Anyone who has ever taken a marketing course knows that a great deal of marketing involves human psychology. It doesn’t matter how great your product is, if it’s not serving or at least speaking to some strong human need, it’s unlikely to catch consumers’ attention. For this reason, generations of college business majors have been slogging through the work of Abraham Maslow, a twentieth-century psychologist who created his “Hierarchy of Needs” in 1943. The hierarchy stacks human motivations into a pyramid shape, starting with base survival needs (food, shelter) at the bottom and progressing up the layers (safety, love/belonging and esteem) all the way to “self-actualization,” the ultimate top-off of the healthy human condition.
While marketing has changed radically in the last 100 years, human beings haven’t. Print ads struggled to find the right colors, logos and images to appeal to us. Television commercials sought to portray the lifestyles that companies thought we wanted to achieve. Now that an enormous chunk of marketing takes place via digital channels, those methods are struggling to understand human motivation and appeal and how these truths apply to twenty-first century marketing. This is particularly critical when it comes to search engine marketing.
For some, the psychology of marketing goes deep into the brain, according to a recent blog post by Darin Westenskow on the Internet marketing Web site IMSOUP, and anyone engaged in search engine marketing should understand this.
“Interestingly, the brain has its own algorithms that control the way it works, so if you can get those to agree with the algorithms in search, your chances of success are that much greater,” wrote Westenskow.
A truly useful search engine optimization program will understand not only what people search for, but how and why. In other words, SEO needs less search knowledge and more human knowledge.
“To be able to conduct effective keyword research, you need to understand human behavior,” wrote Westenskow. “Ultimately, there is a person inputting a phrase into a search engine – so understanding the reasons why certain keywords are used and others are not, will lead to an understanding of exactly what people are looking for.”
The blogger notes that, for example, someone searching with the phrase “how to” is looking to educate himself or herself … not to buy. Ditto with the search phrase beginning with “why.” It’s important not to discard the “how to” and “why” searches as useless, since they are not. They help marketers understand the process consumers use when they are preparing to buy.
To be successful with SEO and get the most out of your efforts and dollars, build a picture of your target audience consumer and determine where along the search process your customer is most likely to be receptive to your message. No matter how great the message is, if it’s presented at the wrong time, it’s a wasted effort.