The online world is full of content and ads fighting for people’s attention, especially on social media. With research suggesting people see up to 10,000 ads online every day, you need to find a way to really reach your target audience and stand out from the crowd. How do you do this? It all comes down to psychology.
Your ad needs to be able to grab people on a subconscious, emotional, and identity-focused level before they lose interest. But it’s more complicated than that. Your target audience are unlikely to all share the same motivations, emotions, and identities. Therefore, you need to identify what psychological triggers the different segments of your target audience respond best to. This is where testing comes in.
Testing different emotional triggers gives you the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the psychology of your target audience. The Meta ad algorithm rewards audience engagement, allowing you to test different psychological traits and ideas. Some of these ideas will skyrocket and be your best performing ad, and some will completely fail. But you can take valuable insights from both outcomes, using these tests to finetune your messaging and ensure your ads are optimised for your audience.
Whether you’re a new or an established business, I’ve taken businesses like yours (as well as my own businesses) through this process and I know it works. Don’t want to take my word for it? I don’t blame you, when you entrust me with the success of your business, you need to know I’ll get the job done. Here’s a quick case study of a client I recently worked with.
This DTC brand working within the cosmetics industry had never fully explored the channel of paid social ads before. Within 30 days of launching the first set of Meta ads for a new customer bundle offer, we’d achieved profitability, meeting their nCPA goal of 2 ROAS. Following this excellent initial performance, we were able to refine the psychological messaging and scale the Meta ads over the following months.
Want to discover more about using psychology to drive revenue from your Meta ads? Get in touch today.
The Psychology of Emotions
People are driven by emotion. This includes your target audience and future customers. By identifying what emotions your audience are currently feeling or wanting to feel in the future, you can tap into these emotions, speaking to your audience on a deeper level and really using this to really speak to your audience. This deeper connection with your audience will not only increase impressions, but it’ll also boost conversion rates, ultimately reducing your cost per acquisition (CPA). Let’s dive in and explore the 10 most common emotions eCommerce audiences tend to experience and how to optimise your ads for them.
Nurturance
By focusing on nurturance, you’re targeting people who are looking for meaningful ways to show love, gratitude, and care, either for themselves or others. However, people desiring nurturance might find it difficult to know the best way to express this emotion. That’s why ads centered on nurturance should clearly demonstrate how your product can help to show affection, using warm, reassuring messaging that evokes a deep emotional connection and ensures the customer feels cared for.
Skincare brand Tula took a nurturance approach in this Meta ad with the words “hug your skin” and “feel the embrace”. This sends a message that this product gives the audience a way to show love and care, and bring comfort to themselves.
Belonging
A key emotion that most people long for at some point in their life is belonging. This could be connecting with others through shared interests, cultural identity, or core values, creating a sense of acceptance and community with others. To target the desire for belonging in your ad messaging, focus on how your product brings people together, strengthens relationships, and helps reduce loneliness.
Here’s an example of a Meta ad focusing on belonging from Taste Salud. By adding the word “same”, this brand is letting their target customers know that they’re not alone in their problem and that others suffering with the same problem have found a resolution in their product.
Security
The key to security is feeling safe and protected. When it comes to a customer looking for security when deciding to purchase, they’re looking to reduce the risk of getting hurt, whether that be financially by wasting money on a bad product, or by purchasing a product that’s dangerous to use. Therefore, in your ads you need to build trust and reliability. This could be done through offering guarantees, positive social proof, or promoting the product through the ad messaging as dependable and risk-free.
For example, this ad by Nordform reinforces a feeling of security by highlighting their belts are reliable. Further security is added with the mention of the lifetime guarantee, sending the message that this product and brand can be trusted and won’t be a waste of money.
Competence
Competence is about people wanting to feel skilled, capable, and confident in their choices. To target this emotion, ads need to provide valuable information, build trust, and create a sense of expertise in the customer. In order to do this, you should highlight how your product empowers people to feel more in control of their decisions and become more knowledgeable.
This Meta ad by Biocol Labs focuses on competence by providing useful information on how the product can help solve their pain point. Informing the audience of both the visible and invisible benefits of the product makes the reader feel like they have some level of expertise on the product, making them feel more in control of their decision to purchase and use the product.
Empowerment
Empowerment is all about feeling strong, confident, and in control of your decisions. Sound familiar? Although empowerment is similar to competence, there’s one key thing that differentiates the two: competence focuses on having the knowledge and skills to be in control of your life, whereas empowerment focuses on your feelings about believing in yourself. Ads that tap into empowerment should use messaging that uplifts, reassures, and eases self-doubt. The goal here isn’t just to promote a product, but to sell the experience of independence, self-assurance, and feeling happier about your own ability.
An example of empowerment can be found in this Meta ad by Outway. The copy “Small steps, big changes” makes the audience feel like they can make the big changes they want without having to make drastic changes. Instead, they can take smaller, more realistic steps, creating a sense of confidence in their own ability to work towards and achieve their larger goals.
Esteem
When someone desires the emotion of esteem, they’re looking to feel appreciated, acknowledged, and respected. This could focus on feeling good about the way they look, receiving praise for their achievements, or boosting their social status and can come from both the person themselves or from others around them. Ad messaging that taps into this emotion is most effective when it’s focused on the future, helping the customer feel like they can achieve the admiration, recognition, or validation they desire.
Glossier targeted the emotion of esteem in this ad with the message “be remembered”, making their audience feel like they’ll get the acknowledgement, appreciation, and admiration they desire by using their product.
Accomplishment
When the target audience is seeking accomplishment, they’re looking for that sense of achievement, success, and pride by reaching a goal. Accomplishment is a popular emotion for businesses to base their Meta ads on, however most brands often only touch the surface of this emotion. Instead of taking a superficial approach to accomplishment, dive deeper into the emotion to focus on an identity or lifestyle your target audience wants to achieve. Focusing your ads around achieving this identity or lifestyle in a quick and efficient manner can make your products and brand stand out in their minds.
Welle Co does a good job of targeting the emotion of accomplishment on a deeper level in this ad. The simple question “What if you didn’t feel tired all day?” gives their target audience the chance to think of everything they could achieve if they had more energy. Not only would this be to accomplish smaller day-to-day tasks, but also the ability to live the life they dream of.
Freedom
When targeting the emotion of freedom, the customer is looking for an escape, free from stress, limitations, and responsibilities. To connect with this emotion, ads should showcase how a product offers you need to show how your product offers spontaneity, adventure, and flexibility. With messaging around empowering people to live the lives they dream of without restrictions, you’ll create the feeling that breaking away from routine, easing worries, or embracing new experiences is all possible with your product.
For example, Cuts creates a sense of freedom with the messaging that their customers can face anything with their clothing. This implies that the customer is free of restrictions so they are always ready for new challenges and experiences.
Autonomy
People who value autonomy are looking for something that will give them limitless freedom and flexibility to make their own choices and live independently. To target this emotion in your Meta ads, focus on how your product gives the customer the power to take control of their life without restrictions or dependence on others.
An example of an ad focusing on autonomy is this ad from Guava. This ad focuses on providing new parents or parents of young children the ability to take control and do the activities they want to do without being restricted. Guava presents their product as the solution to have more freedom and flexibility to be both a parent and live their own life.
Engagement
Engagement is all about experience. If the main emotion of your target audience is engagement, what they’re looking for is unique, thrilling experiences in life. To target this emotion, you’re going to need to tap into this target audience’s sense of curiosity and adventure. Structure your ad messaging around how your product can create these enriching experiences for customers.
For example, in this ad Alcanside decided to focus on engagement. They did this by focusing on how using their product provides customers with a better experience than using alternative products.
The Psychology of Identity
Identity doesn’t come completely independently of emotion (as seen by some of the emotions above mentioning links with identity), but as identity is a key component of human psychology, it does deserve talking about in its own right. Everybody fits into multiple types of identities, some of which are key identities making up our concepts of ourselves (like gender, nationality, or sexuality), others of which come together to create our personalities (like hobbies and interests). On a smaller level, everybody has identities (or traits) when it comes to their shopping habits. For example, preferring brands that offer free delivery, looking for brands with certain moral values, or prioritising quality over quantity.
It’s important to understand the identities your target audience has as well as their emotions because identities are more stable, changing less over time. Focusing your Meta ad creative and messaging based on identities first creates a stable foundation upon which you can build on based on different emotions your target audience may be feeling.
How to collect psychology data?
Understanding how to use the psychology of your target audience in your Meta ads is important, but it’s only one part of the puzzle. To be able to use this information in any meaningful way, you need to know how to gather the psychological data on your target audience so you know what emotions and identities to target.
Where I always like to start is with customer reviews. There’s a whole treasure chest of psychological data in customer reviews, revealing the emotions and identities hidden behind purchases. Whether you’re a new brand or an established brand, you can gain valuable information from looking at product and brand reviews from your customers (if you have any), as well as reviews from competitor brands. Hopefully you’ll be able to find a long list of your and/or competitor reviews. However, going through each review to work out the psychology behind it could take a long time. I recommend speeding things up by inputting the list of customer reviews into an AI platform, quickly and efficiently producing a list of the main emotions and identities demonstrated in the reviews. It can be useful to do this process both on a wider brand level as well as an individual product level as different products may be associated with different emotions and need different messaging.
Another method of collecting psychological data is through social media. Your target audience exists on social media, if they didn’t, you wouldn’t be wanting to run Meta ads. So take advantage of this and check out what groups they’re in, what they’re talking about, and see what questions, concerns, and desires they have for products and brands like yours.
3rd party sites like Brandwatch are also an option for gathering psychological data. The purpose of these sites are to scour the internet collecting information on what people are saying about your brand, competitor brands, and your industry. This gives you an idea of what emotions and identities people are expressing around products like yours.
Once you’ve gathered this data, the hard work doesn’t stop there. The psychology of your target audience can regularly shift. If you don’t keep on top of these changes through regular customer research, your ad messaging is going to start missing the mark and your ad performance will dip. Therefore, it’s vital to continue gathering this psychological data throughout the time you’re running Meta ads.
Summary
Without considering the psychology of your target audience, your Meta ads are unlikely to perform their best. Not only will incorporating psychology into your ads help them reach their full potential, but it’ll also help you scale faster, drive more purchases, and reduce your CPA (trust us – we’ve done this with other clients). Ultimately, the key to your success is to identify a couple of your key target audience emotions and identities and test them, leaning into those who resonate best with your audience.
Want to optimise your Meta ads to speak to the psychology of your target audience? I can help you meet your paid social goals and boost your revenue, just get in touch.