Using Buyer Psychology To Boost Sales: 3 Real-Life Examples

If you want to forge stronger relationships with your leads, boost engagement, and increase conversions, then you need to get to grips with buyer psychology. 

Using buyer psychology in marketing might seem like something of a hidden art—something only businesses in the big leagues can throw money at—but that’s far from the reality. Yes, the top brands are using psychology in their marketing strategies to influence customer behaviour, but you don’t need to have pots of money to do the same.

In fact, you just need ScoreApp and a working understanding of the buyer psychology of purchase decisions. Don’t worry if you don’t know how it works, we’ve put together this article so you have the knowledge and confidence for using buyer psychology in marketing. 

We’re going to walk you through how three huge brands have used the buyer psychology of purchase decisions to increase sales. By studying their successes, you can see how practical, science-backed strategies can work for your own business (with a little help from ScoreApp, of course). 

1. Yum! Brands’ AI-driven personalized marketing

This might come as a shock, but fast food stalwarts KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut are all actually owned by one company: Yum! Brands. We’ll give you a second to recover from that bombshell. 

Anyway, Yum! Brands has made it a mission to deliver personalized marketing content, enhanced and enabled by the power of artificial intelligence (AI). It’s a strategy that’s paid off. In 2023, Yum! Brands reported an increase in customer engagement and purchases in the double digits, both of which were credited to their AI-backed, personalized marketing. 

Yum! Brands’ AI tools were put to use to analyze customer data, meaning they could deliver emails that were personalized down to the day of the week and the time of day, as well as the content. That way, every email was made more relevant to the customer receiving it. It’s no wonder it was such a success when compared to Yum! Brands’ previous, more traditional, marketing approaches. 

It works because humans have a deep-seated psychological need to be recognized on an individual level. If you can speak to your audience or leads in a way that makes them feel like they’re being addressed directly, you can make them feel understood and valued. That recognition, that connection, makes them more likely to engage with your brand on a deeper level. And that increases conversions. 

So, how can you make personalization work for you? Once a lead has completed a ScoreApp quiz, they’ll automatically be segmented in your CRM. You can then create and send different, targeted nurturing and introduction email sequences to each segment of your email list. That way, you can provide content that’s relevant to specific goals and pain points, creating that deep engagement.

What’s more, it’s a process that’s easy to scale. No matter how many leads you have coming in, they’ll all feel they’ve been treated with a personal touch.

2. Nike’s emotional branding

There’s probably not a person in the Western world who doesn’t know what Nike produce, and what they stand for. The brand, which rose to prominence in the early 70s, has stayed at the forefront of sportswear for decades by building strong emotional connections with consumers. 

Nike’s approach is two-fold: brand associations with some of the biggest and best-known athletes in the world, and aspirational storytelling that appeals to customers at every level of fitness. 

In many ways, the brand associations with famous ambassadors is the less interesting of the two. True, people have their role models, and are likely to buy something modelled by a favourite athlete. But it’s also true that these sponsorships mostly boil down to paying athletes or kitting them out to build a shared image of quality. 

Storytelling is a less precise proposition, but one that can be extremely rewarding. Nike’s emotional branding frequently draws on themes of resilience, empowerment, rising to a challenge, and finding strength. And that’s just for general consumers. In sporting contests such as the Olympics, Nike has been seen to refocus on the individual and the drive that powers elite-level athletes. 

With its emotional branding, Nike is cultivating an aura of both existing quality and aspiration. That anybody can achieve their goals with Nike, whether they’re at the zenith of their sporting capability or at the start of their fitness journey.

Emotional branding isn’t built overnight, but you can use elements of it to buff your personalized marketing with the psychology of buying. 

Segmenting your leads with ScoreApp is a start. Use your quizzes and surveys to identify common pain points and goals among your leads and ideal clients, and you’ll be able to position yourself as the ideal solution. By aligning your brand with the aspirations and values of your leads, you can drive loyalty.

You can also join forces with influencers for campaigns. They may not be top athletes, but running a course or a giveaway with a leading voice in your industry will have a similar effect. 

3. Amazon’s personalized recommendations

Amazon is a giant of multiple industries. With web services, logistics, and as the retail branch that started it all, their position as ‘the’ online retailer is practically unassailable at this point. But they didn’t reach the peak by chance or by low prices alone. Amazon is also very, very good at boosting conversions with personalized recommendations.

By analyzing the browsing and purchase histories of its customers, Amazon is able to increase the relevance of the products its customers see. That individual focus encourages additional, complementary, purchases. 

Individualizing recommendations—catering to preferences and insights—shows leads you understand them. They then become more engaged with your brand, and the experience of working with or buying from you increases the likelihood of them doing so again.

It’s an easy bit of buyer psychology in marketing strategies, and you don’t need the resources Amazon has to make it work. ScoreApp can track page visits on your site, with automated emails providing reactive engagement that tells leads you understand what they’re looking for. 

When you send nurturing and engagement email sequences to segments of your email list, you get personal and make every interaction relevant. Relevant interactions equal an invested lead and, ultimately, higher conversions. 

Use ScoreApp—the buyer psychology’s baked in!

So, that’s a quick look at how three of the biggest brands in the world use the psychology of sales to boost conversions. Taken at face value, we can see how these examples might be a bit overwhelming, as these businesses have millions to spend on harnessing buyer psychology. In reality, though, you can use the same buyer psychology principles in your marketing thanks to ScoreApp. 

ScoreApp has buyer psychology baked in, giving you the tools for making it work for you without the need for a psychology degree or a vast budget. 

With ScoreApp, you can:

• Use a quiz to build trust by delivering personalized, high-value insights straight to your leads. Automation makes the process instant.
• Segment your leads based on their pain points, location, likelihood to convert, and more 
• Include tailored recommendations that feel 100% relevant to each and every lead
• Create nurturing sequences with specific content for each segment of your email list
• Create micro-commitments that guide leads naturally toward taking action.

ScoreApp lets you use buyer psychology in a way that feels effortless but gets results. Attract, nurture, and convert your ideal leads with techniques used by the very biggest companies. 

ScoreApp is free to try, so start boosting your sales with the psychology of sales today.