3 marketing psychology principles to make them remember you

Your marketing is no good if they don't remember you! Your marketing needs to position you as the go to expert in your field and get them to remember you when the time comes for them to swipe that pretty little credit card! This is relevant for clients, customers, and referral partners! 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Think Like a CMO, the podcast for entrepreneurs who are ready to stop doing random acts of marketing and start thinking like the chief marketing officer that your business actually needs. I'm your host, Sarah Gemmel. I'm a marketing strategist and consultant helping small business owners just like you to build marketing ecosystems that actually create predictable and reliable results. Around here, we talk about what it looks like to really step into your role as a CMO, to see the big picture lead with your marketing strategy, and stop wasting time on productive, busy work that isn't actually getting you anywhere. This is all about no fluff, honest conversations, potent strategies, and practical insights that you can use right now to make your marketing work smarter. You know that marketing is the lifeline of your business, and a big piece of that marketing is that people need to remember you, right? And there's been a ton of psychological studies that have been done on memory, and a lot of times what I see in small business owners is they're missing a lot of these marketing psychology principles that would help them to get their audience to remember them more. We need your target audience to remember you when they're ready to buy and when they're actively seeking to invest in a solution. But we also need your referral partners and the people that you have great relationships with to remember you when it's time to make the referral. So we're gonna jump right into three psychological principles that explain memory a little bit more, but not just getting into like the geeky science, because you know I can geek out on some psychology science, okay? But we're gonna talk about just a really brief overview of what the psychological principle is and how it applies to your marketing so that you can take these like tangible tactical action items from this episode and start implementing them immediately in your marketing. And you know, I always say if you're not taking notes, I'm not doing my job. So you're gonna want to either save this for later or grab a pen and paper if you have one around. The first one that a lot of people actually know about, but they don't know the name of it, is this it's called the mirror exposure effect, but it's the idea that memory is built through frequency. Humans remember what they see and hear the most frequently. This is why everyone preaches consistently, right? Why if you have to stay top of mind, why you have to have an omnipresence across different platforms. How can you be the go-to expert in your field that shows up the most frequently, right? There's uh, it's kind of bullshit in my opinion, but there's this idea that's been floating around for decades that it's seven touch points to buy, and now in 2026, it's 21 touch points. There's no science or statistics to back up how many touch points your audience needs to buy. It really depends on the individual, it depends on your industry, it depends on the offer and the price point, it depends on all these things, right? But we need them to see you frequently enough that when they are actively seeking to invest in a solution, they come to you to explore their options. But this also relates to your messaging, right? And your offers and your branding. It's not that they just need to see your face the most frequently, they need to be reminded exactly what you do, who you do it for, right, and what the outcome is that you provide. So something you can do to build through the mere exposure theory, right? To build through frequency is really look at where are you showing up? You don't need to show up constantly to show up consistently. But where can you show up more consistently and where can you create more of an omnipresence so that you're staying top of mind through different avenues and different platforms for your audience at different points in their buying journey. Okay, next up is the serial position effect. Really, all this means is that people remember the first thing they hear and that the last thing they hear. So this is really important in like networking, right? If you're listening to 10 intros, the first person and the last person is typically gonna be who they remember first just naturally. So if you're somewhere in the middle, you want to make sure that you disrupt the pattern and you give them a reason to remember you. Give them a reason for you to stand out in their brain. And this is something we'll talk about in the third one. But just remember that people remember first and last. So that applies to networking. It also applies to landing pages, right? The middle of the landing page, there are gonna be some buyers that look at that and want to read every single little detail, but there are a huge group of buyers that look at the first hero section and the last section of the whole page, right? So, how can you make sure that the first thing and the last thing that they see really drives home in keywords, in the right messaging, positioning you as a go-to expert, the go-to person in your field? But also, how can you look at having a better hook in your content? Whether that's the first line out of your mouth in a video on Instagram, or it's the subject line of your email, or it's the title of your podcast. That's gonna be the first thing that they see. And then the last thing that they see in any one individual piece of your content or piece of your marketing is gonna be your call to action. Is your call to action strong and clear? I've been doing hundreds of marketing audits over the last like two or three years. And one thing that I tell almost every single person in a marketing audit is that their CTA is weak or non-existent. The audience doesn't know where you want them to go, and that can severely interrupt the lead flow. Okay, and the third one is the spacing effect. The spacing effect really just means that distributed learning is deeper memory, okay? The interesting thing here, this is a really interesting statistic. 70% of new information is lost within 24 hours if it's not reinforced. Okay, this was done through a study from a guy named Herman Ebbinghaus. And he mapped out this thing called the forgetting curve, but really what you need to take from that for your marketing is that people lose 70% of new information if it's not reinforced within 24 hours. So they find you, right? That's their first uh entry point into your world, that's their first discovery point to who you are if that's not reinforced within 24 hours on some type of platform, they're gonna forget, right? Same thing with like networking. They listen to your intro in networking, but they're not seeing any type of reinforcement after from your other marketing channels or from some type of follow-up. So, how can you re-inforce new information within 24 hours? This kind of goes back to the first one, right? We talked about creating this omnipresence, showing up consistently. But think about you don't have to send manual follow-up saying, hey, just circling back, hey, do you want this? Do you want this? It doesn't need to be manual, right? In order to reinforce information about who you are, what you do, who you serve, or even if you're educating on a topic, providing education or perspective shifting, you can create your own reinforcement by having multiple channels for them to go to. So, for example, they find you through Instagram, they're gonna go to your feed and they're gonna see your other content within that 24 hours, or maybe they go from your Instagram to your podcast, right? Or maybe they meet you in networking, they download your freebie, and there's an email the next day providing some type of information. It doesn't have to be manual, but how can you create different uh assets in your marketing to reinforce new information within 24 hours? New information being either who you are, right? Or if you're educating on a certain topic or perspective shifting on a specific topic, especially if you really like have strong beliefs in something that goes against the rest of your industry. If they're seeing A from everyone in your industry, but they come to you and they see B, they really need for that belief or that piece of information to be reinforced so that they can deepen their trust within your brand. So that's it. That's the quick and dirty marketing psychology principles that you can take right now to make your audience remember you better so that you can work smarter, not harder, right? You can start implementing these three things in your next piece of content, your next email, your next networking intro. How can you show up more frequently across different platforms, right? How can you make the first thing they see and the last thing they see stronger? And then how can you really distribute this learning and reinforce different ideas within 24 hours by having more systematic marketing or having a more omnipresence or both, right? Make sure you follow the follow the podcast, okay? Save this for later, send it to a friend. We're gonna make more episodes just like this that break down different psychological principles that you can use in your marketing. Thanks so much for tuning in to Think Like a CMO. If this episode helped you think about your marketing in a new way, go ahead and follow the show so you don't miss any more. And if you're ready to tighten up your marketing strategy, create a marketing plan that actually works for you, go ahead and check out the free resources in the show notes. I'll also drop the link of where you can book a free clarity call to discuss your options. If you're looking for marketing support, you'll find everything you need in the show notes. And remember, you're already the CMO of your business. Let's just make sure you're thinking like one.