What’s in this article:
- By adjusting and personalizing your messaging for each individual, your offers will be better-received — and might help close the psychological distance you have with customers over time
Let’s talk about dating apps. If you have one installed, open it and re-read some interactions you had with matches you eventually declined. See that one who kept messaging you twice a day? Or the match who got way too serious during a first date? Or the one that creeped you out by mentioning details from your social media page?
If you somehow matched with your marketing campaign on that same dating app, how would it behave? Would it respect your boundaries, or come on too strong?
Marketing is like romance in that every relationship is different. Some leads are genuine superfans who love to engage with brands across email, social media, and every possible channel. But most are testing the waters with something more casual, like an email newsletter or discount. If your campaigns are built entirely around high-value superfans, those casual leads will immediately swipe left.
To be clear, targeting potential superfans is a valid strategy since they drive returns like no other customer. But if marketers fail to connect with casual leads, they will miss out on promising connections — and relationships that can blossom into something more. That’s why it is important to make sure that you’re listening to customers and how they want to be treated. What you may or may not know is that growth’s secret sauce is your existing customers.
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Why psychological distance matters
According to a team of marketing researchers, we can use the principles of psychological distance to tap into brand relationships — no matter how deep or shallow they may be. A new study awaiting publication in the Journal of Marketing — aptly titled “They’re Just Not That Into You” — argues that meeting customers at their engagement level is far more effective than trying to upgrade relationships.
Construal-Level Theory defines psychological distance as the cognitive separation between the self and everything else in the world. We use this separation to conceptualize the literal space between objects or the social distances between people and groups. CLT is why you consider one person to be your friend, but another just an acquaintance. In marketing terms, people can feel familiar with trusted brands and platonic about others and those relationships influence how they regard any branded messaging they receive.
The ROI of respecting boundaries
The Journal of Marketing study uses this perspective to reconceptualize and measure customer feelings for a brand. The end result is that different types of messaging drive positive outcomes for close and distant customer segments. “Specifically, if consumers feel psychologically distant to a brand, we find they respond better to abstract, high-level language,” co-author Mansur Khamitov explains. “Whereas we find that concrete language is preferred among consumers who feel very close to a brand.”
In one experiment, the authors segmented potential customers by their psychological distance to a tea brand. When using abstract, conceptual language — such as “the ethereal essence envelops and soothes because of each tea’s playful yet calming aromas” — distant customers were willing to pay 35 percent more for their tea. Close customers, on the other hand, respond to concrete language with physical descriptions: “During this time the tea leaves open, hydrate, and infuse the cup with the essence and aroma of tea fruit and flowers.”
The study suggests psychological distance applies to more than shopping for oneself — another experiment determined that charitable donations increase by 67% to 88% when messaging matches distance. Given these results, it’s safe to say campaigns that acknowledge the distance and boundaries of each group can benefit your financial bottom line.
More research is required, but marketers can start considering how they segment close and distant customers. Just like a first date, don’t presume to speak to every customer like you’ve known each other for ages. By adjusting and personalizing your messaging for each individual, your offers will be better-received — and might help close the distance over time.