9 Psychology concepts for better marketing

Plus how to understand your clients with the IHE method

Mar 06, 2025

Hello, welcome to this edition! 👋

Great marketing is deeply rooted in psychology.

Successful marketers understand this. It’s why they're successful.

Your role is to not only understand the product or service you sell, but to also understand the underlying psychological drivers in your prospect’s brain:

How do your customers buy? And why?
What triggers make them to say "YES"?
What are they trying to avoid?

Without understanding these psychological triggers, your marketing actions are arbitrary — built on guesswork and biased analyses rather than facts.

"Maybe they will react to this" → Uneducated guess
"I think they bought for this" → Biased analysis

So here’s what you’ll learn in this edition:

How to use the IHE method to understand your prospect’s mind
The 9 essential psychological triggers that drive purchasing decisions
How to actually implement this into your marketing

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How do you find your prospect’s psychological triggers?

In order to actually implement psychology-driven marketing, you must first understand your prospect’s psychological triggers.

Here's the thing:

If you had 1 hour to convince someone to buy your offer, you should spend 50 minutes asking questions, and 10 minutes pitching.

To find out exactly how to get my customers to buy, I use the IHE process:

Run customer Interviews

You cannot invent answers to psychological questions.

Plan at least 5 interviews with existing customers and 5 with prospects.

Dig deep to understand their buying process and decision factors.

For example, ask:

What motivated your initial search for a solution?
What alternatives did you consider, and why?
What fears or objections almost stopped you from purchasing?

List educated Hypotheses

Now that you have your answers from the interviews, it’s time to analyze them.

Focus on the psychological elements of their answers to uncover psychological patterns.

Remember, that means:

How they bought and why.
Which triggers made them say “YES”.
And what they were trying to avoid by buying from you.

Now, turn these psychological patterns into a hypothesis.

For example, in your answers you might notice that a lot of people bought because they had seen some good reviews online.

Therefore, your hypothesis could be:

"Emphasizing our customer testimonials will significantly improve close rates."

Run Experiments to validate hypotheses

You have your hypothesis.

Now it’s time to put on your lab coat and run an experiment.

Our illustrative hypothesis above was that if we increased the level of social proof our prospects see, we’ll get higher close rates.

So, create an experiment where, for the next 30 days, you post 1 testimonial on LinkedIn a day and track how that impacts your close rates.

Plan your experiments in weekly, monthly, or quarterly sprints because that gives you enough time and data to draw meaningful conclusions.

With this process, psychology becomes a practical marketing tool. You transition from "I understand psychology" to "I'm strategically applying psychology in my marketing."

Now, let's dive deeper into 9 key psychology concepts…

9 psychology concepts that can transform your B2B marketing

The Halo Effect

The halo effect is a cognitive mechanism where a positive perception of one aspect of a brand, product, or person influences opinions about the entire entity.

The Halo effect is awesome because it means you can convince your prospects just how good your brand is just from one small element of your brand.

For example, if your website is amazing your prospects will likely think the rest of your business must be just as good, too.

To harness the halo effect, think “what crucial points of my business do my customers care about the most” and focus on making those elements the best they can be.

For me, I leverage the halo effect by focusing mostly on creating high-quality, authority-building content.

When people learn something new from an infographic I’ve made, they subconsciously start to see me as an authority and, thus, assume my products and services are good. (Which they are, according to my 490+ students… 😁)

How to implement:

Identify the crucial touchpoints in your customer journey that prospects care about, and polish them to perfection.

For B2B companies, this might be:

Your content
Your website
Your customer support’s responsiveness
Your case studies showcasing your client results

Loss aversion

People are more motivated by the fear of losing something than by the prospect of gaining something of equal (or sometimes, greater) value.

This psychological principle explains why "Don't miss out" (which triggers scarcity and FOMO) often outperforms "Get this now" in marketing messages.

This is also why ‘free trials’ work so well. People gain access to a product that helps them in some way, but after a week or a month, it gets taken away from them — so they buy it.

Example:

IBM's classic slogan "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" is perhaps the most famous application of loss aversion in B2B marketing. It didn't focus on what you'd gain by choosing IBM, but rather on what you wouldn't lose — your job.

How to implement:

Highlight in your marketing the opportunity costs of delay or inaction
Frame product benefits in terms of preventing losses
Use time-limited offers strategically
Emphasize the risks of choosing your competitors

Social Proof

We humans are social creatures. There’s safety in numbers.

People are more likely to trust a product or service if they see others using and enjoying it.

Your testimonials, case studies, and client’s logos should be featured heavily throughout your B2B marketing materials.

In B2B enterprise, decisions often involve multiple stakeholders and there’s significant risk in making the wrong decision. Social proof reduces this perceived risk by showing other companies that have seen success with your solution.

How to implement:

Showcase testimonials — especially from companies similar to your target prospect
Show off the specific metrics and results you’ve achieved
Leverage any industry awards and recognitions you have

Confirmation Bias

People tend to seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs or attitudes.

Once someone forms an opinion, it can become hard to change it — to the point where they become more likely to embrace information that supports that opinion and reject any information that contradicts it.

Your prospects often come to you with preconceived notions about the problems they’re facing and the potential solutions. For example, “AI-automations won’t work in my business”.

Instead of directly challenging these assumptions, effective marketing should acknowledge these notions and provide compelling evidence, testimonials, and case studies that gradually reshape their understanding.

This approach reduces resistance and makes it easier for prospects to accept new perspectives without feeling confronted.

How to implement:

Begin content by validating common industry beliefs
Frame new information as an extension of their existing knowledge
Use data to challenge misconceptions without directly confronting beliefs

Scarcity Effect

When something is perceived as limited or rare, people become more motivated to obtain it.

Scarcity creates urgency and can transform passive interest in a product into active purchasing behavior.

You can induce scarcity in your prospect’s brain through limited-time sales, by highlighting a capped number of spots for a webinar, or with exclusive early access to a new product launch.

How to implement:

Offer limited enrollment in your beta programs
Use flash sales to close those prospects sitting on the fence
Limit capacity authentically ("We only onboard 5 new clients per quarter")
Use time-bound pricing structures

Anchoring Effect

People rely heavily on the first piece of information they receive when making a decision.

This initial “anchor” serves as a reference point for evaluating all subsequent information.

For example, my course, Authority-First Content, is worth over $3,000.

That’s because, inside, I give you access to the exact strategy, templates, and frameworks that I’ve personally used in my content to generate over 7 figures in revenue and over 150,000 followers across platforms.

But I don’t charge $3,000 for it.

Authority-First Content only costs $590.

Now, because you saw the $3,000 figure first, your brain subconsciously believes that the actual $590 price is a ‘bargain’ in comparison because you’re getting it at only a fraction of the value.

You can “anchor” more than just price though — timeframes, performance metrics, and most other kinds of numbers.

How to implement:

When comparing your impressive results to competitors’, show theirs first
Frame pricing discussions by establishing value before revealing the cost
Present the premium offering before the standard option

Goal Gradient Effect

People are more motivated to complete a task as they approach the end.

For instance, there’s nothing worse than filling out an application form online and not knowing how long it’s going to take. Ten minutes in, and you’re debating if it’s even worth continuing the application!

But if you give people a progress bar — and let them SEE the finish line — they’ll become much more likely to complete it.

This is the Goal Gradient Effect in action.

How to implement:

Break down complex purchasing journeys into concrete micro-stages
Use progress bars on your website/application forms

The Mere-Exposure Effect

People tend to prefer things that are familiar to them.

Repeated exposure to your brand, messaging, and solutions make prospects more likely to choose you when they’re ready to buy.

This effect explains why consistent content marketing and thought leadership is so effective in B2B contexts — especially for reaching the 95% of buyers who aren’t yet ready to buy.

How to implement:

Maintain consistent branding across all platforms/touchpoints
Post content regularly to stay ‘top of mind’
Retarget website visitors with your messaging

Authority Bias

This is my favorite psychological concept of them all!

People are more likely to trust and follow the advice of those they perceive as being positions of authority or expertise.

This is why Authority-First Content is such a powerful B2B marketing approach.

It’s how I’ve been able to drive such crazy results as this:

Think about why you became a paid subscriber of this newsletter?

At one point, you had no idea who I was. But as you’ve become exposed to more and more of my content, you’ve started to see me as an authority in an area you care about — and so, you subscribed.

That alone should show how powerful this concept is.

How to implement:

Secure speaking roles at industry conferences and events
Publish your own research and original data
Showcase you or your team’s credentials and expertise
Create Authority-First Content that demonstrates your expertise

The bottom line

When psychology drives your marketing strategy, you stop guessing and start knowing.

You start making strategic decisions based on how your specific buyers actually think and buy.

A successful B2B marketer is one who fundamentally understands that behind every purchasing decision is a human brain operating according to predictable patterns.

Hopefully, this newsletter has given you some ideas of how to leverage those patterns to propel your results.

Join my LinkedIn Content Creation Bootcamp!

A 5-week coaching program to learn my ideation, planning, and creation process I used to get 45M views on LinkedIn. You’ll join group coachings, have a direct 1:1 slack channel with me, and get feedback on your strategy and content from me. The next one is starting on the week of March 17.

Learn More Here

And reply to this email if you’re interested