In today’s digital age, understanding how social media influences consumer purchase decisions is crucial for marketers. Our latest blog explores this impact and looks at how you can leverage social media psychology for success.

Despite the varied nature of social media users, companies invest considerable resources in understanding the digital pathways that lead to a purchase. And rightly so. By tapping into the emotions and social interactions that drive online behaviors, businesses can connect with potential customers on a deeper level and unlock new opportunities for engagement and sales.

However, success requires navigating both digital psychology and social media analytics – individual preferences, community influences, diverse user behaviours and more. And while this may seem daunting, it is essential if businesses are to truly understand the social media pathways that lead to purchases. 

So what are the psychological factors influenced by social media?

Social media shapes our buying decisions through key psychological factors, including:

Long-term vs. Short-term Engagement

On social media, consumers exhibit two distinct mindsets: one seeking long-term value and connections, and the other desiring immediate engagement and gratification. Balancing content and interactions to cater to both can enhance the consumer journey from casual browsing to decisive action.

Fundamental Needs Within Digital Communities

Three fundamental needs drive us: wealth, health, and relationships. On social media, these translate into a quest for financial advice, wellness tips, and community belonging. Tailoring your content to address these core desires can significantly boost your appeal and relevance.

From Broad Markets to Niches on Social Platforms

Just as in traditional markets, social media audiences’ segment into niches with specific interests. Identifying and targeting these niches allows you to craft more personalised and effective marketing strategies.

Learning and Engagement Through Social Media

The journey to a purchase on social media follows a path of discovery, consideration, and action. Content that educates, engages, and encourages trial can transform passive observers into active participants and, eventually, into buyers.

Emotional Connections and Social Proof

Emotions and social validation play pivotal roles in purchase decisions on social media. Stories that resonate emotionally and content that showcases community endorsement can significantly influence buying behaviour.

The Power of Social Narratives

Crafting compelling stories that connect with your audience on a personal level can bridge the gap between interest and purchase. These narratives should highlight relatable experiences, challenges overcome, and the journey towards achieving goals, making your brand more relatable and trustworthy.

Scarcity and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

Leveraging the psychological principles of scarcity and the fear of missing out can encourage quicker decision-making. Highlighting limited time offers and exclusive deals on social media can create a sense of urgency among your audience.

The Bandwagon Effect

Social media amplifies the bandwagon effect, where people are influenced by the actions of others. Showcasing widespread acceptance and popularity of your products through user-generated content, reviews, and endorsements can sway potential buyers to join in.

Leveraging social media psychology for success

Understanding the psychology of social media users offers valuable insights into what drives consumer purchase decisions, and by undertaking a thorough review of your own data and analytics you can improve marketing strategies, connect more effectively to your audience and influence their purchasing behaviour. Below are a range of approaches that can adopted to help leverage success:

Analyse Audience Psychology:

Invest in social media analytics tools to understand the emotional and psychological triggers of your target audience. This helps tailor your content and campaigns to better meet their needs and desires.

Segment Your Audience:

Identify and focus on specific niches within your broader market. Use targeted advertising and tailored content to speak directly to these groups, enhancing relevance and engagement.

Develop Emotional Content:

Create content that emotionally resonates with your audience, using storytelling that highlights relatable experiences and the journey of overcoming challenges. This can build a deeper connection and trust towards your brand.

Utilise Social Proof:

Regularly share user-generated content, customer testimonials, and expert endorsements to leverage social proof. This helps build credibility and can influence potential buyers by showing the popularity and reliability of your products and services.

Promote Exclusive Offers:

Use scarcity tactics and time-sensitive deals to create urgency. Highlight these promotions prominently on your social media channels to tap into the fear of missing out (FOMO) among your audience.

Take a Long and Short-term Approach:

Balance your content to cater to those looking for immediate gratification as well as those seeking long-term value. This could mean mixing quick tips and promotions with in-depth guides or community discussions.

Focus on Fundamental Needs:

Tailor your content to address the fundamental needs of wealth, health, and relationships. For instance, financial brands could offer money-saving tips, wellness brands could provide health advice, and community-oriented brands could facilitate discussions and connections.

Encourage Interaction and Learning:

Design your content to educate and engage. Interactive posts, live videos, webinars, and Q&A sessions can help transform passive followers into active participants and buyers.

Craft Compelling Narratives:

Develop stories that not only highlight product and service benefits but also weave in elements of personal achievement or improvement that your audience can aspire to.

Monitor and Adapt Based on Feedback:

Keep an eye on how your audience reacts to different types of posts and campaigns. Use this feedback to continuously adapt and improve your strategies.

Leverage Bandwagon Effects:

Showcase the widespread acceptance and popularity of your products. This could be through sharing metrics of how many people have bought a product, “most popular” lists, or visual content featuring multiple customers using your product.

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At Fetch, we specialise in harnessing the power of social media psychology to craft marketing strategies that resonate with your audience and positively impact consumer purchase decisions. Contact us to explore how we can elevate your social media presence and drive sales.

The post The role of social media in consumer purchase decisions appeared first on Fetch Social Media.

One of the things we love about video, is how much easier it is to get and maintain your viewer’s attention. It makes sense. After all, when you’re watching a video, you get to sit back, relax, and consume the information passively, while reading needs work.

And the more customers who engage with your content, especially product­ related content, the more sales opportunities you are likely to get. However, just because video makes it easier to get your target customers to pay attention, doesn’t mean all video content is equal!

Despite popular belief, it is possible to create a video that LOWERS your conversion rate.

Fortunately, creating a persuasive and engaging script is not that complex. Writing copy that sells is not a creative act so much as it is mechanical process, adhering to formulas, and assembling essential component parts within a reliable framework. You don’t need to be a literature nerd or poet to craft compelling copy, so long as you follow the process and put in the time to do it right.

From a technical standpoint (grammar, sentence structure, etc), if you can write a coherent letter to a friend, then you have the skills needed to write effective copy. Sure, there are some minor differences between copywriting for text and scriptwriting for video, but most of the core principles and formulas are the same:

• Write like you talk
• Pretend you’re talking to one person
• Focus on clarity and simplicity in your language
• Use lots of transitional words and phrases
• Take your prospect on an emotional journey
• Avoid tangents and “fluffy copy” that doesn’t move the prospect towards a buying decision
• and more…

But as mentioned earlier, maintaining attention with video is even easier than with text, so you don’t need to be a brilliant wordsmith to write effective scripts, just follow our most used copy framework so long as you follow the process outlined in this guide: Problem – Agitate – Solution.

Here’s how it works.

• Problem: Highlight a painful problem your viewers are facing
• Agitate: Identify the underlying pain behind the problem and how it makes your viewers feel
• Solution: Here’s how you solve the painful

Video script step 1: Frame the problem 

With this video script approach you begin by addressing an extremely painful problem that’s shared by your target audience.

Think about it like this, if someone starts talking about something you’re going through right now, you’re much more likely to sit up and pay attention, right? Of course you are! So you use the problem as a cue to your viewers that this video is relevant to them. By bringing it up immediately, you’ve effectively “hooked” your viewer and earned more of their attention.

When choosing your problem, make sure it’s the biggest, most painful, most ubiquitous problem that the video you’re creating (or your product) solves.

The process is a little different depending on the type of video script you’re creating. If you’re creating a video about your product or a feature of that product, then the problem you identify at the very beginning of your video should be the problem your product solves.

This allows you to establish contrast and create an emotional journey by starting with a painful problem and ending with a solution to that problem. For example, imagine you sell golf training videos to business executives. The obvious problem you’re solving is being bad at golf, but that’s not quite deep enough to resonate emotionally.

So instead of focusing on the obvious problem, focus on the “hidden problem” beneath the problem. If your target customers are business executives, then you know that most of them are very competitive. With that fact in mind, the “hidden problem” is that your customers are embarrassed when they play with their friends and can’t keep up.

Here are a couple of video script opening statements (hooks) using each of those approaches:

Obvious Problem: “Do you want to improve your golf game?…”

Hidden Problem: “Do you avoid playing golf with your friends because you’re embarrassed by how much better they are?…”

The first approach isn’t terrible…it immediately tells you what the video is about and, if you want to improve your golf game, you may sit up and pay attention. However, it doesn’t tap into your emotions and make you feel the problem.

Hopefully you can see why the second approach is much better. It enters the conversation that’s already going on in your prospect’s mind ­­ namely, that they don’t do something they would probably enjoy (playing golf with their friends) because they’re embarrassed. They’re missing out!

On the other hand, if you’re sharing a marketing video to generate leads, identify the problem that the information in your video can help your viewers solve. For example, if you create accounting software, you may want to create a video teaching your audience how to store all their receipts and expenses using Evernote.

This topic is helpful, sharable, and promises a very specific benefit. That makes it perfect for generating leads and building trust with your subscribers. If that’s the topic you select, then the problem your video script is solving would be the hassle of storing and sorting all of your receipts come tax season.

But once again, that’s the obvious problem. We’re looking to go slightly deeper so we can tap into the psychology of our viewers. In this case, the hidden problem your video script is seeking to solve is that when you are working on taxes, you don’t get to do the things you really want to do (spend time with family, watch sports, build your business, etc.).

The deeper problem will vary based on the type of person you’re targeting. Your videos should pinpoint a specific problem AND a specific audience. The more niche your audience, the more accurate and direct you can be at identifying problems, but the smaller your addressable audience is.

This requires some balance, but I would always recommend being “too niche” versus being “too generic.” Nobody buys “generic” unless your product is a low­ cost commodity, like peanut butter or something.

Step 2: Agitate the problem 

Once you’ve addressed the painful problem your product or content solves for, the next step is agitating the problem until your viewers can feel the pain from your problem. Don’t overthink this section ­­ if you choose your words carefully and look for the “hidden problem,” it shouldn’t take long to make your viewers feel the pain.

The purpose of conjuring up the pain felt by your viewers is to create contrast. Every emotion has an opposite, so your goal here is to make your viewers feel the pain, so that when you offer up relief, it feels more valuable.

Remember: people act on the basis of emotion and post­ rationalise with the facts. You need to give them both, but without the emotional underpinning, you will find it difficult to get your viewers to take action. Using the same example as in Step 1, here’s what agitating the problem can look like in a video script:

Do you avoid playing golf with your friends because you’re embarrassed by how much better they are?
And what about the people playing behind you?
Do you rush trying to keep up, or let them skip you and your friends…?
Unlike other sports, there are no “naturals” in golf. Nobody plays well when they’re first getting started…

 As with the problem, the agitation should be relevant to the type of person you’re targeting.

In the case of the example above, we’re still targeting business executives. With that in mind, we focused our agitation language around competition and etiquette, without discouraging them from continuing to try.

So if you break down the two new sentences, the first seeks to agitate the problem further, while the second protects the viewer’s ego and addresses the tendency of high achieving people to give up on things they aren’t naturally good at. Be deliberate, make your viewers feel the problem you’re providing a solution for, and handle objections wherever it makes the most sense in the context of your script.

Step 3: Promise a solution

Now that you’ve stated and agitated the problem, the next step is to promise your viewers a solution. In an ideal scenario, you can get to this solution statement within the first 30 seconds of your video, when most of your viewers are still paying attention. This should be the easiest part of your video script formula: simply tell your viewers that you’re going to solve the problem and how.

Using the same example as in Steps 1 and 2, here’s what that may look like:

Do you avoid playing golf with your friends because you’re embarrassed by how much better they are?
And what about the people playing behind you?
Do you rush trying to keep up, or let them skip you and your friends…?
Unlike other sports, there are no “naturals” in golf. Nobody plays well when they’re first getting started…
But it’s possible to dramatically shorten your learning curve by focusing on three core skills: swing mechanics, putting mechanics, and reading the green.
These are the 20% of golf skills that get you 80% of your results. So if you commit to following the steps I’m going to show you in this video, soon your friends will be asking YOU for golf tips!

There are a couple things I want to point out here. First, notice how this transitioned into a promise ­­ I flowed into it conversationally.

This is very important when writing video scripts because anything abrupt will make your viewers stumble…and when they become aware of the fact that they’re watching your video, you create a natural opportunity for them to decide to stop. Don’t give it to them!

Make your scripts flow smoothly and use lots of transitions, even the ones that make your English teacher cringe, such as starting your sentences with “and” or “but.” Trust us, you’ll maintain your viewer’s attention much better if everything flows seamlessly from one idea to the next.

Next, notice how I tied the promise back to the problem. The problem was being embarrassed that your friends are better, but the solution promises that your friends will be asking you for tips. This brings the viewer full ­circle and offers resolution to the specific, underlying pain you identified in your hook.

Step 4: Deliver the goods

Now that you’ve got your viewers on the hook, it’s time to reel them in.

If you’re using this video script approach for an educational video, then deliver the value you promised and be sure to cover it adequately so you can fulfil your promise. However, if you’re using this template for a promotional video, the next step is to explain how your product will fulfil the promise you’ve made.

At this point you’re simply providing the details and asking your viewers to take action. In many cases, this section represents the bulk of your script, but there’s no specific formula here ­­ simply communicate the information your viewers need to take action and do it quickly and with as much clarity as possible.

Remember: never use a big word when a smaller word will do and keep your script conversational and flowing smoothly. If you’re promoting a product, keep your focus on the benefits, not the features.

And whether you’re making a promotional or educational video, always include a call­ to ­action that moves your viewers another step down the buying pathway. If your video is promotional, ask them to click for another piece of information. If your video is educational, give your viewers an opportunity to join your email list by offering something of value in the form of a lead magnet.

Need help with your video script content and more, find out how our services can grow your brand.

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