Psychological Tactics to Use for Your Social Media Marketing

The ability to influence people is at the core of marketing strategies. This includes social media marketing campaign strategies. Every type of marketing uses psychology in some way.

Social media marketing is reliant upon the understanding of those who use social media. It is how you promote to the appropriate audience and target market. This is true whether you are marketing products, services, or brand names.

Here are some psychological tactics to use for your social media marketing.

1) Using Color

Because social media is wildly visual, color is the first psychology tactic we will discuss. There is some debate over the idea of colors sparking certain emotions, but the tone and imagery used usually hold true. For example:

• Purple represents ideals such as luxe, high intellect, regal, special, and problem-solving.
• Red is for passion, intensity, anger, and a heightened sense of emotions and physical states.
• Blue sparks soothing, sadness, trust, and is approachable.
• Yellow promotes happiness, serenity, ecstasy, and joy.
• Green provokes prosperity, luck, money, success, conservatism.

Having information like this, you can use color psychology in your marketing to your advantage on social platforms.

Colors help you to stand out from other blogs and brands and depends on your audience and what product or service you are promoting.

2) Using Social Proof

Social proof relates to using things like testimonials and reviews to show others how much your customers like your service, product, or brand. Your number of followers and engagement are also a good measure of social proof. This is why people buy followers on TikTok, for example.

When others see how much your followers and customers trust you and like what you do, they want to be a part of that. This psychological marketing tactic is also useful for pre-selling to your audience.

Some of the actions your audience will take from seeing social proof is to like your page, follow you, and even purchase your products or services. Use your social media channels to show your positive reviews and testimonials to gain more new business.

3) Using Reciprocity Psychology

Reciprocity is the concept of, “I will do something for you if you do something for me.”

For example, if you follow me, I will provide you with coupons, advice, giveaways, or free stuff. It is just like someone helping you move into a new apartment and you buy pizza for later. Reciprocity is getting and giving back.

Generosity is important on social media. Your audience is more apt to engage with you and become a loyal customer if you are a giver. Whether you sell makeup, baked goods, digital goods, books, or other products and services, give back to your customers and potential customers.

4) Using Frequency Illusion

The Frequency Illusion is the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, which is that sense that you have seen something once, but then suddenly you see it everywhere. Social media platforms are the ideal venue for this psychological tactic for being everywhere. This is particularly effective on YouTube, where influencers use it to get more views.

Using this tactic requires that you get hyper focused on your target market/audience as opposed to a broad audience. To market to the whole world would make it overwhelming and less important to the goal. You do not want to waste this content on just everyone. Use appropriate and relevant hashtags, platforms, and topics.

6) Using the Isolation Effect

Most social media platforms are focused on the visual aspect of things. People are extremely visual. That is what makes the Isolation Effect so effective in psychological marketing.

One method is to take an image and make sure it is the focal point. Your audience should be able to tell visually and clearly what your focus is on the image. That content stops social media timeline scrollers and makes them look at the image.

Be sure not to overuse this method, but it helps them to remember the focus of the image you posted. For example: Use an image of some skincare or makeup product and add a focal background to it so that it blends (do not contrast the colors) and showcases just the product.

7) Using Natural Curiosity

People are curious creatures. Have you ever found yourself engaging with social media content just because you were curious about learning more about it? That is a natural instinct. We humans cannot help it.

By using social media memes, quotes, captions, and/or headlines, you can spark your audience’s curiosity and get clicks to it.

Final Thoughts

These are just a few psychological tactics you can use to get more interest to your content. Always be sure to focus on what your audience wants to see and these marketing strategies will boost your engagement and presence.