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The Biases 4 How Brands are Leveraging Behavioural Biases in PPC Ad Copy An analysis of the mortgage market CONTENTS Introduction to Behavioural Economics 2 Bringing Behavioural Biases into Digital Marketing 3 The Biases 4 Our Methodology 6 Our Findings 7 Implications 14 Next Steps 15 Contributors 16 How Mortgage Brands are Leveraging Behavioural Biases in PPC Ad Copy 2 Introduction to Behavioural Economics In 2002 when Daniel Kahneman basis provided by Kahneman and his became the first psychologist to research partner Amos Tversky by win the Nobel prize for Economics thinkers such as Richard Thaler and it represented a shift in the way Cass Sunstein who co-wrote ‘Nudge’, that Economists viewed consumer the best seller which helped push the decision making, away from the rigid field into the mainstream. view that consumers make choices guided by strictly logical factors, Marketing thought leaders such as and towards the more nuanced view Rory Sutherland, Richard Shotton, that decisions are influenced by and Phil Barden have led the a number of ‘behavioural biases’; charge in sharing how Behavioural cognitive shortcuts that take the hard Economics not only provides work out of decision-making whilst explanations for many of the ideas making it somewhat irrational. that marketers had always held to be true, but also how it can inspire Since then the field of Behavioural new strategies to drive growth for Economics has been built on the brands. How Mortgage Brands are Leveraging Behavioural Biases in PPC Ad Copy 3 Bringing Behavioural Biases into We’ve chosen mortgages in this case Digital Marketing for two key reasons The speed, scale and flexibility offered by Digital At01 ROAST we’ve been building and executing Marketing make it the perfect sandbox in which to PPC strategies for financial services brands test Behavioural Biases , with Pay-per-click (PPC) for over five years, so we’re experts in this The speed, scale and advertising being an excellent candidate for quick area. flexibility offered by test-and-learn. Digital Marketing At ROAST we’ve been leveraging the power of We02 believe the Mortgage space is make it the perfect Behavioural Biases in PPC for years, and our particularly interesting at this moment in recent advances in Natural Language Processing time, with a number of market forces in play, sandbox in which to test (NLP) and Machine Learning have allowed us to such as the the Stamp Duty holiday, and Behavioural Biases. analyse large data-sets with increasing speed disruptive digitally native challenger brands and consistency. putting pressure on the established market leaders. In this study we have chosen to look at the six biases analysed in Google’s ‘Decoding Decisions - Why these six biases? Making The Most of the Messy Middle’ study from July 2020 and apply them to a study of PPC ad There are far more than six behavioural copy used by Mortgage businesses. biases (in fact we have identified over 100), and many are applicable to PPC ad copy, but Why Mortgages? choosing the same biases as Google enables us to build on the findings of their study in a The beauty of this analysis is that it can be way which we believe will help progress our performed on any sector, vertical, or set of industry’s knowledge in this area. competitors. How Mortgage Brands are Leveraging Behavioural Biases in PPC Ad Copy 4 The Biases Mortgage Specific Examples Authority Bias Leveraging positive signals from recognised bodies or experts in order to reduce the cognitive load on the consumer. Category Heuristics Using recognised category signals which provide short-cuts for buyers to make informed decisions. Power of Free The price of £0 is irrationally more exciting than any other price, so much so that consumers will prefer a deal with a £0 component to a deal that offers objectively better true value. How Mortgage Brands are Leveraging Behavioural Biases in PPC Ad Copy 5 The Biases Mortgage Specific Examples Power of Now Humans are hard-wired to be biased towards the present and will over-value offers that are available instantly. Simply put, people hate waiting. Scarcity Bias People instinctively value limited resources, this applies whether products are ‘time limited’, ‘quantity limited’, or ‘access limited’. Social Proof When unsure, consumers tend to copy what others have done - so signalling popularity can be highly persuasive. How Mortgage Brands are Leveraging Behavioural Biases in PPC Ad Copy 6 Our Methodology The01 first step was to pull the This03 sample could then be used relevant PPC ad copy. We to train the NLP model which identified over 50 domains that could then analyse the rest of had been competing in the PPC the ads itself. auction for mortgage related terms in 2020 and used a tool to pull the copy from 2,000 PPC ads being used by these domains1. Once02 we had pulled the ad copy, Once04 the tool had tagged all the second step was to manually the biases we performed further tag a sample of the ad copy with data analysis. the behavioural biases. shown in the graph ontheright. inthegraph shown eachbiasis The popularityof PPCad. per biases sixdifferent our of usingtwo were thatcompanies found we On average, Bias by itdown Breaking company. of types different biasesusedby type of and innumber thedifferences biases, to themostandleast leveraging were whichbusinesses to and leastpopular, most were whichbiases findings, from someinteresting studyuncovered Our Our Findings How Mortgage Brands are Leveraging Behavioural Biases in PPC Ad Copy inPPCAd Biases Behavioural Leveraging are MortgageBrands How Likelihood of appearing in a mortgage PPC ad 60% 80% 40% 50% 30% 20% 70% 10% 0% Authority Bias Prevalence of Selected Biases in PPC Mortgage Ads inPPCMortgage Biases Selected of Prevalence Heuristics Category Category Power of of Power Free Power of of Power Now Scarcity Bias Scarcity Social Proof 7 How Mortgage Brands are Leveraging Behavioural Biases in PPC Ad Copy 8 Authority Bias Category Heuristics Power of Free 54% 66% 35% Authority Bias was the second most popular Category Heuristics was the most popular Power of Free was the fourth most popular bias, found in 54% of ads analysed. Mostly bias, found in 66% of PPC ads analysed. bias, found in 35% of ads analysed. Many this consisted of “Award-winning” type online brokers were offering "fee-free claims. In the Financial Services sector We identified dozens of different advice" or promoting the fact that their in general, trust is crucial as products category heuristics being used to service was "free and easy". are complex and potentially high-risk signpost good deals to consumers in for consumers. Borrowing authority is an this complex product set. excellent way to inspire trust. The sheer number of different category heuristics in play means it is not surprising that they were the most prevalent bias in this study. Llikelihood that the bias will appear in an ad How Mortgage Brands are Leveraging Behavioural Biases in PPC Ad Copy 9 Power of Now Scarcity Bias Social Proof 52% 8% 12% Power of Now was the third most popular Scarcity bias was the least popular bias of Social proof was the second least popular bias, found in 52% of ads analysed. Power the six. Due to the nature of the product, we bias. A number of mortgage players used of Now was mostly tagged in ads promising were not expecting the scarcity bias to be it, principally to show how many consumers quotes that were ‘instant’, ‘fast’, ‘quick’ or employed in its ‘quantity limited’ form, we were using them and how well reviewed ‘within minutes’. were however expecting to see some ‘time they were, but this number was lower than limited’ variations encouraging consumers we expected. At ROAST we believe that to take advantage of the Stamp Duty inspiring trust is essential in PPC ad copy holiday. We were surprised not to find any for Finance brands, and we would expect ad copy addressing this, probably due to brands that use social proof to be more providers already experiencing a backlog successful in the auction than those that do which would make hitting the deadline not. difficult for new customers. We did however see some instances of ‘access limited’ scarcity bias, with banks offering ‘exclusive’ rates to existing customers. Llikelihood that the bias will appear in an ad How Mortgage Brands are Leveraging Behavioural Biases in PPC Ad Copy 10 Top five sites by average number of biases used expertcompare.co.uk 3.26 virginmoney.com 3.16 Breaking It Down by Company habito.com 3.14 Looking at the data by company, we identified restless.co.uk the advertisers with more than ten ad copy 3.04 examples who were using the most and least unbiased.co.uk behavioural biases per ad. 2.86 We found that expertcompare.co.uk had the highest average number of biases used per Bottom five sites by average number of biases used ad, with 3.26. At the other end of the scale, molofinance.com was using the lowest number of biases per ad, with only 0.89. molofinance.com 0.89 cbonline.com 1.00 lloydsbank.com 1.00 halifax.co.uk 1.08 mortgageable.co.uk 1.13 growth. fuel and ultimately testing for hypotheses provide can competitors your of butalsothat Profile, Bias Behavioural own your only not understanding As abrand, Social Proof. beusing istheonlyoneto Habito.com Bias,and to beusingScarcity five top inthe istheonlysite Virginmoney.com Biasatall. useScarcity does not heavilybut Now of and Power Free of Power Heuristics, Bias, Category uses Authority Expertcompare.co.uk insight. more uncover to us allows sites five thetop of thebiasprofiles into Digging
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