Priming is an important phenomenon in advertising, which indicates the advertisement having the stimulus, which is able to influence how people respond to a subsequent stimulus, and thus enhance the conversion for the products.
Generally, the priming is considered to be driven by our subconscious mind, and it will work by activating an association of certain things in our memory if we had them before.
There used to be an experiment to compare the effectiveness of two advertisements for sofas. One is using white cloud on the blue sky as the background, while another one is using coins on the blue sky as the background. When comparing the sales result after a period, researchers found that the customers seeing the cloud in the sky would prefer the comfortable but more expensive sofas.
On the other hand, the customers being presented with the money would like to choose the cheaper options. This experiment shows that well-designed advertisements can easily enable customers to have positive associations with the promoted products.
There are many types of priming which can be useful under different situations. Direct attribute priming is a method to guide customers to put their focus on some specific features. One experiment shows that, in a computer store, the researcher is trying to discuss with customers who are about to buy a new computer.
The discussion will be focused on different components of the computer such as processors or video cards. After the discussion, it is found that the final purchase of those customers will focus on those components in the discussion.
So, if the discussion is about the processor, the customer will pick up one with a more powerful processor. If the discussion is about the video card, the customer will choose a computer having an advanced video card.
Apart from the direct attribute priming, the indirect attribute priming is also widely used in marketing strategies which is not limited to classic advertisement.
For example, if you are going to a Japanese restaurant to have dinner. If the restaurant is playing traditional Japanese music, psychologically, you will have a better first impression than another Japanese restaurant playing American pop music. You may not even notice this since it will be using associations made in our subconscious.
Another important marketing strategy is to use pictures to prime the customers. Usually, the picture of a happy face will prime better than the picture of a neutral face. Also, some certain brands or colors will prime customers and influence a person’s immediate thoughts on the products.
Although successful priming can help customers to have positive memories on the product, if the feature is one your customers do not want to have or had bad experience before, the priming may produce a negative result.
For example, on the product webpage, the feature which is presented to the customers may cause the customer to lose interest and give up the idea of buying it. So, to attract customers to make the first purchase, a well designed advertisement based on positive priming is necessary.
