As a marketer, it is important to craft a strategy that drives customer behaviour throughout a campaign and beyond. To do this effectively, you need to understand how your customers’ brains will respond to creative work. Previous articles have discussed how you can create marketing assets that trigger specific responses in the brain such as dopamine and the golden rule of content marketing, and neuroscience and beauty: making an impact with visually appealing assets. Additionally, cognitive biases can be used to influence customer decisions.
However, marketers can be prone to cognitive biases that prevent them from connecting with their audience. The fundamental attribution error refers to a person’s tendency to attribute certain behaviours to a flaw in character or disposition instead of external or situational factors. For example, if a customer is late to a meeting, it is easy to attribute this behaviour to their own laziness or rudeness. However, it is important to remember that external circumstances could have also caused the delay.
Another cognitive bias is apophenia, which is the tendency to see meaningful connections between unrelated phenomena. This is seen in the tendency to see shapes in the clouds or faces in random places. When it comes to marketing, this can lead to marketers attributing their own campaigns as the cause for changes in data when in reality, it could be unrelated. It is therefore important to challenge these connections and ensure accurate interpretation of data.
These cognitive biases can have a huge impact on your role as a marketing leader, as it is important to understand the underlying factors that lead to different behaviours. It is also important to remember that you are more likely to blame external circumstances when your own behaviour is questionable, and be aware of your own biases. Therefore, to gain the greatest influence and understand your audience most completely, it is vital to accurately interpret data and be aware of the potential for cognitive biases.
Originally reported by Martech: https://martech.org/how-cognitive-biases-prevent-you-from-connecting-with-your-audience/
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