Over $475 billion industry, marketing has been incessantly growing since the Internet came about – and whether this was the global economic crisis of 2007-2008 or the pandemic, it has never ceased to shed light on the products they want you to buy. Yeah, that’s right: most people – including you, my reader – cannot withstand smart, alluring advertising, and they tend to get hooked by allegedly generous offers and promises.
From discounts to freebies to fake scarcity, there are a lot of techniques to sell ice to Eskimos, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take it under control. Mastering your decision-making may take a long time and much more effort than reading this piece, but why not start right now? Anna Rosak, a gambling writer from KasynoHEX with a solid grasp of marketing, has gathered the most cunning online marketing tricks in one place. Without further ado, let’s dig in!
Promises, Promises, and One More Time Promises
Without a shadow of a doubt, the most dangerous marketing trick is outright deception. Although not being marketing per se – after all, most countries would forbid trickery – deception may take many forms and is practiced by many online businesses, from shops to casinos.
Speaking of which, overpromising and underdelivering is still a hallmark of some online casinos, even despite the ever-growing competition in the field. Greedy casinos usually sugarcoat their bonuses and conditions, or they show you only the bright side of the deal – while the dark side may render the deal useless or even deceitful.
Here are a few examples of how online casinos may lure naïve players into spending their money:
- Offering munificent bonuses without mentioning wagering requirements and other limitations, such as the maximum bonus money withdrawal limit, games excluded from the bonus offer, geographical restrictions, etc.
- Offering free games for registered users only (which makes players one step closer to depositing their money into their casino account).
- Making the most important information on fees, deposit/withdrawal limits – the fullest info on casino payouts you can find here: https://polskiekasynohex.org/kasyna-online/najszybsze-wyplaty/ – and promotions obscure, ambiguous, and hard to understand.
Scarcity
The mysterious desire to own something scarce is one of the most powerful drivers behind our purchase decisions, and marketers take full advantage of it. In a telling study, 200 female graduates were asked to rate the attractiveness of cookies from two baskets, the one with plenty of cookies and the one with very few. Unsurprisingly, even though the cookies were exactly the same, most participants found scarce cookies more attractive.
More often than not, scarcity is fake – that is, created artificially by marketers. Countdowns, limited offers, and even sales and discount prices are all made to make you spend more money, not to save it. In some cases, though, you can even check whether the scarcity is fake or real. If you’re dealing with a countdown banner, refresh the website and see if the countdown time jumped back to the initial time (and if it did, the timer is not even real). On some occasions it starts with just introducing you to something fun, like home entertainment ideas, that don’t look like it will push much money out of you. But there are many hidden hooks in every marketing strategy – they may seem innocent at the first glance, but they definitely aim at getting you hooked.
Useless Extra Features
The technological improvements of the past two decades are unbelievable, but how much of those do you really use in, say, your smartphone? Air Call Accept (for accepting calls without touching your phone), Smart Scroll (scrolling based on your eye movements), Smart Stay (the screen stays on while you are looking at it), Group Play (streaming music to your friends who are within Wi-Fi Range) – how many of those are you even aware of? But you’ve paid for all of them!
In many cases, upgrades and improvements are designed to create a strong feeling that you’re falling behind the times and should urgently buy a new gizmo to keep the pace. In reality, you just want to have a better device than your neighbors, a psychological drawback craftily used by marketers.
Decoy
As a thoughtful buyer, you tend to compare the goods in an attempt to gain the most value for the lowest price. But even this allegedly reasonable approach may backfire on you if you’re not careful enough. Artful marketers may try to lead you astray by adding obviously unfavorable offers. For example, to sell you a hundred-dollar worth gym membership, they may also offer a much worse two-hundred-dollar membership that would include only a single extra day at the gym.
The Bottom Line
Most humans share the same basic desires, which makes them easy to manipulate, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to avoid marketing traps. Quite the contrary – by learning the psychological mechanisms behind the main marketing hooks, you can significantly improve your decision-making and most of the time purchase things based on the value they bring you.
Disclaimer: This article contains sponsored marketing content. It is intended for promotional purposes and should not be considered as an endorsement or recommendation by our website. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and exercise their own judgment before making any decisions based on the information provided in this article.