Marketing Behavioral Science

Behavioral Marketing

Use psychology, data, and ethical persuasion to shape customer decisions and improve marketing performance

Behavioral Marketing logo
Quick Course Facts
16
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
16
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
5.3
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the Behavioral Marketing Course

This Behavioral Marketing course teaches you how people really think, decide, and act so you can create more effective marketing strategies. You’ll learn how to use psychology, data, and ethical persuasion to shape customer decisions and improve marketing performance while building stronger trust with your audience.

Apply Behavioral Marketing Principles To Improve Customer Response

  • Understand the psychology behind attention, perception, memory, and buying behavior
  • Use behavioral insights to design messages, offers, and experiences that drive action
  • Apply social proof, authority, scarcity, and urgency in a responsible way
  • Improve marketing performance through segmentation, testing, and conversion-focused design

Behavioral Marketing combines behavioral science with practical marketing tactics to influence customer decisions ethically and effectively.

In this course, you’ll explore how people actually make decisions, from the biases and heuristics that shape quick judgments to the emotions and motivations that drive action. You’ll see how attention, perception, and memory affect whether your message is noticed, remembered, and acted on, giving you a stronger foundation for modern Marketing.

You’ll also learn how to build confidence and reduce perceived risk through trust signals, credibility, and message framing. The course shows you how to apply behavioral segmentation, choice architecture, and pricing psychology to create better customer experiences across websites, landing pages, email, and follow-up messaging. These techniques help you design marketing that feels clear, relevant, and persuasive without relying on pressure tactics.

As you move through lessons on influence principles, retention psychology, and experimentation, you’ll gain practical tools for improving conversion rates and long-term customer relationships. You’ll learn how to test behavioral ideas, measure results, and refine your approach based on evidence rather than guesswork. By the end of the course, you’ll think more strategically about customer behavior, create more effective Marketing campaigns, and make decisions that improve performance while strengthening trust.

Course Lessons

Full lesson breakdown

Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.

Course Foundations

1 lesson

Behavioral marketing uses insights from psychology and decision-making to improve how people notice, evaluate, and choose products. In this introduction, you will learn what behavioral marketing is, h…

Behavioral Science Basics

1 lesson

Lesson 2: How People Actually Make Decisions

20 min
People do not make decisions like perfectly rational calculators. They rely on shortcuts, emotions, context, memory, and social cues to choose quickly and with limited attention. In behavioral marketi…

The Psychology of Notice

1 lesson

Lesson 3: Attention, Perception, and Memory in Marketing

18 min
This lesson explains how attention, perception, and memory shape whether marketing is noticed, understood, and remembered. Students learn why people ignore most messages, how context and expectations …

Biases and Heuristics

1 lesson

Lesson 4: Cognitive Biases That Affect Buying

22 min
Buying decisions are not made by logic alone. In this lesson, we explore the most common cognitive biases and mental shortcuts that shape how customers perceive value, compare options, and decide to p…

What Drives Action

1 lesson

Lesson 5: Motivation, Emotion, and Desire

18 min
People do not buy because they are only rational. They buy because something feels important, urgent, safe, rewarding, or identity-confirming. This lesson explains the behavioral drivers behind action…

Building Confidence

1 lesson

Lesson 6: Trust, Credibility, and Risk Reduction

20 min
This lesson explains how trust, credibility, and perceived risk shape customer behavior before a purchase happens. You will learn how people judge whether a brand feels safe, competent, and honest, an…

Message Design

1 lesson

Lesson 7: Framing Messages for Better Response

18 min
How a message is framed can change how people interpret the same offer, even when the facts stay identical. In this lesson, learners examine common framing choices in marketing—such as gain vs. loss f…

Influence Principles

1 lesson

Lesson 8: Social Proof, Authority, and Reciprocity

22 min
This lesson explains three of the most widely used influence principles in marketing: social proof , authority , and reciprocity . You will learn how each principle affects customer judgment, where it…

Motivating Timely Action

1 lesson

Lesson 9: Scarcity, Urgency, and Ethical Persuasion

18 min
This lesson explains how scarcity and urgency influence customer decisions, why they work, and how to use them without misleading people. You will learn the difference between genuine limited availabi…

Audience Strategy

1 lesson

Lesson 10: Behavioral Segmentation and Customer Psychology

20 min
This lesson shows how to segment audiences using behavioral signals and customer psychology rather than relying only on age, location, or income. You will learn how to identify groups by motivation, i…

Conversion Optimization

1 lesson

Lesson 11: Behavioral Design for Websites and Landing Pages

22 min
This lesson shows how to design websites and landing pages using behavioral principles that reduce friction, increase clarity, and guide attention toward conversion. The focus is on layout, hierarchy,…

Lifecycle Messaging

1 lesson

Lesson 12: Email and Follow-Up Based on Behavioral Triggers

18 min
This lesson explains how to trigger email and follow-up messages from customer behavior so communication feels timely, relevant, and helpful. You will learn how to connect behavioral signals such as s…

How Context Shapes Value

1 lesson

Lesson 13: Pricing, Anchoring, and Choice Architecture

22 min
This lesson explains how price perception is shaped by context, not just by the number on a tag. You will learn how anchoring influences what customers see as expensive or affordable, how comparison s…

Keeping Customers Engaged

1 lesson

Lesson 14: Habits, Loyalty, and Retention Psychology

20 min
This lesson explains how habits form, why customers stay loyal, and what really drives retention beyond simple satisfaction. You will learn how repeated cues, rewards, convenience, identity, and switc…

Experimentation and Measurement

1 lesson

Lesson 15: Testing Behavioral Marketing Ideas

22 min
Testing behavioral marketing ideas means treating persuasion tactics like hypotheses, not assumptions. In this lesson, students learn how to identify the behavior they want to change, choose the right…

Responsible Behavioral Marketing

1 lesson

Lesson 16: Ethics, Compliance, and Long-Term Trust

18 min
Responsible behavioral marketing uses psychological insight without exploiting vulnerabilities, deceiving customers, or creating hidden harm. This lesson focuses on the ethical boundaries that protect…
About Your Instructor
Professor Bo Bennett

Professor Bo Bennett

Professor Bo Bennett guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.