Leverage "Herd Mentality" Marketing

Wait. I thought it is Viral Marketing.

Okay fine, if that sounds better and pleases you more.

Let us pause for a moment and try to understand what is marketing all about. It is all about influencing the thoughts of your audience, be it their explicitly expressed intent or a latent one. And this ability to influence and persuade is what marketing strives to tame. A powerful principle of persuasion is the idea that ‘Everyone else is doing it’. Marketers tap on to our innate fear of exclusion and the power of conformity when they use catch lines such as "8 out of 10 women using this shampoo reported less breakage or damaged hair" causing the female viewers to think if 8 women found it helpful - it would be good and there is no harm trying. Ads by Colgate and many similar advertisers have lines such as "4 out of 5 dentists recommend..". Lines as this not only causes generic audience to trust the ad more, but also forces the doctors to check out the product and conform to it and possibly recommend.

Everyone else is doing it. Are you?

Let us take it a step further. What if I want to implement this into marketing an ad for the product rather than the product itself. For example, my ultimate objective is to sell soap or shampoo or whatever. As a marketer, I create an ad which does not sell the ad but speaks a related story with a greater emotional appeal. As expected, the ad rhymes well with my audience. If I want to make the ad "viral", I might do something like this ad below.

The line "Viewed nearly 9 Million Times in 4 days" is a very powerful statement which demands instant conformity by anyone who views this ad to click the link and view the actual video.

Robert Cialdini, author of the book “Influence,” mentions that animals form herds and birds flock together, bees swarm together and mostly everyone around us subconsciously observe folks similar to ourselves and behave similarly in similar situations. It is like a shortcut to deciding what to do in any particular situation, especially when you want to continue being a part of the group. As marketers, we need to understand that we are trying to influence a group or herd rather than just individuals like Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The quicker we realize we are trying to entice a herd & thus, leverage Herd Mentality Marketing, the better.

Understanding what is relevant to your audience is important. Knowledge of what inspires them is important as well. But what is more important is the knowledge of what inspires their peers, rather than just your audience. As marketers, you might already be doing this. Let us take a look at how more effective campaigns can be created using the power of conformity. 

1. Enhance Exclusivity
When you buy a new car, have you noticed, suddenly you start seeing more of the same car on the road? Or when you buy a new phone, you start looking for people who have the same phone? It is because inherently, we are searching for reassurance - Reassurance that our purchase decision was correct and the reason we assure ourselves with is - Not all of these people can go wrong. It is perfectly natural.

As marketers, the first thing to do is to build an "Exclusive" community for your product or service and let your new customers or prospective customers  interact and share experiences. While you are certainly leveraging "Testimonial marketing", one other thing which can help in greater persuasion is creation of a common platform to engage with your prospective customers who are on the edge; multiplying the chances of them transitioning into paying customers. Ensuring transparency and interaction between members of the community, ability to rate ideas in the forum and multiple other things can help in greatly moulding the buyer behaviour and intent. 

2. Announce the New "Norms"
At times, marketers would not know what the "norms" of an industry are, what would appeal to the industry. This mostly when the product is a new one and does not have any competitors. Even though herd mentality exists here as well, in this case, the marketer has the responsibility to identify the existing related norms and then announce the new norms.

Let us take the example of Boroline Suthol. Suthol is an antiseptic skin liquid which is a remedy for skin rashes, itches and prickly heat. The market is dominated by talcum powders which catered to these skin irritations. And these products have been there since well over 50 years. When you are creating something which is new and very different and solves the problem more effectively, you need to create content/ ads which cater to breaking the herd mentality mould. Thus, the ad above where a black and white strip shows 1980s and colored one shows today - the 'Today's mom' in the ad uses Suthol . The ad clearly understands the emotions of mothers and attempts to break the herd mentality by bringing in a new dimension and helps define new norms - Being liquid, Suthol penetrates deeper within the skin, thus protects you better than powder. 

3. Tuned Messaging
Let us imagine you are running an online text ad or display ad campaign with the ad line - 'Experienced in working with hundreds of Pharma companies' vs '80% of Pharma companies in North America choose to work with us', it does not take a genius to say which ad would be performing better. 

Testimonials on the website are nothing but a very basic way of putting recommendations and building credibility for your business. The objective is actually to create herd mentality. 'I am XYZ and I belong to shipping domain and I was successful because these guys helped me...' is the explicit part of the sentence. The implicit part is 'since you (reader) are also based in the same region as me, same industry as me and we have so many similarities.. you also hire them and you will get success'. Understanding of the effect of testimonial on prospective customer mindset can help marketers request recommendations or feedback accordingly.

A fundamental shift in the way content is written on the website also can impact how visitors to your website perceive you as. Rather than saying - we have rich expertise and experience in doing XYZ, if we rephrase that and say - Leading enterprises as yours, rely on our XYZ expertise and experience, we not only have shifted focus from 'we' to 'you' but also have added the visitor into an invisible exclusive group so that he behaves as per the norms of that group. The norm is leading businesses rely on our xyz expertise.. For the visitor to keep being a part of the so called 'herd', he has to then comply to the norms of the herd - working with you.

Market leaders strive to retain their position by creating ads which promote herd mentality, while upstarts which disrupt the marketplace aim to break the mould of herd mentality. However, irrespective of where you work, as a marketer, you derive much higher powers and insights when you are able to discover and specifically identify the force of 'herd mentality' in your domain.

When it comes to new age marketing, don’t forget the herd mentality and its ability to influence. 

What do you think? Have you leveraged 'herd mentality' to promote products, services or advertisements of products or services?

Cheers
Subhendu