MHM#75 Marketing isn't about convincing people

When I studied marketing, one of my lecturers was Professor Byron Sharp, Director of Adelaide’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, the world’s largest centre for marketing research.

One of the principles I learned then, and that still influences how I think about marketing today, is that marketing isn’t about persuading people.

A traditional view of marketing and advertising is that its job is to persuade: present people with a compelling enough message and convince them to choose one brand over another.

But decades of research by Andrew Ehrenberg, Byron Sharp and other researchers associated with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute suggest advertising often works in a much less dramatic way. Rather than persuading people, it can help build and refresh memories of a brand, increasing the likelihood that the brand will come to mind when someone is ready to buy.

I think this is a particularly useful way to think about marketing a therapy practice.

Marketing and memory

A 2021 study by Kelly Vaughan, Armando Maria Corsi, Virginia Beal and Byron Sharp describes this as the weak theory of advertising. Rather than viewing advertising as a strong persuasive force, it proposes that advertising often works as a form of “creative publicity”, repeatedly bringing a brand to people's attention and nudging the memories they have of it.

This connects to the concept of mental availability, which the researchers define as the propensity for a brand to be noticed or come to mind in a buying situation. Marketing can help build, refresh and reinforce the associations between a brand and the different cues people encounter when they're ready to buy.

The researchers looked at eight brands across six categories in Australia and the UK and found that people who were aware of a brand's advertising generally had greater mental availability for that brand than those who weren't. Interestingly, the effect was stronger among people who didn't already use the brand.

The study didn't measure whether people subsequently bought the brand. What it does show is that advertising can influence the memory structures that make a brand more likely to come to mind later. And if a brand is more likely to come to mind later, it increases the likelihood that it will be purchased in a buying situation.

What does this mean for therapists?

A number of people who encounter your marketing probably aren't looking to book an appointment with a therapist at that exact moment.

Someone might watch one of your videos, read an article you've written, come across your website or hear your name from a GP. They don't enquire, and from a purely conversion-focused perspective, it can look like nothing happened.

But something may have happened in memory.

Months later, they might be struggling with anxiety, having difficulties in their relationship or finally deciding it's time to get some support. At that point, the question isn't whether your marketing could have persuaded them to book months earlier. It's whether you come to mind now that they need what you offer.

What do you want people to associate with you?

This research also connects closely with something I spend a lot of time teaching therapists: brand associations. I ask therapists to think about what prospective clients need to think, feel and believe about them to trust that they may be the right therapist for them.

You might want people to associate you with expertise in a particular issue, warmth, understanding, a practical approach, cultural understanding or a particular way of working.

The research underlying mental availability describes memory as a network of concepts connected through associative links. In marketing, these connections become brand associations.

So effective marketing isn't simply about being seen repeatedly. It's also about being deliberate about what you become known for.

Your website, directory profile, social media content, videos and professional relationships all contribute to the associations people build with you over time.

Your marketing doesn't need to convince

For me, this is also a much more comfortable way to think about ethical marketing for therapists.

Your job isn't to convince someone they need therapy or persuade them that you're better than every other therapist.

Your marketing can have a much simpler role: help the right people know you exist, build the right associations around who you are and what you offer, and make it more likely that you come to mind when they need the kind of support you provide.

This is why an Instagram post, article or conversation with a referrer hasn't necessarily failed because nobody immediately booked.

Sometimes marketing can be doing its job long before there is an enquiry to show for it.

References

Romaniuk, J., & Sharp, B. (2004). Conceptualizing and measuring brand salience. Marketing Theory, 4(4), 327–342.

Vaughan, K., Corsi, A. M., Beal, V., & Sharp, B. (2021). Measuring advertising's effect on mental availability. International Journal of Market Research, 63(5), 665–681.

Sharp, B. (2010). How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know. Oxford University Press.