As a marketer or a business owner, you’re probably constantly looking for marketing methods that have been proven resultful. Psychology helps us understand customers and users so that we can provide them with more relevant messages and improved solutions. One of the most significant psychological phenomena used by marketers around the world is frequency illusion. Read on to learn more about this phenomenon and find out how to take advantage of it in your marketing strategy.
What is the frequency illusion?
It’s also known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.
This phenomenon occurs when the thing you’ve just noticed, experienced or been told about suddenly crops up constantly.
Simply put, you can experience the frequency illusion when the recently learned information crop up everywhere you look. Let’s say you watched a movie yesterday, and today you saw its posters and reviews at least a few times. All of a sudden, you feel like surrounded by information about this movie. As a result, you can think that the movie gained omnipresence overnight.
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. The reason you can see so many references to the film now is that you notice them more, because of the selective attention. Additionally, confirmation bias occurs. It reassures you that the thing you learned gained popularity recently and confirm that it’s essential. Confirmation bias reflects our human nature to justify our choices and preferences. We’re naturally seeking information that is in line with our views.
The frequency illusion effect is also connected to social proof. Other consumers’ recommendations, testimonials, and positive opinions can influence your customers’ decision-making process. These two phenomena can overlap and become even more powerful. Once you notice everyone’s discussing a product or a brand, you’ll subconsciously think it’s important and worth your attention.
How to take advantage of the frequency illusion effect in marketing?
The frequency illusion phenomenon helps brands to take potential customers through the stages of the buyer’s journey. Moreover, Frequency-illusioned users, even if they won’t be actually interested in your offer, can recommend you to a friend who’s looking for products or services such as yours.
Brand awareness
Brand awareness is a first step in the marketing funnel. Customers have to aware of your brand even to consider the purchase. Nowadays, consumers can research products, compare them, and get the best deal. So before you start counting on the shopping impulses, prepare your audience for the following marketing messages and introduce your brand. Great ways for increasing brand awareness can be content marketing and influencer marketing. By sharing valuable content you can help customers and create your image as an expert. It’s a resultful idea for building trust. Later on, you can successfully promote your products.
Omnichannel marketing
Thanks to omnichannel marketing, you can reach potential customers with your messages via many platforms. It’s worth being present on several social media platforms, using content marketing, running campaigns with influencers, organizing contests, being active in social media groups, and cross-promotions to reach new consumers.
Remember. For the frequency-illusion effect to work, customers have to notice your brand. Otherwise, it will just blend with hundreds of other marketing messages, which is likely considering the marketing clutter era that we live in. Start with a powerful and noticeable copy and image to get users’ attention.
Next, choose multiple channels to reach your audience. Being present online isn’t just about selling. Nowadays, there are several ways to connect with potential customers, build a relationship, and use frequency illusion effect to increase sales eventually.
Remarketing and retargeting can be resultful strategies to make the most of the frequency illusion phenomenon.
Dynamic remarketing
At Google Ads Help, we can read that:
Remarketing allows you to show ads to people who have previously visited your website or used your mobile app.
Dynamic remarketing takes this a step further, letting you show previous visitors ads that contain products and services they viewed on your site.
With messages tailored to your audience, dynamic remarketing helps you build leads and sales by bringing previous visitors back to your site to complete what they started.
While browsing websites, visitors can get distracted and jump off to do something else, and quickly forget about your products. But, you can remind them about your offer and items they were interested in. But there’s even more in marketing.
Retargeting
Thanks to retargeting pixels embedded in your website’s code, you can reach your website visitors across social media. Nevertheless, to use retargeting across different platforms and not only directing to your website, you’ll need a special “partner in crime.”
RocketLink, besides shortening URLs, enables you to add retargeting pixels to the links you shorten. What does it mean in practice? You can reach the same audience on multiple social networks and via Google Ads, and more importantly, the audience didn’t have to visit your website. For example, you can reach an audience on Twitter based on people who clicked the link you shared in a Facebook group.
This feature can revolutionize the way marketers perceive retargeting. How?
- Use RocketLink in your influencer campaigns to reach the influencer’s audience in your further campaigns.
- Share helpful content from any website in Facebook or LinkedIn groups and reach people interested in a given topic with your ads.
- You can promote content on one platform, for example, niche social networks such as Quora, and reach these users on other social media.
That’s only the tip of an iceberg when it comes to RocketLinks potential! You can use link retargeting in any way that it’s helpful for your brand. Moreover, you can customize your links with your domain, so that your brand can be memorized better.
The limitations
Even though the frequency-illusion phenomenon can be powerful and work wonders for some brands, it doesn’t mean you can sell your products or services to everyone if you present your ads regularly. Remember to reach an audience that is potentially interested in your offer. Otherwise, you’ll just annoy users and get the opposite result, as you wished for. Follow the marketing funnel and engage with customers that have shown interest in your brand.
Key takeaways on the frequency illusion in marketing:
- Avoid being spammy – show your ads to people interested in your offer (and not too often!)
- Start with a strong message to get noticed
- Use visual branding and customized shorten links to get memorized
- Use marketing funnel to present relevant content
Psychology plays a huge role in the purchasing decision process, and marketing’s goal is to reach the most suitable target group with the most relevant content. Make the most of the psychological effects that can help you persuade customers that your offer is the best on the market. Good luck!
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