Branding is deeper than a logo… You need to get your customer’s head.

While building a brand may be a popular topic, a lot of people fail to realize just how deeply the principles of marketing are rooted in basic human psychology. You see, your brand isn’t a logo, a name or a product, it’s the idea that people get when they look at any of these markings. As for the ideas, they are always individual, subjective and, once again, come from our basic understanding of the principles of the world. With this in mind and without further ado, as well as to show you just how deep the rabbit hole actually goes, here are three serious psychology-based branding trends that you definitely need to look out for in 2018.

1. Trust and transparency

Even though the issue of trust is something that people talk about 24/7, not a lot of people understand all that actually goes into this notion. First of all, in order to be willing to do business with your brand, people have to trust you with their money. Because of this, you need to be transparent about your prices. A lot of businesses, especially e-commerce retailers try to make their prices more appealing by displaying a price before taxes, delivery, and additional fees. In turn, they get a lot of first-time customers but have a hard time establishing trust and gaining return customers (something we will discuss at length later on).

This matter of pricing is particularly important, seeing as how not being able to see the full price of a product is one of the main reasons behind a high shopping cart abandonment rate, especially if the shipping cost is unexpectedly high. Taught by previous experience, people are often reluctant to deal with a business that fails to meet their transparency standards and this is probably a textbook example.

Another thing you need to keep in mind is that the issue of trust is something that plays quite a strong part in the world of influencer marketing. This is why more and more people are turning towards micro- rather than macro-influencers. While the latter may have more followers, the former ones are usually more niche-specific. In other words, if you are leading a health and lifestyle blog, an endorsement by a medical expert might carry more weight than an endorsement of an A-list celebrity. Sure, the latter one has a greater reach, yet, their expertise in the matter is quite questionable.

2. Simplicity has an appeal of its own

If there’s one thing that the internet users as a demographic lack, it’s patience. After not responding for about 4 seconds, 25 percent of your entire audience is bound to leave you. If your check-out system is too complicated or just several steps longer than they deem it should, you will also get abandoned. Instead of being a thing to admire, in the digital world complexity usually means inefficiency. For this reason alone, more and more veteran web designers are quickly turning towards minimalism, simplicity and high responsiveness.

Moreover, having a plethora of choice is not necessarily a positive thing, especially in the digital world. According to one study, two groups of consumers were presented with a $1 coupon for a jar of jam. One group had to choose between 6 different varieties while another group had to make the same choice between 24 different types of jam. The results were shocking, due to the fact that members of the first group were found to be 10 times more likely to actually make a choice. In other words, more is not necessarily better. Needless to say, this is another idea that you need to enhance your design with.

3. The power of habit

The next psychological phenomenon that you could explore is the good old power of habit. Earlier on, we mentioned the importance of return customers and, according to a survey, in most industries, 8 percent of regular customers make up 40 percent of the company’s entire profit.

Apart from this, repeat customers are incredibly frugal, seeing as how they need minimal persuasion in order to return for more. In fact, that same survey claims that an average buyer, who was satisfied with a previous sale, has about 27 percent of chance to return for a second purchase. After a second purchase, the chance that they will return for the third time rapidly rises to 45 percent. Finally, after three successful interactions, they have a 54 percent chance of returning for more.

Additionally, it’s not just about the odds or the effort necessary to bring these people back. Ultimately, the more interactions they have with your brand, the greater their confidence in you gets. This results in two additional positive trends that are hard to overlook. First, they are much more likely to recommend you to their friends and family, which leads to invaluable word of mouth (WOM) recommendations. Second, the value of their purchases will rise, as well, seeing as how they will feel that their money is safe in your hands.

By harnessing the power of these three simple principles, you can easily make your branding efforts much more efficient and the results of your marketing much more consistent. Furthermore, unlike some of the most commonly misused advertising tricks, psychology-based branding methods provide long-term results. In other words, they are not there to boost your sales in short-term but to increase your overall brand loyalty for years to come. They are there to turn your business into a corporation and your corporation into a legacy.

Editors Note: This is an awesome guest post from Nick Brown. Nick is a blogger and a marketing expert currently engaged on projects for Media Gurus, an Australian business, and marketing resource. He is an aspiring street artist and does Audio/Video editing as a hobby.