Go-to-Market Plays #11: 3 Marketing Psychology Plays That Actually Work

Summary

Episode Summary: Go-to-Market Plays #11 - 3 Marketing Psychology Plays That Actually Work

Podcast: The Marketing Millennials
Host: Daniel Murray
Guest: Tamara Graminski
Release Date: June 18, 2025
Episode Title: Go-to-Market Plays #11: 3 Marketing Psychology Plays That Actually Work

In this insightful episode of The Marketing Millennials, host Daniel Murray teams up with marketing expert Tamara Graminski to delve into the powerful realm of marketing psychology. They explore three essential psychological strategies that drive successful marketing campaigns, providing actionable insights for marketers aiming to enhance their go-to-market strategies.

1. Social Proof: Leveraging the Power of Community

Daniel opens the discussion by highlighting social proof as a fundamental psychological tool in marketing. He explains how humans inherently look to others to guide their decisions, making testimonials, reviews, and user statistics vital in building consumer confidence.

“Social proof gives us confidence to act because we know that this is like a known thing.”
— Daniel Murray [01:55]

Example Highlight: At Unbounce, Daniel recounts a campaign celebrating 1 billion conversions facilitated. This milestone served as a robust social proof, reassuring potential customers of Unbounce's reliability and effectiveness.

Tamara emphasizes the importance of relevant social proof. She advises marketers to use testimonials and logos that closely match their target audience to ensure relatability and effectiveness.

“The best social proof makes people feel like it's for them.”
— Tamara Graminski [03:48]

Key Takeaway: Utilize testimonials and user metrics that resonate with your specific target audience to enhance credibility and trust.

2. Loss Aversion: Framing Messages to Prevent Loss

Moving forward, Daniel introduces the concept of loss aversion, a principle suggesting that individuals are more motivated to avoid losses than to achieve gains. This insight is pivotal in crafting compelling marketing messages.

“Loss aversion says that people are more motivated to avoid losing something than they are motivated to gain something new.”
— Daniel Murray [05:04]

Example Highlight: Canva effectively employs loss aversion by showcasing the features users will lose if they downgrade from a paid plan, such as premium templates and brand kit access. This strategy makes the prospect of canceling feel more costly.

Tamara adds that loss aversion taps into our primal survival instincts, making it a highly effective tactic. She also touches on the related concept of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), which further drives consumer action.

“Our brains are wired for survival... we rather avoid pain or loss and that takes priority over gain.”
— Tamara Graminski [07:33]

Key Takeaway: Frame your marketing messages around what customers stand to lose if they don't take action, rather than solely focusing on the benefits of taking action.

3. Foot-in-the-Door Technique: Building Commitment Through Small Yeses

The final psychological strategy discussed is the foot-in-the-door technique, which involves securing a small initial commitment to pave the way for larger requests later on.

“If you can get someone to say yes to a small ask first, then they're more likely to say yes to a bigger one later.”
— Daniel Murray [09:04]

Example Highlight: Mailchimp exemplifies this technique by offering free services upfront, such as creating a first campaign or adding contacts without any initial cost or commitment. This low-friction entry encourages users to invest time and effort, making them more likely to upgrade to paid plans.

Tamara underscores the importance of providing value in these initial interactions to foster trust and ease the transition to larger commitments.

“It's about giving, giving, giving... letting people say yes a few times before you hit them with that big ask.”
— Tamara Graminski [13:40]

Key Takeaway: Start with small, valuable requests to build trust and commitment, making customers more receptive to larger offers down the line.

Conclusion: Integrating Psychology into Marketing Strategies

In wrapping up, Daniel and Tamara reiterate the significance of integrating psychological principles into marketing strategies to drive action and build lasting customer relationships.

“Steal these, use them, and the next time someone asks you for a favor, you'll know exactly what's happening.”
— Daniel Murray [15:22]

Final Thoughts: By understanding and applying social proof, loss aversion, and the foot-in-the-door technique, marketers can create more effective, psychologically-driven campaigns that resonate deeply with their target audiences.

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This episode serves as a valuable resource for marketers seeking to harness the power of psychology to enhance their go-to-market strategies. By implementing these three proven psychological plays, marketers can drive better engagement, build stronger trust, and ultimately achieve greater success in their campaigns.

Transcript

[Tamara Graminski]

You know what's not fun? Spending your days in workflows, writing content and dragging blocks around the screen. You know what is telling ActiveCampaign's AI? Your marketing goals and watching it build the campaign for you. Emails, landing pages, follow ups done. It's the way marketing automation should be. Start your free 14 day trial right [e-mail] that's active. Activecampaign.com what is up Marketing besties. We are kicking off a brand new miniseries called Go to Marketplace where we break down one go to market move in under 10 minutes. Real tactics, zero fluff. Just the kind of stuff you actually use to launch smarter, grow faster and win your market. And joining me for this whole series is someone who lives and breathes Go to Market, Tamara Graminski. She's an award winning, award winning product marketer, former VP of product marketing at Kajabi, and one of the sharpest minds in the game. Let's get into it. We are back with another episode of Go to Marketplace. In our last episode we talked about price anchoring and that's a powerful psychological tool that makes you feel like your offer is a deal. But pricing isn't the only place to use psychology in marketing. In fact, some of the best performing campaigns are built on understanding how people think, decide and behave. So today Tamara and I are here with another Go to Marketplace in 10 minutes or less. But this time we're breaking down three marketing psychology plays that actually work and how you could start using them today.

[Daniel]

Let's do it. I love this topic because you and I talked about this a lot. But like, the best marketers aren't just creative, they're behavioral scientists and there's a lot that goes into this. So they know these best marketers that the path to conversion often comes down to tiny moments of influence. It's a specific word choice. It's where you're placing that social proof. Maybe it's a limited time offer and there's probably dozens if not hundreds of these we could talk about. But I want to run through three today, today because I think they're great three that you could like start implementing in your work. So first up, I want to talk about social proof. It's true as humans, we look to others to guide our decisions, right? This is true in all parts of our life and it's true in buying decisions. When we see testimonials, when we see reviews, when we see numbers like user counts or you know, you ever go to the Sephora site and something pops up and it's like 100 people are looking at this foundation right now. It's reassuring, right? No one wants to go first. And so social proof gives us confidence to act because we know that this is like a known thing. Right. So an example is when I was at Unbounce, we actually ran this massive campaign when we hit 1 billion conversions, facilitated. And now to be honest, like, there wasn't really much to say about this, but we wanted to run the campaign as a massive social proof. Right. Our whole campaign focused on the idea that if we've helped other marketers and hit 1 billion conversions, we can help you get those conversions too. Right. And so if you want to use social proof in your own work, it's simple. You basically get those testimonials. Of course, that's a basic one, but even it could be as simple as adding logos, adding numbers, adding quotes to your homepage or different use case pages. Even a tiny bit helps. How do you feel about social proof, Daniel?

[Tamara Graminski]

I mean, I think it's a necessity now. It's not an optional thing to have. And I also add, one thing is when you're thinking about social proof, you should always use social proof that is as close to what your target audience is. So you don't show a testimonial of Google if you're selling to SMB and if you're trying to, and if that's your goal to sell to SMB, if you're trying to show Google, show it to more people who are enterprise. You people want to buy like that person that they're trying to do. So show them either a Persona that's close to them or a logo that is like their company because they're going to buy. People buy things that are like the same audience. So I just wanted to add that part. And a lot of people forget that. They just add random social proof. But the best social proof makes people feel like it's for them.

[Daniel]

I completely agree. Nothing drives me up the wall more than when I go to a website and they're like, you know, the software for SMBs and then all of the logos they showcase are like Fortune 500. It makes absolutely no sense. So you're right. It's like you want to make sure you're getting the social proof that matches your target customer. Okay, are you ready for our second technique?

[Tamara Graminski]

Yeah, let's dive in.

[Daniel]

This one is loss aversion. And it's actually an interesting one because basically loss aversion says that people are more motivated to avoid losing something than they are Motivated to gain something new. So loss feels harder, essentially. And this is really why limited time offers work. And it shows up in how we frame a lot of different messaging for campaigns. So instead of saying something like join today and get 20% off, you would want to reframe this to say, don't miss out. Your 20% discount expires in two hours. It's the same offer, but framed differently. Or I'm sure we've all seen this before. You go to any SaaS tools website and they'll say, like, your trial is ending soon, don't lose access. And so this concept really focuses on shifting away from what you will get if you buy it. So away from like benefit statements and more towards what you'll lose if you don't act. And one of my favorite examples of this is from Canva. I love a lot of the marketing that they do, but they do an incredible job with loss aversion. And so if you are a Canva user and you're in app and you go to cancel your account or downgrade from their paid plan, they don't just say, okay, sure, hit here to delete, they actually present this like beautifully designed loss aversion screen and it's a checklist of everything you're about to give up. So if you're trying to downgrade from the Canva paid plan down to free, it's going to say, well, you're going to lose brand kit access, premium templates, background remover, which is essential magic resize, you know, the list goes on. And so they really framed this as like downgrading isn't just canceling, it's actually giving up or giving back things that you've already embedded into your workflow, right? And they've specifically showcased items that you have used before. And so by showing you exactly what you're going to lose, Canva really makes the cost of canceling feel higher than the cost of continuing. And so if you want to tap into loss aversion, really it's all about this idea of framing the messaging around what the user is at risk of losing. And typically you want to focus on they're losing time, they're losing access, they're losing progress towards something, or they're losing the opportunity of something in the future.

[Tamara Graminski]

I'll add one more thing into that is the reason why this works is our brains are wired for survival. So we're not wired to make rational decisions. We rather avoid pain or loss and that it takes priority of gain. So losing a deal, like not buying Buying tomorrow might feel so much pain for you to miss out on not spending that money that you're doing that. So we want to, as humans, do this, and that's why it works so well. So I think it's the common thing of what all us millennials like is and fall trap too is fomo. We have fear of missing out. I'm actually in the broad. I just saw another acronym is oh, joy Mo. Yeah, I. That's my new thing. I'm.

[Daniel]

I love it.

[Tamara Graminski]

I know, I'm. I'm getting sidetracked. Let's get into another one. Let's be real. Most of us didn't get into marketing to get buried in busy work, but here we are. The good news is Active Campaign's AI agents take a lot off your plate. You tell it what you want, a welcome series, a follow up, a full campaign, and it builds it and then it gets it to the right people with email, SMS, and WhatsApp automation. Try it for free for 14 [e-mail]. that's activecampaign.com.

[Daniel]

Yes. Okay, so the last one we're going to talk about is probably one that we've all fallen for before, and it's called the foot in the door technique. This one's so good because it's basically this idea that if you can get someone to say yes to a small ask first, then they're more likely to say yes to a bigger one later. So this is great to implement in marketing, but it's also great to implement in your personal life. And it's basically all about this idea of consistency bias. Right. As humans, we want to stay consistent. If we take one small action, we want to make sure that we're doing a similar action in the future. It's how we basically build momentum toward these bigger commitments.

[Tamara Graminski]

I know people like this, but they want more examples of companies doing this well. So you want to go into some examples of this?

[Daniel]

Of course, you know, I've brought some examples. So let's bring it back to B2B. We see this all the time with things like free lead magnets and free trials. And one company that I think does a really good example of this is mailchimp. We all love mailchimp's marketing and it's really simple. Instead of going straight for our paid plan, they invite you to start for free. They have language like create your first campaign. And then they also have language like add your contacts for free. There's no credit card, there's no friction. It's just super easy micro yeses like, who doesn't want to start for free? Who doesn't want to just test and play around, right? But mailchimp knows that once you've designed your first campaign, once you've imported your list, you're emotionally invested, right? You've already spent time doing this, you've bought in, you've done the work. And so the next step, paying to upgrade, feels natural. It feels like it should be the next step. So you're not just signing up anymore. You're already a user and you're just moving to step two. And so if you want to use the foot in the door technique in your marketing, there's a few fun ways you can do this. I kind of teased this idea earlier. It's the idea of lead magnets and freebies. But really the concept here is just start with something small but valuable, right? The value has to be there. This might be a checklist, it could be a free template, a little quiz, whatever it might be. And you just want someone to opt in because that's step one. And then once they've opted in, they're really primed for a higher commitment. Ask like, oh, you know what, let's follow up and ask to book a call, maybe start a trial, maybe attend a webinar, whatever it might be. The second one is get started for free flow. So I talked about this a little bit with mailchimp, but this is definitely something we can play around with as product marketers and marketers, especially in the world of, like, product demos. There's so many options here, but let people explore your product without any pressure of having to buy. Like, no one wants to get on a demo call with a sales rep, right? You don't want to put a credit card in. You want to just play around. You want to get that sense of if it's for you. So let them take one to two key actions that will help them see the value of your product and then hit them with the CTA to book a demo or schedule a call. Because the more that they get kind of ingrained in this, the more that they do, the harder it's going to be for them to walk away. And then the final one is using email to start layering some of these asks. And so again, instead of going straight for the like buy now, lead with downloading the free guide. So put your little freebie in there. Then you follow up with try the tool. Then later on you can follow up with a bigger message, like upgrade to unlock even more and so this comes back to like customer life cycle. It's pretty simple, but really think about the messages that you want to deliver over time and what micro yeses you're getting customers to buy into as they move through that life cycle. And this will essentially turn your go to market into a ladder of tiny wins that will keep people climbing up and up the ladder towards being a fully kind of paying customer.

[Tamara Graminski]

The key here is the first yes isn't about the ask. The it's about the future. Yes. I mean, you could do this in a lot of other things as well. With content, a lot of people make the mistake to go with their first piece of content, asking people to attend their event, asking people to buy something. But me and you both know, well, you with your PMM camp and the market millennials, we. It's about giving, giving, giving. And then you've given so many yeses and positive reinforcement that a small ask, it doesn't feel like a big ask anymore. Even if it's big for you to ask those things of your audience.

[Daniel]

That's exactly it. It's all about lowering the stakes, building trust, and letting people say yes a few times before you hit them with that big ask. It's kind of like this. If I asked you out of nowhere to get me a reservation at Carbones, you'd probably say no, right?

[Tamara Graminski]

No, for you, I would do anything. But yes, if it was a random person, if they haven't done anything. And actually funn story about Tamara, she loves Carbone sauce so much that they didn't have it in Canada in one of the stores. So she made me bring Carbone to her in Vancouver. No lie on this. She loves Carbone that much. But yes, if it's a hard reservation to get.

[Daniel]

Exactly. But let's say you didn't love me as much as you do. I'm just the average person. I'm going to have to start small, right? I'm going to ask you for a little favor first. I'm going to say, daniel, have me on the piece pod that I might ask for you to shout me out in your newsletter. And then suddenly that vodka rigatoni is within reach. One micro yes at a time.

[Tamara Graminski]

Now I am definitely creating craving some regatoni and some grandma's bread. If you have not had regatoni and grandma's bread at Carbone, you are missing out. And that might sound snotty, but it is very peak to have that. But let's bring it home. Today we've covered three marketing psychology plays that actually work. They're tools not only to help you build trust with your audience, they reduce friction and they guide people towards action. And that's what you want as a marketer, is action?

[Daniel]

Absolutely. Steal these, use them, and the next time someone asks you for a favorite, you'll know exactly what's happening.

[Tamara Graminski]

Don't ask for that. Carbon Carbon Reservation up front. That's the biggest takeaway of this podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever. Wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.