7 Psychological Growth Hacks (That Work)

I’ve always been interested in Psychology and the way it influences marketing so in this resource I’ll go ahead and list out some of my favorite psychological growth hacks that I’ve used to succeed.

Psychological Growth Hacks 1: Opposite Pop-up Messaging

Pop-ups are ubiquitous throughout the web.

The vast majority of pop-ups are triggered by user intent or are timed to display a CTA.

In all instances, they are designed to attract the user’s attention before they leave the site.

In most cases, the message conveys a “last chance to convert” message, typically with an offer.

I’d propose something different, and perhaps more honest.

If the visitor displays intent to leave your site (by motioning their cursor on the back button of their browser) then why not ask why they are leaving?

A gentle and polite message with a one or two-question poll might give you some invaluable information as to why your visitors are leaving.

Using the data you attain in the above growth hack will allow you to reduce bounce and increase engagement and conversion.

Psychological Growth Hacks 2: Three Is The Magic Number…

Pricing tables or pricing bars are all over the Internet.

We see them all the time with everything online. There are almost always three options when it comes to creating an account.

Typically these are categorized in grades like “Bronze”, “Silver” and “Gold” product ranges.

Each level is more expensive but offers more features.

There’s a specific reason why there are (typically) three pricing tables.

Countless research has shown that when customers are presented with three choices, they tend to go for the middle option.

Think about Starbucks.

There is a reason they offer you three coffee cup sizes.

Few people go for the small and most opt for the “regular” which in fact is not that much product compared to the large size.

You should experiment with this principle on your pricing tables, i.e. offer three options with the middle one having the greatest margin.

Some call this growth hack the “decoy effect”.

Psychological Growth Hacks 3: International Numbers Growth Hack

This one is epic and won’t cost the earth either.

You need five minutes for each of these steps.

Step 1, create a Skype account and register three phone numbers in countries where your target customers live.

For example, I was able to get these numbers in Newark, New York (315) 359-5026, Leeds, United Kingdom 0113 328 1367 and 0064 9 333 8181 all for about USD$120 per year.

Step 2, head over to Fiverr and get someone (preferably female) to record a voice message in the accent associated with the geographical number.

So, what’s the benefit of having these numbers?

For a cost of about USD$ 200 a year you can insinuate that you have three offices around the world. It makes you look bigger than you are and also adds a degree of credibility and trust.

What about office addresses? Sure, you could always pay for a virtual office address too!

This simple growth hack gives the illusion that you’re a lot larger than you are and adds an extra channel to your online presence which you can later convert.

I also use a service called eVoicemail, which has done a good job for me sending the recorded voicemails to my email.

Psychological Growth Hacks 4: Voucher Hack That Works (Hide and Seek)

Having a coupon code on your checkout signifies that, of course, you do indeed offer discounts.

Now, if your customer is slightly on the fence about buying your product or service and they see that you have a coupon code option, they might be tempted to open up another browser to search for a coupon online.

Make sure that you have a page optimized for the keywords of “My Brand Coupon” (change “My Brand” for your company name), and as long as you come in the top results your potential customer will see the page, click it, and see that there is indeed a coupon that they can use which gives them a 10% discount (or whatever).

Let the customer copy and paste the coupon code (or promo code) and they’ll satisfy themselves that they’ve just received a good deal and likely proceed with the checkout process.

The beauty of this hack is that you can easily measure the results, i.e. how many people used the promo code.

Psychological Growth Hacks 5: Be Negative, Use Negative Language!

This is kinda crazy, but for some reason, we humans prefer negative news.

It’s not that we “prefer” bad news, it’s just that we react more passionately and with more urgency when we see negative or “sad” or “alarming” messages.

Why is this? Well, it seems that nastiness makes a bigger impact on our brains.

This, apparently, from my research, is due to the brain’s “negativity bias”: your brain is simply built with greater sensitivity to unpleasant news.

The bias is so automatic that it can be detected at the earliest stage of the brain’s information processing. And – those last three words “brain’s information processing” are what growth hackers thrive off.

We need our audience to react. That is really our number one goal. Once we get them to react we can start the pitch, but the starting point of the chemical reaction is the “reaction” – and, interestingly, it seems that negative copywriting has a positive effect on our lead generation activities.

Need examples? Sure. Imagine the following (and highly successful) Ad Copy.

“Dentists Hate Me, Here’s Why”.

The reader is now alarmed. Why would a dentist hate you? What have you done? Wow, is it serious?

“Steal Your Competitors SEO Secrets”.

Again, this Ad Copy has a negative spin of something which suddenly looks interesting. Sure! I’d be curious. Tell me more!

“My Boss Is Jealous Because I Have This Skill”.

Woah! What did you do to make your boss (i.e. authority figure) so jealous, and gosh, this tool that you have must be pretty awesome; what is it? I’m interested!

To summarize, this growth hack is to implant creativity into your ad creation and copywriting.

Try to lean towards certain key human drivers such as greed and fear; this hack emphasizes the “fear” element of these twin emotions.

Psychological Growth Hacks 6: From Free to Paid. But Hurry!

When someone commits to a free trial then they are clearly interested in your service.

Free trial users might just need an offer presented to them when they first log in to encourage them to become full-paying customers.

I saw this time-sensitive CTA when I opened a trial account with KeyWord Finder that offers you a time-sensitive discount for the full features of the software.

The benefit here is that you have the attention of a potential customer that has already taken an important step in signing up for your service, so why not offer them an immediate discount to upgrade?

As always, try it and see

Psychological Growth Hacks 7: Get LinkedIn Users To Link To You

This is an awesome growth hack that’s free and simple.

If you’re on LinkedIn then go ahead and install a Chrome extension called LinkClump and I guarantee you’ll see results straight away.

This hack is psychological and it trades on a feature that LinkedIn knows generates a reaction.

So, in case you don’t know, LinkedIn keeps a record of who has visited your profile. This free growth hack can make your LinkedIn profile one seriously HOT property by alerting dozens of people that you visited their profiles.

In many cases, the alerted recipients are curious about you and they will visit your profile and in many cases connect with you.

Once you’ve installed the AddOn then fill in the search criteria of your ideal potential customers, clients, or just people you’d like to network with. Your search would be based upon these criteria:

• Job title
• Location
• Keywords (any words or combination of words in their profile)

Once all the results (profiles) have loaded then use LinkClump to open all their profiles at the same time, therefore saving you time opening one at a time.

As far as the recipients are concerned you’ve taken the time to visit their profile and many of them will view your profile. Why?

Because they’re curious.

If your profile is written well and you’ve searched for the people who can most benefit from your products and services, you’ll grab their attention for all the right reasons.

The other benefit of this trick is that your profile will be shown to more LinkedIn users because the algorithm will notice that you are getting a lot of incoming requests.