Tag: Psychology

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Social media advertising and marketing using psychology.

The growing popularity of social networking sites (SNS) around the world has led all types of firms, people and researchers to investigate this worldwide phenomenon. SNS are virtual communities that allow people to interact, connect with each other by making profiles and sharing and uploading photos; from friends, relatives to acquaintances, everyone is living in this virtual world. They market themselves, establish and maintain social connections with others, and articulate their own social networks practically all the things we do in the real world. Hence, incorporating psychology, the study of human behaviors, into social media is now the present and future of marketing and advertising. Learning and improving these social media platforms in every way possible for more user interaction has become a driving goal for most SNS. Its popularity has encouraged researchers to analyze and observe the correlation of activity performed on SNS with user behavior, the different ways people interact with social networking sites, in more depth which has led to knowing more about human behavior.

The world is changing at an exponential pace. With new innovations, diversifying cultures, crossing boundaries that never seemed possible before and competing with people all over the world every second of the day is a part of daily life. People engage in technology more than they engage in personal bonding meaning people are spending more time online than offline. It is changing our current social structure in ways that is affecting all the other work that needs more attention leaving us little to no room for other activity that really matter.

This phenomenon affects all the people in the world, time spent online and the offline activities it replaces vary significantly based on age, income, and other demographics. Not surprisingly, younger people spend more recreational time online, accounting for a higher percentage of their overall leisure time. Using the term ‘marketing psychology’, firms have created systems and software that keep users hooked to SNS for longer periods of time to they can advertise and sell products. As seen on the chart below, the numbers are higher for the age group15-17 and this occurrence is new to all of us since this problem never existed twenty years ago.

Behavioral psychology is an approach in psychology which studies observable behavior, emphasizing the role that conditioning (it is a theory that the response to an object or stimulus by a person or animal can be modified by learning) plays in influencing a person’s thoughts and actions. This theory claims that all human behaviors are either reflexes or produced by a response to certain stimuli in the environment or a consequence of that individual’s history and motivation. Similarly, the Stimulus-Response Theory states that any form of conditioning can be paired with a specific stimulus to get a particular response. This theory come to be the principle theory behind how SNS create a kind of anchor on our brains that makes us filled with anticipation when we receive notification that is completely useless and irrelevant.

The importance and impact of social media on any business’s overall marketing strategy is very obvious today. Being on social media is beneficial for brands and businesses and among those benefits, the level of engagement they receive from the consumers on a daily basis is even more valuable. Brand managers often seek two types of marketing communication: interactive digital advertising and virtual brand communities. The former exposes social media users to brand-related messages; the latter encourage them to engage in brand-centered social relations. However, such social media marketing trends also raise concerns about how to optimize the effects of marketing communication in the context of online social networking. Social media engagement comes in many forms of click-activated reactions such as likes, comments, shares on Facebook or retweets on Twitter or advertisements on websites from Google. Social media affects largely to social networking among users, since marketing communication approaches in such user-centered social networking contexts reflect the views of marketing experts. The most fundamental communication approach focuses on the media features of social networking, such as social connections transforming into personal relations for business communication. Hence, social media provides a suitable platform for worldwide advertising and marketing and electronic word of mouth. Recent studies show that experience with social networking sites influences user perceptions and responses to online shopping and advertising.

Marketing is the process of creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging something that has a value to consumers, clients, partners, and businesses at large. At its very core, marketing is psychological. Whereas, advertising and selling implement techniques to get people to give you cash for your products or services. Marketing has little to do with getting consumers to purchase from you and more to do with developing an interest, cultivating a demand for the products and services you offer and about creating relations that are beneficial for both parties which requires social negotiation skills.

             Source: TheNewYorkTimes.com

Technology is at its peak and exponentially growing as predicted, however, every single person in the world still has not adopted to the online epidemic. In the real world, technology is only available to the few who are lucky enough to afford it.  

This topic is not just about getting better at advertising or marketing a product but to better understand the target consumers and to better determine the reason and purpose for why they buy what they buy and help businesses become more personalized in the field of marketing a product easily.

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