The main question in this post is: How do we apply human psychology in affiliate marketing?
Actually, human psychology has been a part of marketing since its very inception in one form or the other in the modern industrial world. The impulse to sell, trade, barter, however, goes much farther back in antiquity. Exchange has been a part of human civilisation and forms the backbone of what we call commerce and more broadly the economy.
At the most basic level, exchange involves two parties, primarily: a seller and a buyer. In the beginning the seller was also the primary producer. As societies became more complex, other parties inserted themselves into the process. What until now seemed a straight forward two-party seller-buyer transaction became more complex. Enter, the third party. Marketing is a more nuanced version of the third party.
Selling and buying, apart from being a fundamental economic activity, is also a profoundly psychological process — people undergo a range of human emotions while engaged in exchange. Modern marketing’s paramount achievement has been to formulate these psychological aspects of commerce into a coherent strategy.
The 5 psychological principles rehearsed in the previous post can now be engineered as follows . . .
Trust —
What’s the social proof?
In the digital age information may be the primary form of currency. However, it is a currency only if it is based on a trust system. That trust system derives from social proof — what others have said on social media (choose your favourite one). And, while there are risks involved in taking social proof on face value, people still trust others such as micro influencers because of the close relationship they have been able to build with their curated audience. The same applies for affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing platforms could not exist without the social proof which they are able to garner through their many successful subscribers some apparently millionaires themselves.
Urgency —
Without a perception of time, there would be no timetables. No schedules would be necessary or possible without this perception of time. Essentially, what every consumer wants to know is this — How long is this offer going to last? Because on the other side of the question is the vague but nevertheless palpable anxiety of being left behind, of losing out not just to others but to time itself. Thus the famous FOMO. “This deal disappears in X hours, starting now” — those words are often accompanied by a digitised stop watch — we see our lives trickling away just before our eyes. Oh, do forgive me. I didn’t mean to be so grim. This perception of time — or rather its relentless passage — is leveraged as an incentive to buy, often followed by a Call To Action (CTA) — “Click to buy.”
On the upside, what’s wrong with giving your consumers a great deal if you can afford it — while bumping up your own sales in the process — a win-win? Prices fluctuate in real time in any market — regardless of whether we keep tabs. A product or service provided with in a time frame carries a special significance for the consumer — the feeling of participating in a real transaction. Think Amazon special buys.
Reciprocity —
Although barter is an exchange of tangible objects, not all exchanges are tangible. We also exchange greetings — a very intangible ‘object.’ We exchange emotions. Take compliments, for example. These also fall into the same category of intangible goods. In fact, emotions have an economy of their own. Feeling good is a very important part of life — without it, we would loose hope and whither away. The greater system that underpins this emotional economy is an expectation . . . that if we pay compliments, we could be complimented, in return. But that’s in the future. What about now? What about immediate reward? That’s where the thanks from the other party comes in.
If this is not received immediately, then the transaction can fall through . . . no compliments in the future for you and forget about being in my will — I’ll make sure everything goes to the National Compliments Society.
What can I do you for today, Chief? —
What intangible value are you offering? Think genuine recommendation, personalised recommendations through micro influencer.
Authority —
How authentic is your knowledge?
Not all of us have the luxury of claiming a foundational event — the launch of the iPhone or Amazon — as a life experience. Most of us are not industry leaders. But has that deterred anyone from speaking on a chosen subject? So, the next question is how did they get around this initial difficulty (everyone starts somewhere)? The best suggestion for overcoming that difficulty is of course to acquire knowledge — through wide reading and research. That is the very first stage. The next stage is forming opinions — opinions that could be substantiated with that knowledge. Forming an opinion is akin to taking a position on an issue. The third stage of that process (of knowledge construction) is to express that knowledge in the form of direct quotations in your postings, articles, information sheets and so forth . . . “Johnson’s (2004) suggestion about increasing conversions in affiliate marketing is flawed/perceptive because . . . ” Notice how this technique could be applied to any field — it is as versatile as it is basic. It will come in handy in writing reports for work, school, research.
Let me give you a live demonstration right here. Supposing you’re trying to convince your audience that micro influencers are crucial to affiliate marketing — however, you feel you lack authority to make that claim, as many novices might feel. This is how you get around this problem: “Affiliate marketing cannot be imagined without micro influencers. Click here.”
Was that hard?
Empathy —
If you were the buyer what would you feel? Would you, for example, feel uncomfortable about spending money even a small amount on a project whose outcome seems uncertain at best. This is called a keen perception of risk. How can you mitigate this risk? You can can mitigate it by taking away the risk with a 100% money-back guarantee. And, that is just one example.
It is not sufficient to go through the motions of empathy but you have to feel it, too. If you are not 100% sure (and no one is), you need to provide a disclaimer, a caveat, a disclosure statement. These are not difficult things to achieve and are, in fact, required by law in the last case.
Many if not most micro influencers are so successful precisely because of their genuine empathy. What course can you take to learn and exude empathy like that? What course can you take to learn any emotion, for that matter? The answer has to be practice of course. Practicing charity or kindness, for example, would be the first step to learning them. Similarly, we could argue that practicing empathy is the first step to learning it.
The Upshot
Taking these 5 principles as your guideline and your own goals in mind, consider how you’ll achieve these tasks in your own journey as a successful affiliate marketer.
Let me come back to this issue — the issue of self-discovery that can also become a coherent plan for achieving your goals — in the next post.
Cheers.