In the marketing industry, there is a tendency to go flashy, bright and bold - leaning on influence and grandeur to stand out in a crowded marketplace. However, instead of being lured in by fads, looking to human behaviour is one of the best ways to strike the right chord that resonates with your ideal customers.

Drawing on real-world examples from Apple, Philips, Brewdog, Netflix and more, in this blog we’ll explore our steps to understanding and using behavioural science in your marketing to inspire action among your customers:

What is behavioural science?
How can we use behavioural science in marketing?
Make it easy to use your products and services
Make using your products a social experience
Make it attractive to use your products and services
Make using your products and services time-sensitive
Understand the importance of a cue
Take action

What is behavioural science?

Behavioural science centres around understanding why people do what they do, often unknowingly. It’s the bridge between natural science and social science, applying the tools from natural science to understand social and economic behaviour.

It’s clear that a better understanding of what drives our decisions can affect real change.

Behavioural science also provides the gateway to better understanding customers and delivering the right messages in the right way.

How can we use behavioural science in marketing?

I was lucky enough to recently attend a behavioural science workshop with The Choice Factory author Richard Shotton.

Over two days, we delved into the complexities of human behaviour and studies from a wide range of industries.

He called upon the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team’s (affectionately known as the Nudge Unit)’s EAST Framework, to address different tactics and why they’re effective. The EAST framework stands for:

Easy
Attractive
Social
Timely

Making something easy plays into human behaviour, and reduces the ‘hassle factor’ of any service.

Making it attractive focuses on getting the right attention from your audience.

Making it social is about using peers to show how others may emulate this behaviour.

Making it timely capitalises on ideal times in life or in a day which may have beneficial results to change behaviour.

All of the above helps break down how to choose the right technique, to get the desired results out of your audience.

This has practical applications for any field, but I’ll be particularly looking at healthcare applications, government, finance, and the pharmaceutical industry (with a bit of champagne thrown in there - why not!).

Enjoy the bevvy of helpful case studies below:

Make behavioural change easy

When marketing goods or services, it’s critical to take any impediments out of the process. We know this of website use – the fewer clicks to purchase, the better – but it’s true of so much more.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman uses a driving analogy to describe behaviour change.

He argues that there are two ways to influence behaviour: you can push on the accelerator (boost motivation) or remove the handbrake (remove small barriers).

Kahneman argues the most effective way of changing behaviour is often removing the handbrake.

So, when looking at your marketing or sales process, what can be changed to make the process simpler for your audience?

Streaming services

We see great examples of this with streaming services like Netflix applying the ‘ease principle’ with their ‘autoplay’ function.

By automatically playing the next episode, it removes barriers to watching and encourages viewers to continue on their binge spree (although who doesn’t love that judgey message of ‘are you still watching’ when it’s been hours since touching the remote),

Auto enrolment

There was a simple experiment conducted in 2017 by Bergman and Rogers, looking into parents signing up for educational support to determine which had the best uptake. Their study randomly assigned parents into one of three conditions:

1. Standard group - parents were sent a text saying they could sign-up for the support service via a website delivered by text.
2. Simplified group - parents were sent a text stating they could sign-up if they replied “Start”
3. Automatically enrolled group - parents were sent a text saying they’d been automatically enrolled but that they could opt out by texting “Stop”

Sign-up rates were as follows:

Standard group: 1%
Simplified group: 8%
Automatic enrolment: 96%

That’s a staggering difference. The researchers, Bergman and Rogers, went on to ask 130 teachers to estimate the sign-up rates. Their guesses were wildly wrong. The teachers estimated sign-up rates of 39%, 46% and 66% for options 1, 2 and 3, respectively, which was a gross miscalculation.

As in so many other situations, the importance of the programme’s appeal was over-estimated and the ease of signing up was under-estimated. Just because you’re offering a great product or service, don’t overestimate your potential client’s effort to obtain it. Take the effort out for the end user.

Pensions

Another interesting example was when the government shifted the default on pensions. The Nudge Unit studied enrolment rates and after 6 months there was a 60%- 80% increase on enrolment rates. Opting in vs opting out made a huge difference when the pain point of opting in was taken away. And now, vast numbers will have savings in their old age.

Ordering champagne

One of my favourite examples is by Bob Bob Ricard Soho (right).

The restaurant sells markedly more champagne than any other restaurant in the UK.

How do they do this? By making it easy (of course!). They’ve made ordering champagne even easier than normal: every table has a champagne button to push, which is both fun and effortless… dangerously so!

Use social proof in behavioural science

The most powerful tool in the behavioural science toolbox appears to be social proof. We are hugely influenced by others around us, especially when making complex decisions.

Now this is true of people we know, as well as strangers in a crowd. However, the closer in proximity to your life, the more it resonates.

So if you’re trying to make a message land with people in London, quoting Londoners is good; but specify the borough, say Croydon, even better! Think of BrewDog: ‘Croydon’s favourite beer’ (or whatever BrewDog you’re in). Go into bookstores and you’ll often find a ‘local favourites’ shelf of novels.

Environmental public sector

We all remember when the plastic bag tax was brought in. At first it seemed inconceivable that we would give up the convenience of single-use bags. However, now you feel guilty and embarrassed if you have to ask the shopkeeper for a bag.

The £0.10 charge is just inconvenient enough, but really, it’s not about the cost.
Single-use bag use has gone down to about 20% use across the UK. It certainly worked on me!
We also see this from the public sector in recent years, with the introduction of green number plates for eco cars.

By introducing the green plates, they’re easily identifiable to normal people (not just people who know cars). You want to be in this club.

Hoteliers using social proof vs environmental impact

There’s a famous experiment by Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University, to encourage towel reuse in hotel rooms. He created three messages. The first, his control message, stated the environmental benefits of reusing their towels. This had successful results among 35% of visitors.

The second message included social proof messaging, stating that most people re-used their towels (44% results).

A 9% uplift without doing much.

The last message stated that most guests in this particular room had reused their towels. This was the most successful message – 49% of people reused their towels.

What I find very powerful, is when Cialdini contacted students to see which would be most persuasive to them, most thought the environmental messaging was seen to be more persuasive. This is a warning for market research.

It’s often better to observe than ask, as people are often not conscious of their behaviours.

Product design

From the outset, Apple has been unrivalled at tapping into behavioural science techniques. Apple launched iPod in 2001. They couldn’t yet claim market leadership and popularity. However, other market leaders at the time grew complacent, allowing their position to become invisible. MP3 hardware was in consumer pockets as they listened. Indistinguishable black headphones were all you could see.

Apple set themselves apart with distinctive white ear buds. They immediately stood out in the market, making them look like market leaders. People with white headphones were wearing them proudly like a status symbol - a simple and creative stroke of genius from Apple.

Healthcare industry

Australia had a problem: GPs were handing out antibiotics too readily to patients. So, British and Australian insights teams set off to persuade GPs to stop handing out antibiotics too quickly. 6,600 GPs were sent a letter (Australian GPs identified as being in the top 30% for antibiotic prescription rates in the region). There were four versions of these letters in distribution, sent from Australia’s Chief Medical Officer.

When sent the simple ‘you’re over-prescribing’ letter, prescription rates dropped by 2%. However, when GPs were directly compared to their peers, the rate dropped hugely (12% for social proof example).

Here was the text found in the most successful letter:

“You prescribe more antibiotics than 85 per cent of prescribers in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) region”. The letter was paired with a graph, visually comparing the GPs to their peers, clearly illustrating the problem and driving the point home.

National parks

If you’re addressing a negative behaviour, take note; it’s all in how you phrase it!

This is best exemplified by the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. The unique park contains 218-million-year-old foliage that was buried in ash and preserved, which created a petrified forest of logs. To combat the increasing problem of people taking crystallised trophies home with them, the park warns visitors not to steal from the natural habitat.

The following message was displayed throughout the site:

“Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of fourteen tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time.”

Surprisingly, psychologist Robert Cialdini and colleagues thought this messaging would lead to more people stealing, not reduce it. Accidentally, the park was actually highlighting that it’s normal to steal from the park, so why not participate.

This hypothesis was tested using three routes in the national park. One was left without signage, as a control.

The first sign read: “Please don’t remove the petrified wood chips.” Result: fewer than 2% of the wood chips were stolen.

When signs read, “Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood from the park, changing the state of the petrified forest," 8% were taken - a fourfold increase.

There was only 2.9% taken with no signage at all, so the messaging was actually encouraging criminal behaviour.

Interestingly, normalising bad behaviour encourages more people to take part. Be careful not to heighten negative social behaviour when you’re crafting your messaging.

This is true of NHS campaigns as well. Simply mentioning the word hospital (e.g. 70% of people go to the hospital when they could have dialled 111 instead) can have an adverse effect, resulting in increased trips to hospitals.

You have been warned!

Make your messaging appeal to customers

How do we make our message more attractive and appealing to the end user? This can apply to both visual elements and the messaging itself.

We know it’s hard to capture attention in a wildly cluttered environment. The oldest study addressing this was coined the Von Restorff effect. Lists of three-digit letters or numbers were given to the participants, as found here:

VEM, AKE, 164, MNH, KLI, PLO.

People were asked to recall as much as they could.

It was overwhelmingly clear that when provided with lists of letters, it’s the short series of numbers they remember, and vice versa if the three letters were put amidst a series of numbers. Humans notice what is distinctive. Being different and distinctive pays off. Here’s a brilliant example from the death metal music genre.

Here, death metal’s Party Cannon stands out on the event poster (right):

More recently there’s a Rob Mayhew sketch highlighting how all digital marketing conferences look like rave posters, so if you’re in that world, take note! By fitting in, you’re not doing yourself or your brand any favours.

How to make your marketing memorable

Language tends to be more motivating when it is concrete and personal. Here, we look to Ian Begg from the University of Western Ontario. In 1972 he read 25 participants a series of phrases and they were asked to remember as many as possible.

Some phrases were concrete, like “white horse” or “square door”, whereas others were abstract, like “basic theory” or “impossible amount”. The results were clear; people were more than 3x as likely to remember the concrete terms then the abstract ones. It appears we need something sticky and visual to hold on to.

This is perfectly illustrated again by Apple, when releasing the iPod vs the competition at the time:

Apple - Say hello to iPod. 1,000 songs. In your pocket vs MP3 in Full Motion by Philips.

Which message speaks more to you?

Make your marketing messaging timely

Come January first every year, we will be inundated by the ‘new year, new you’ messaging. As predictable as it is, there is certainly something effective about it - the new year is the perfect time to break habits and start something new. And there are more triggers to be aware of to capture your ideal audience, whether it be ideal times of day, year or life to influence significant changes.

How (and when) to disrupt customer habits

Major life changes such as getting married or moving house create a perfect time to disrupt habits and encourage people to try new things. Habits are disrupted for a short window of time after they undergo a life events.

In a 2017 UK study conducted by Richard Shotton, 2,370 nationally representative participants were asked two significant questions. First, the participants were asked to indicate whether they had undergone one of six life-events in the last 12 months (marriage, baby, etc.).
Secondly, after a few filler questions were asked to throw them off, they were asked whether they had tried any new brands in one of eight categories over the last year. The categories included lager, coffee shops, make-up, broadband and cars, among others. Within every product category, more people had switched brands in the year after they had undergone a life event.
Among those who hadn’t had a life change, 8% had switched brands. Among those whose lives had recently changed, 21% had switched brands.

This highlights two things. Firstly, we are creatures of habit. Secondly, when our environmental norm has been destabilised, there’s an opportunity to change our habits and expand our horizons.

The importance of cues, rewards and repetition in your marketing

Most theories of successful habit formation have three components: a cue, a reward and *lots* of repetition.

At the turn of the 20th century, only 7% of Americans had a tube of toothpaste in their medicine cabinets. Enter a product, Pepsodent, and advertiser extraordinaire, Claude C. Hopkins. A decade after Hopkins’s ad campaign went nationwide, the number of Americans with toothpaste had jumped to 65%. Soon everyone wanted a “Pepsodent smile”. This was done by creating a trigger for daily use. “Just run your tongue across your teeth”, or “you’ll feel a film”.

Hopkins’ marketing advice:

“First, find a simple and obvious cue. Second, clearly define the rewards.”

You can see the same with Nationwide, using implementation intentions with ‘payday = save day’. The trigger encourages you to save your money when you have it.

This timely technique was used when the UK Government collaborated with RKCR/Y&R to run a ‘Fire Kills’ campaign, which utilised implementation intentions. You only need to check your smoke alarms twice a year, so they gave people a trigger – when the clocks changed. Over the course of the campaign, deaths from fires in homes fell by 41 people.

Uncertain rewards can be another powerful tool. It feels fantastic to win something, however small, plus this has the advantage of delighting customers.

You’ll see this first hand if you dine at Dishoom restaurant.

At the end of your meal, diners can roll a bronze dice, called the Matka. If they roll a six, their meal is free.

This is mathematically equivalent to a 16.7% discount but it feels wildly more satisfying on an emotional level - and memorable too!

How can you use behavioural science to make your marketing more effective?

Now that you’re full of ideas, I hope you go forth and bring more behavioural science into your campaigns! Remember to keep things easy, attractive, social and timely.

These ideas are, of course, just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to integrate some smart behavioural science techniques and tactics into your marketing campaigns, talk to Sookio.

Behavioural science for marketers: How to reach your ideal clients