a fitness gym – a toned figure, CRM-system – increase in business profits, a course of extreme driving for bodyguards – outperform applicants in the labor market on professional characteristics.
We, too, can rely on a specific result in an area of life that appeals to us to create maximum motivation to perform the required actions.
What other marketing manipulations besides these move commerce in the marketplace and strengthen the connection between sellers and buyers? And how can you transfer them to the format of everyday life to achieve the desired results?
Bio:
Elissa Smart is an omnipotent demiurge behind PaperHelp’s blog. Driven by seething creativity, not only she helps students with thorough research and writing requests, but also finds the energy to share her extensive expertise via blog posts.