If you, like me, spend a bit too much time on LinkedIn, you certainly would’ve heard people harping on about the importance of mindsets, so much so that it almost sounds cringey. However, in psychological terms, there’s a lot more to it than just being positive or negative.
Mindset is another way of referring to implicit theories, which are the beliefs people hold about the nature of human characteristics, which in turn shapes people’s motivation. Anyway, what’s this got to do with marketing? Let’s explore something called mindset-based targeting, which can help drastically improve your engagement and conversion rates.
What are fixed and growth mindsets?
Before we begin, let’s take a look at the real psychological meaning behind mindsets. Coined by Psychologist Carol Dweck, she broke people’s mindsets down into what are known as fixed and growth.
People with a fixed mindset believe that human traits like intelligence and personality are fixed – meaning that there’s not much people can do to improve or change them. This leads to people thinking that you are either good at something or you aren’t, for example, that you either are intelligent or you’re not, and so on. This leads to people not wanting to put in lots of effort because they don’t feel that it’ll be worth it – you’re either gifted or you’re not. This in turn leads to people wanting to ensure that externally, they appear as if they’re good at a particular thing, as this leads in to their sense of self-worth.
On the other hand, people with a growth mindset believe that learning and development can change who a person is and how they behave. People with growth mindsets believe that with effort and perseverance, you can become better at a particular academic subject, sport, creative endeavour, and so on. This leads to people being less concerned about their image, and they much prefer seeing opportunities to improve their skills over time.
Mindsets and consumer behaviour
You might be wondering, what does someone’s mindset have to do with consumer behaviour and marketing? One of the first things we learn as marketers is that different products speak to different types of consumers which is why we create buyer personas. We can take that a step further as studies have shown that mindsets impact the way people relate to brands and products. This all comes down to the fact that the messaging you use will resonate differently with different mindsets.
Mindset-Based Targeting
When it comes to marketing, we’re trained to write copy around pain points and how our product/service can easily solve them. However, we can significantly improve on this by using messaging that caters to people’s different mindsets. It might sound a bit confusing as you don’t often hear about mindset-based messaging, however, it can help you create content that speaks to people on a human level.
People with a fixed mindset use brands in several different ways. Studies have shown that people with a fixed mindset incorporate brands into their sense of self. This means that if you have a product that can be thought of as more as a lifestyle choice, or is often used as a way to prove your attractiveness or status (e.g designer clothing, certain car brands, etc.), you’re likely dealing with a fixed mindset consumer base.
So how can you create content and campaigns that resonate? Well, that all comes down to the psychology of fixed-mindset consumers. You could think about:
Focussing on the ease of use of your product/service as fixed-mindset people prefer low-effort products, e.g. “lose weight effortlessly”
Make sure that your messaging focuses on performance-related goals
Talk about how attractive your products will make the user
Try comparisons, e.g. I was once x but now I am x
Get your consumers to imagine the traits they could have with your product
Emphasize the image your product conveys
Messaging for growth mindset consumers
On the other end of the spectrum, you have messaging for growth mindset consumers. Again, studies show that growth mindset consumers prefer effort-based goals. Rather than looking for a quick fix that’ll make them look good in the eyes of others, growth mindset individuals like products and/or services that address the root cause of whatever they’re designed to fix.
Ideas for messaging that targets consumers with a growth mindset include:
Show how your brand will help them grow
Focus on learning-related goals
Explain how your product or service works in detail, rather than focusing on surface-level proof like before and after pictures
Show how you meet consumers’ learning and improvement goals
Make sure that you emphasize the quality of a product
Mixed mindset targeting
You might be wondering how you can target everyone, rather than breaking your consumer base into fixed and growth mindsets. There are always going to be brands that specifically go after particular groups of people, e.g. fixed mindset messaging being used by:
Designer Goods
Luxury car brands
Messaging that focuses on quick and easy progress, e.g. Baby Einstein
Companies that use signaling to sell, e.g. Apple
But other companies may want to target everyone. If that’s the case, then you need to make sure that you run different ads using messaging that targets both fixed and growth-mindset consumers. Just make sure you’re not using this when you could be targeting specific mindsets as you will get better results by targeting one particular mindset!
Looking beyond fixed and growth mindsets
Psychological studies have led to more constructs being labeled as mindsets, expanding them from just fixed and growth. This includes power, which has been shown to also affect consumer behaviour.
Rather than directly impacting growth or fixed mindsets, power impacts the lens through which people view the world, and therefore impacts consumer behaviour. High-power consumers who want to externalize their power prefer status-signaling products to show the world how powerful they are. However, high-power consumers who internalize their power choose the opposite. This explains why some very successful people appear no richer than the average person, whereas you get the stereotype of middle-management type folk who try to look as flashy as possible to make themselves look powerful.
Why mindset-based targeting is so important
Mindset-based targeting is not very common and is used more by large corporations that can employ psychologists to bring these sorts of tactics to life. It’s a real shame though, because mindset targeting has been shown to result in greater persuasion, which is something every marketer is looking for. Reasons for this increase in persuasion could be that consumers find that mindset-based targeted messages just “feel correct”, or that consumers simply care more about the message. Getting messaging right also leads to consumers spending more time attending to the information in your ads/content etc., and carefully attending to information has been shown to increase persuasion.
You do have to be careful though, because while mindset targeting can get impressive results, if consumers perceive the message as weak and/or misleading, it’ll be less persuasive and could backfire on you. This can be backed up by studies that show that if message arguments are weak, consumers are less persuaded by marketing efforts designed to match their orientation.
How to use mindset-based targeting in SEO and PPC
Even if it might not seem relevant at first, there are plenty of ways to use mindset-based targeting as part of your SEO and PPC strategies. Here’s how:
Work out what type of brand you work for and if your consumers have a growth, fixed, or mixed mindset
Find out what sort of keywords your target audience will be searching e.g. easy weight loss or best language learning app
Use the techniques above and implement them into your slogan, web content, ads, etc.
Use mindset-based messaging in your titles and meta descriptions
Create content based on your consumers’ mindset-based goals
Use the right kind of messaging in your PPC ads
Final thoughts
While there is so much to look at when it comes to mindset, hopefully, this blog post has inspired you to dig a little deeper and think outside the box when it comes to your marketing campaigns. Understanding how people think and function can make a world of difference in persuading people to try/buy your products, so give it a go.
If you’d like to know more or would like a hand implementing these kinds of strategies, I’d love to hear from you. And if you'd like something new to explore, how about checking out my take on cognitive biases in SEO?
References
John, D. R., & Park, J. K. (2016). Mindsets matter: Implications for branding research and practice. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 26(1), 153-160.
Mathur, P., Chun, H. H., & Maheswaran, D. (2016). Consumer mindsets and self-enhancement: Signaling versus learning. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 26(1), 142-152.
Murphy, M. C., & Dweck, C. S. (2016). Mindsets shape consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 26(1), 127-136.
Rucker, D. D., & Galinsky, A. D. (2016). Growing beyond growth: Why multiple mindsets matter for consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 26(1), 161-164.
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