Applied psychology is something that any business owner should be familiar with. It has to do with analyzing the way that people think and feel and how that impacts their choices and actions. This sounds complicated, but it is usually fairly simple to pin down. Still, it takes time and work to analyze the potential market and then make decisions based on your findings.
You need to learn more about the people who you want to sell your products or services to, you need to consider what that means about those consumers in a practical sense, and then you need to change your products and marketing to match what those people already want.
Altering Your Products
This can be applied in two main ways. First of all, you might want to make changes to your products themselves so that they connect with your target audience. Perhaps you are selling mobile phones, and you know that young people tend to buy a lot of these devices. Older people will as well, but your main target group consists of young people. When you look at the way that they think and feel, you will find that they often connect emotionally with things that appear beautiful or impressive on the outside. They are drawn in by trends and advancements.
This means that your phones need to be stunning in their design. A lot of people are probably going to buy them before they even test them out, deciding that the way that they look is more important than their functionality. They will be drawn in by a sleek case and a touch screen display with a high amount of pixels. If your phones were designed to be very functional but they are not aesthetically pleasing, you might make far fewer sales than you want because you missed out on this target group.
Altering Your Ad Campaign
Another way that any business owner can use applied psychology is to change the ad campaign to match. Again, pretend you are selling phones to young people. You have to think about the things that they like, the things that draw their attention. One thing that often falls into this category is music. Another is art. If you create a television commercial with a trendy pop song that has a neat artistic slant, it will get these people to watch, and you can then sell a lot of phones even if the commercial does not really tell them much about what the phone does. They will not respond as well to a commercial that is dry and boring, even if it lists a lot more details.
You also want to think about this when deciding where you are going to place your ads. Where do these people go most often, where they might see print ads? What television shows do they watch and what channels should you target? When do they watch television: At night or in the middle of the day? If you understand the target audience and you know about their lives and their habits, you can get your ads in front of them effectively.
Starting with Understanding
On the whole, it is a good idea to spend a lot of time getting to understand your target audience before you ever make your product, release it, or create a single ad. You want to do this when you are still in the planning stages for all of these things. This way, every single business decision that you ever make, from the beginning to the end, can be aimed at helping you get the most sales.
About the Author: Sarah Daren is a writer who creates informative articles relating to the field of health. In this article, she describes the importance of understanding the behaviors of a target audience and aims to encourage further study with a Masters Degree in Applied Psychology Online.
Photo credit: Mr. Flibble
