Behavioral Science for B2B Marketing With Nancy Harhut [Video]

Most B2B marketers think buyers are rational first and emotional later. They are wrong. 

There’s a strong undercurrent of emotional reasons twirling around as these buyers decide. In fact, a buyer at a workplace is forced to appear rational. 

Will I look good with the decision? 

Will my boss praise me?

Will I risk my social capital?

These questions, not quite rational, precede any rational consideration for the buyer. 

“People, including B2B buyers, make decisions for emotional reasons,” believes Nancy Harhut, co-founder of HBT Marketing. “They quickly justify those decisions with rational reasons. It’s a fine balance.”

Tapping into behavioral science can uncover such decision-making shortcuts that buyers use. This can help B2B marketers design more proof-backed campaigns. Yet, where do you start? How do you convince your leadership? Which principles should you use? And how do you test for the right approach? 

In a chat with me, Nancy, who is also the author of ‘Using Behavioral Science in Marketing,’ answers these questions and shares her top behavioral science hacks to market better, build trust, and sell more. 

This interview is part of G2’s Professional Spotlight series. For more content like this, subscribe to G2 Tea, a newsletter with SaaS-y news and entertainment. 

To watch the full interview, check out the video below:

Deep dives with Nancy Harhut

Tell us a bit about your professional journey and how you developed an interest in behavioral marketing.

I graduated from Boston University with a degree in journalism, but I knew I would not be great at it. So, in my last year, I took other writing classes, including advertising, corporate communications, and public relations. I knew I wanted to write, but being a journalist wasn’t my calling. 

Upon graduating, I joined Mullen Advertising and later worked at Inc. Magazine in their marketing department. Then, I moved to an ad agency called Digitas. It was much smaller than the big, global agency it is today. 

I continue to work my way through advertising and marketing agencies, focusing on direct response marketing, customer relationship management, and performance marketing. It was less about building brands and more about getting people to act. 

Then, at one point, one of my mentors gave me a copy of ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ by Robert Cialdini. This book was a game changer for me. And I went down the rabbit hole of behavioral science and started learning persuasion techniques. 

I began to study how people make decisions. It isn’t the way marketers like to believe. We believe people make well-thought-out, carefully considered decisions all the time. Often, people make decisions automatically. They have decision defaults or shortcuts they rely on. They use shortcuts for everything from opening or not opening an email to shortlisting vendors. 

I don't want to say there's no thoughtful consideration in these decisions, but a lot of what leads to an action is automatic. So, I studied this more and started applying the principles to marketing. 

So, I’d be reading a book on behavioral science and think of scenarios where I could apply principles from it. I'd underline and highlight these principles in books and make margin notes. Then, I'd come to the office and apply them to write copies. 

When it started to work, I thought I had found my calling. So that's taken me to where we are today. I wrote the book using behavioral science and marketing. I also run the agency, where we focus on applying marketing best practices and behavioral science to increase the likelihood of our clients getting the response they look for to emails, landing pages, and social media content. 

You’ve called upon both B2C and B2B sellers to build emotional connections with customers. How can companies balance their emotional appeals to customers with rationale?

The word ‘balance’ that you just used is the perfect word here because we want both. 

We know that people make decisions for emotional reasons and quickly justify those decisions with rational reasons. They justify their decisions to themselves and to the people around them. This is a nice balance.

“It’s good to lead with emotional triggers because that pulls people in. Then, you can provide rational sales points for people to justify their decisions.”

Nancy Harhut
Co-founder of HBT Marketing

You don't want to go all emotion, but you also don’t want to go all rational. In B2B, we think specifying features is enough for people to decide. But there’s more to the story, which is the emotional component. 

The buyer will think: 

• If I choose this solution, will it be easy to get through?
• Will people push back on me if I make this decision? 
• Will it take a long time to onboard the solution? This could mean getting home late to spend time with family for some days. 

These are considerations floating in the background. In addition, buyers ask: 

• Is this a good solution for my company? 
• What is the price point? 
• Could it solve our problems? 

So, it’s about finding the balance between the specific things that people need to justify their decisions and the emotions that swirl around them as they decide. 

So, the B2B buyer is no less emotional than the B2C buyer. But is the B2B buyer more rational? 

I think B2B buyers are forced to appear more rational. They're forced to justify their decisions. 

But they may not be any more rational or emotional. You know, people are people, whether at home or at work. But we’re forced to be more logical at work and tick off certain criteria. You’re asked to justify your decision here. 

In a B2C scenario, purchases are quicker because you’re not always asked why you bought something. 

According to a recent G2 survey, marketing leads all functions in AI adoption. How is AI’s use in marketing transforming how we tap into the B2B customer psyche? What are the opportunity areas here? 

AI is helping marketers be more efficient, crunch data faster, and search for information quickly. 

On the other hand, it's affecting what we launch into the marketplace and what our messages are. This is where storytelling becomes important. Everyone has their own story, and you want to make sure you have a story that no one else can tell. 

AI in marketing is also opening the door for more honesty about where you fall short. This is the last thing you’d want to do, right? You would keenly talk about how wonderful you are and how you’re better than everyone else. 

But nobody can be perfect, including brands and products.

“With the growth of AI, it's authentic, refreshing, and surprising when a company talks about an area where it may not excel. ”

Nancy Harhut
Co-founder of HBT Marketing

This is an opportunity for brands to forge more authentic personal connections with customers and build their brand equity by being honest. They can do this by saying things least expected of them, and that is something an AI-generated copy won’t focus on.

In behavioral science, this is called the pratfall effect, where you admit to a slight shortcoming to look more honest and win trust. In the AI age, whenever everyone sounds the same, it’s really important that you sound different. 

Which psychological principles of marketing do you see being the least used by B2B companies but having huge potential? 

My answer would be the idea of cognitive fluency. Cognitive fluency means that people prefer things and messages that are easier to think about and understand. They also tend to judge them to be more truthful and feel more confident in their ability to decide between them. 

In the B2B segment, we ignore cognitive fluency and complicate our messages. We use big phrases and words and long paragraphs. We use acronyms, industry jargon, and buzz phrases. We feel this is how educated professionals are supposed to be spoken to. 

You feel you have to justify an expensive purchase by sounding very sophisticated. This is despite many behavioral science tests showing that people prefer things that are easier to think about.

It's not that the B2B audience isn’t smart. We're time-pressed. You are competing for attention. Anything a marketer does to make it easier for the buyer to grasp and understand their message will help them sell better. 

“We're afraid to simplify things when we should. It can work in our favor.”

Nancy Harhut
Co-founder of HBT Marketing

A Princeton University study has explored this. In the study, researchers took thesis papers of PhD candidates and replaced every word that was nine letters or longer with a shorter synonym. 

Then, they had some people read the original versions and the versions with shortened words. They were asked to judge the paper and the author. The researchers found that people preferred papers with shorter phrases; they thought they were better written. They judged the authors of these papers to be more intelligent. 

So if you can make it easier for people to understand, they’re going to prefer you. They’re going to rate you as more intelligent. 

Attention spans are declining today. What principles of behavioral marketing can marketers use today to grab attention quickly? 

One thing you can use is surprise. Instead of blending in, you want to do something unusual, different, or surprising. 

A University of Glasgow study has found that when people are surprised, their emotions are amplified by 400%. You may ask what this means. Two things happen when our emotions are amplified. One, we focus on the thing that surprises us, and two, we remember it longer. 

“What do marketers want? We want people to focus on our message and remember it. Surprising people can help catch attention and make this happen.”

Nancy Harhut
Co-founder of HBT Marketing

You can surprise people in three different ways:

1. With the words and language you use. It could surprise them if you say things in a way that people don’t expect. 

2. Use images and visuals that people least expect, and that are uncommon for your category. 

3. Appear in unexpected places. If your B2B buyer uses a medium in their spare time, showing a message there can grab attention. 

Beyond surprising people, companies can use the information gap theory. That is, if you create a gap between what somebody knows and what they want to know, you know they’ll act to close the gap. This can also help grab attention. 

You can help close the gap by answering the who, what, where, when, why, and how — an approach commonly used by journalists to grab attention. It could benefit you if you lead your stories by answering these questions. 

For example, you could answer questions like: why are consumers buying more from a specific brand? Who are the top five providers in this particular category? What’s the best time to change your CRM? Your buyers may not know the answers to these questions, so they’ll take the step to close the information gap. 

We know behavioral marketing and a focus on emotional triggers are good for business. But how can marketers tie it to revenue and build a business case for it?

A lot of times, there's a desire to inject emotion into marketing, but you run up against resistance from the leadership. They hit back saying it’s never been done that way. 

It's hard to convince the powers that be. As I mentioned earlier, my background is in direct marketing or relationship marketing. So, we do a lot of testing and learn from it. When you want to check what can work, try multiple approaches and see which one does. That's an answer I often give to my clients. 

If you don’t think adding emotion will help, just test it and see. You can carve out a small audience and run a pilot program. Maybe emotion may not work entirely at a particular time, for a particular message, or for a particular audience. But let’s not argue; let’s not guess. Let’s put it out there in the marketplace and see what our customers and prospects tell us. 

We had a client who made business intelligence software. It’s an expensive and complicated product. It bubbles up siloed data to give you a full 360° view of all your data. 

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Our client wanted to roll out a very straightforward message: you can unlock the data in your silos so you have a full 360° view. And we said there’s more to it. There are emotions involved. 

So we dug a little bit deeper and asked them to put themselves in the shoes of the executive who has to make decisions based on data. They're not seeing all the data in one place and might feel nervous about making the decision. If only they could get a 360° view of data, they could decide confidently. 

If the decision turned out to be wrong, it wouldn’t just affect their job or reputation but also everyone at the company, potentially affecting its reputation and profitability. So, we created a campaign showing the software as an antacid for making tough decisions. The solution could act as the delete button for that voice in your head. 

We tested this against a more straightforward problem-solution articulation of the product’s benefits. We found a double-digit lift in purchase intent when we used the more emotional message. 

So, I stand by the idea of testing because it will give you the answer. Sometimes, the answer can be surprising and benefit your bottomline. 

Where do companies start to integrate behavioral marketing into their marketing strategy, and how? Where do you think most go wrong with implementation?

In marketing, we often think about why somebody should do what we want them to do. But you also want to ask why they might not. This is where you start with behavioral marketing. 

Identify the top two or three reasons someone might not want to do what we're asking them to do. Maybe they’re not familiar with your brand or feel the existing solution is enough. Maybe they feel you’re pricey. 

Next, look at available behavioral science tactics and see which ones will most likely help you overcome that buying behavior. Then, you want to test them in the market. 

If buyers don’t act in the expected way due to a lack of awareness, you can employ social proof that mentions other companies, including buyers who bought your solution. You can test this against the use of the authority principle, which taps into some well-known authority representing the industry. 

Once you’ve tested both, you can double down on the method that worked better. 

The biggest problem is that when people experiment with behavioral science, they stop at one test when they don’t get incredible results. It could well be that they didn’t test enough or in the right way. 

“One-and-done testing is not the right way. It's a nuanced science. It requires experimentation, testing, and delving into how humans behave. ”

Nancy Harhut
Co-founder of HBT Marketing

Occasionally, you can get a blowback, even an unintended consequence. For example, while using social proof, if you say, “Like many people, you might not have heard of us, but let me tell you why we're a good choice,” it could backfire as buyers could view your company as having a lesser presence in the market. So, you must be careful not to misuse the principles. 

The principles are powerful and easy to apply. But they require some experience and perspective. If what you’re looking for doesn’t work in one test, don't stop just yet. Go a bit deeper, try a bit more, and you'll likely see the response you're looking for.

You almost anticipate a black-and-white response when it may actually be gray. 

What are some of the most powerful and research-backed words and phrases marketers should use in their messaging strategies? And why do they work?

One good word is ‘new’ or any words from the family of new, including now, introducing, announcing, finally, and soon. 

These work as the brain is hardwired to seek out news and novelty. Finding something new activates the reward center of our brain, producing dopamine, which, among other things, is a feel-good chemical. And we’re constantly looking for that next hit of dopamine. 

He finds that ‘free’ produces such an emotional charge in us that we overvalue the free thing. So, if the item were even a few cents, we might not be interested. But if it's free, we have to have it, right? 

So anytime you offer a free upgrade or 10 hours of free training, it makes the customer pay attention and overvalue what’s on offer. 

As discussed earlier, people skim through messages as companies compete for attention. When they see the word ‘you,’ their eyes go directly to it.  

“I tell my clients we want to use ‘you’ maybe five times as often as we use the words ‘I’, ‘we’, and ‘our’.”

Nancy Harhut
Co-founder of HBT Marketing

That’s because your eye jumps across the screen, and ‘you’ attracts it like a magnet. 

You should not only ask someone to do something but explain why they should do it. Sometimes, it could be a reason that no one else can give. You should use ‘because’ even without a unique reason. 

First, your defenses drop because you’re just imagining, right? This isn't reality. This puts me in a better position to sell because you’re not pushing back against me. 

Second, when I ask you to imagine something, you create the mental picture that suits you, that's personalized or tailored to you. This is better than telling you what you should imagine. This is different for everyone. 

For example, if I told you you could save five hours with a tool, you’d imagine what you’d do with the saved time. This is better than telling you what you could do with it. The buying becomes easier since you’ve already visualized the outcome in your own way. 

You earlier touched upon the pratfall effect, especially in the B2B segment. What are your favorite behavioral marketing hacks for B2B marketers? 

One of them is availability bias. This means people judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily they can recall a relevant example. 

So even if you’ve never flown, and I tell you about how safe it is to fly, you’d still have an opinion based on examples from media inputs. You’ll think of every news story you’ve read involving a plane crash, engine failure, or hijack. And you’ll consider flying to be an unsafe experience. 

How do you use this in marketing? Before asking someone to buy your product, you want to back it up. You want to get them to think of a time when it would have come in handy if they had your product in the past. 

Or you’d want them to imagine a future where using your product would help. And then you want to make the ask. We want to say, “Hey, how about buying?” But we want to first start with this idea of availability bias by getting them to recall a different time like, “Back then, if I were their company or if I were their customer, or let’s say, if I were a customer of their company, I wouldn't have had that problem I had. 

Another one is autonomy bias. This is a deep-seated desire to exert some kind of control over ourselves and our environments. We don't like to feel pushed or forced. We like to feel we have autonomy, or what psychologists call agency. 

Giving people choices is a great way to make them feel in charge. Some studies show that if you give somebody two choices instead of just one, you can nearly quadruple the likelihood that they'll make a buying decision at the moment. 

This is because when you offer just one thing, people don’t have the context or options to compare it with. So they say they’ll research more, Google it, or ask their colleagues. Then people get busy and forget about it, and the buying moment disappears. 

When you put two choices before somebody, you suddenly give them context and comparison. This makes it easier for people to decide. It’s no longer a question of “Do I really want this?” It’s about which of the two I want. And which of them is an easier decision to make because our brains like the easier way out? 

“We like things to be simple. We like things to be easy. We like things to be fast. So “do I or do I not want this” is a much harder choice to make than which of these two do I want.”

Nancy Harhut
Co-founder of HBT Marketing

Related to these principles is what behavioral scientists call the BYAF principle. It stands for “but you are free.” If you follow up and ask people to do something with “but you are free” to decide, it doubles the likelihood of people doing those things. 

This works because you’re reminding the person that they’re still in control, that the decision is being made of their own accord.