Behavioural science hacks: How to frame your ads to increase clicks

How did some ads generate six times more clicks than others promoting the same product? They matched the mindset of the customer.

Let’s say you run a couples counselling service and are putting an online ad together. You have a choice.

Do you say, “improve communication and intimacy” or “understand and end negative patterns”?

That’s what researchers Mowle, Georgia, Doss and Updegraff (2014) delved into. Creating Google AdWords ads for a real online business, OurRelationship.com, the researchers analysed how many views and clicks each ad variant generated.

They were studying the impact of two aspects of the text ads:

Whether negatively or positively framed ads were more effective; and
Whether the ad being compatible with the mindset of the user changed its effectiveness.

Psychology underpinning the study

Before we get into what the researchers found, we need to cover off something called “Regulatory Fit Theory”.

In short, this theory suggests we each have a way of looking at the world that’s either gain (or promotion) focused, or risk avoidant, prevention focused. Rather than the cup being half-full/half empty, it’s more like “I want the cup” vs “I don’t want to lose the cup”.

Here’s a snapshot of characteristics to look for:

As a general rule, prevention-focused people tend to stick with the status quo, feel worried when things go wrong and work very deliberately. They like hearing how they’ll avoid a problem. Prevention-focused people tend to work quickly, be open to new ideas and experiences and feel dejected when things go wrong. They like to hear about the benefits of something.

Knowing the difference between prevention and promotion mindsets matters because if you have a customer that is prevention-focused, talking to them solely about the benefits of your offer rather than the risks they’ll avoid, simply won’t persuade them. Similarly, talking to a promotion-focused person about what they’ll miss out on rather than the benefits they’ll enjoy, is unlikely to resonate.

Fix a sexless marriage

The researchers realised that what people type into a search engine can be used as an indicator of someone’s regulatory focus. A prevention-focused person, for example, would likely type search terms like “prevent divorce” or “stop communication problems”, where a promotion-minded person would search for “improve communication” or “fix sexless marriage”.

While serving advertisements on Google to more than 4,500 people over 5 weeks for OurRelationship.com, the researchers varied the text within each ad’s description to be prevention or promotion oriented, and either matched to the user’s mindset or not.

They hypothesised that prevention-minded people would be more likely to respond to prevention-worded ads, and promotion-minded people to promotion ads.

Ad text framing and mindset matching

The researchers found that “advertisers can significantly increase clicks on their online search advertisements through careful consideration of the focus of the consumer (e.g., whether the consumer is more focused on possible promotion or on prevention concerns) and presenting advertisements with messages compatible to the regulatory focus of the search term used by the consumer.”

More specifically:

Users were six times more likely to click on a promotion (positively framed) advertisement than a prevention (negatively framed) one, regardless of their mindset;
Promotion-minded searchers were twice as likely to click on an ad, regardless of the type of ad;
Promotion-minded searchers are especially likely to click on a promotion-focused ad. This effect is particularly pronounced;
There’s not as strong an advantage in matching a prevention ad to a prevention-search, though; and
Best performing were ads that were positive and compatible.

Implications for you

This research has significant implications for how you frame your ad, and more broadly, any messages you send to customers.

Some quick tips

Promotion-minded searchers are more likely to clicks ads. You may employ other strategies (like lead-magnets) to reach prevention-focused types who tend to have a slow-burn approach to decision-making.
Compatible messages matter most for promotion-focused searchers, so don’t serve a negative ad to a positively minded person.
Because compatibility doesn’t matter so much for prevention-minded people, you are much better to opt for positive than negative framing as a general rule. This avoids turning promotion-focused people off.
If you are targeting prevention-minded consumers, other researchers have found they tend to prefer concrete rather than abstract terms, so “five steps to prevent sun damage” is likely resonate more than “avoid sun damage”.