5 Ways to Avoid Manipulative Marketing and Save Money

Can you remember every ad you encountered today? How about the one you saw most recently?

If the answer is no, you’re not alone. Most consumers see so many ads that they begin tuning them out. As a result, marketers have to be pretty crafty to not just grab our attention but actually close the sale.

Learning to spot manipulative marketing tactics can help you avoid bad purchases, save money, and even build your confidence as a consumer. And you can learn to do it with five simple steps.

1. Monitor Your Emotions

Many successful ads play on your emotions, whether that’s a hit of nostalgia in a holiday commercial or fear of missing out on a great sale. Unfortunately, our emotions don’t help us make the smartest purchases, so here are a few manipulative marketing strategies to watch for.

Creating a Sense of Urgency

Marketers often create a sense of urgency hoping you’ll commit to a purchase rather than miss out on a bargain. One common online tactic is advertising a sale that’s ending soon. Many websites will include a large countdown clock with phrases like, “act now,” “expires in,” or “don’t miss out.”

A similar strategy is notifying you that a product is running out. You’ve likely seen notifications such as “low stock” or “only 4 left,” or warnings that other people are considering the same product. 

Sometimes it’s possible to score a deal through these flash sales. The problem is that deadlines encourage you to buy without thinking about your budget or researching the product, increasing your chances of buyer’s remorse. 

These are also tactics scammers use, so you should thoroughly investigate any website using these strategies before sharing any personal information with it.

Appealing to (and Creating) Anxieties

Marketers have been playing on our anxieties since the birth of modern advertising in the early 20th century. One of the most famous examples is a campaign run by Gillette that persuaded women they needed to shave their legs and armpits to be attractive — a move that created a whole new market for Gillette that’s now worth $3.60 billion.

While fear appeals can be helpful if they encourage people to make healthier, safer choices, they can also leave us feeling pressured to make purchases that don’t benefit us.

Creating a Problem and Selling a Solution

An easy way to sell a product is to convince consumers it fixes a problem, but some products offer solutions to problems that are negligible or don’t exist, or for which solutions already exist. By convincing us that a problem exists — or that current solutions aren’t good enough — marketers can persuade us that we have a need their product can satisfy.

The trick to not falling for these ads is to simply ask yourself three questions:

1. Is this problem a real problem?
2. Does this product actually solve the problem?
3. Is the problem bad enough (and the solution good enough) to justify this purchase?

Focus on What You’re Spending, Not the Savings

Retailers want you to know how much you’re saving with them. In fact, some retailers even list your savings on receipts for each purchase, hoping to build brand loyalty and make you feel good shopping with them.

But any time you’re saving, you’re also spending. Buying something you don’t need to save 25% is really spending 75% unnecessarily. A bargain is only a bargain if it’s something you really want or need.

2. Ask Questions

The best way to avoid manipulative marketing tactics is to simply ask questions. Asking questions helps you set aside emotions, slow down, and think logically before becoming a fool soon parted from his money.

Do the Claims Make Sense?

Every ad makes claims about the product it promotes. However, not every product lives up to those claims. It’s important to move past your initial excitement and ask yourself if a product can actually do what it says it will. 

For instance, a car wash might claim its proprietary wax protects your paint job four times better than its competitors’ waxes. Before you shell out extra cash for their wash, look for verifiable evidence to back up those claims.

Are the Product’s Promises Realistic? 

Imagine a truck commercial with a father and son loading up their camping gear, driving into the wilderness, and bonding over fresh fish on a campfire. The ad suggests how your life might improve with this truck. Are you actually going to follow through and do those things? If you aren’t doing them already, then probably not. 

Marketers often make subtle promises about improving your life or making you happier. These promises appeal to our deepest desires like our need to belong and build meaningful lives. That only works if other factors in your life support the role their product plays. 

Are the Reviews Real?

In an age where many of us buy products online without seeing them in person, we rely on reviews to help us make good choices. Unfortunately, the rise of bot reviewers and brushing scams has led to an increasing number of fake reviews.

There are tools you can use to check whether reviews are fake on major retail websites like Amazon and Overstock, but the best way is to ignore star ratings and look at what people actually write. Reviews with specific details and clear descriptions are more likely to be trustworthy. 

Is It Really on Sale?

Black Friday and Cyber Monday events have grown into week-long spending events promising the best deals of the year. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Some sellers actually raise their prices in the weeks ahead of these events so their sale prices look like steep discounts despite being close to the normal price.

Similarly, some brick-and-mortar retailers hold fake sales that never end. They mark products with red dots or yellow sales stickers that show the sale price and the original price (often 40-60% higher than the sale price). But if a product is perpetually on sale, it’s not really on sale at all.

These strategies play on loss aversion, the idea that consumers feel good when they gain something and bad when they lose something. Since consumers don’t want to lose a bargain, they’re more likely to buy a product now instead of comparison shopping and risking missing the discounted price. 

One way to know if something is really on sale (and whether the sale is substantial) is to use a price tracking tool. Many are free, and you can simply paste the product’s name or URL into the tool to see the price of the item by month over the last few years. Another way is to comparison shop online before making a purchase. 

3. Do the Math

Price is what marketers call a “pain point” for consumers — something that is an obstacle to purchasing something. So, marketers have become clever in how they present prices, hoping to persuade consumers that their price isn’t so bad.

Value Size Products and Price Per Unit

Many grocery stores offer value sizes of popular products like soup or snacks that they advertise as more cost-effective. The idea is that you spend more but pay a little less per ounce, saving money. 

Pay attention to the cost per ounce (or whatever unit) on these items, because a larger package doesn’t always come with a lower price. Sometimes deceptive marketers charge the same per ounce or more for a larger box or bag, hoping consumers won’t notice.

Multiple Payments of a Small Payment Price

In the 1990s, television was rife with commercials for products that mysteriously all cost “just 3 easy payments of $9.99.” The reason was simple — consumers home in on $9.99, which sounds better than $29.97 (plus shipping and handling), so people assume they’re getting a steal. 

This pricing strategy is still around today because it’s effective. An easy way to combat it is to get in the habit of calculating the total cost any time you see prices broken up into payments.

Decoy Pricing

Decoy pricing is a strategy of presenting two options and a third, less desirable option. The less desirable option is designed to make one of the other two options look really good. For instance, a gym might offer the following subscriptions:

• Monthly physical access for $190/year
• Monthly physical access + spa access for $250/year
• Monthly physical access + spa access + any time online workouts through their app for $250/year

Who would pay for the physical + spa access and not for the physical + spa + online workouts? No one, because it’s a decoy price. In comparison, the $250 membership with online workouts is a bargain since its online workouts are basically free. It’s a small leap from there to persuade yourself the most expensive membership might be worth the extra cash because it’s the best deal.

Annual vs. Monthly Prices

More and more companies are moving to subscription pricing models where consumers pay a subscription for access to a product instead of buying it outright. These subscriptions often offer multiple payment models including a monthly and annual price, and sometimes 3- 6- or 9-month prices.

In many cases, paying for a longer subscription upfront can save you a small amount on the cost per month. For instance, the regular price of the product might be $35 per month, which would cost $420 per year — but you might only pay $360 with the annual payment, a savings of $5 per month. But that’s not always the case, so pull out your calculator before you decide.

If you know and like the product and it fits your budget, paying the annual cost is a no-brainer. However, you won’t save money by purchasing more than you planned just to get a bargain, especially before you know if you like and will use the product.

4. Avoid Temptation

Commercials, junk mail, and email spam constantly shower us with discounts and coupons. Social media floods our feeds with thousands of products curated for our interests. This constant bombardment conditions us to buy.

Thankfully, there are ways we can limit our exposure to ads and reduce temptation:

• Unsubscribe from restaurant and store mailing lists to stop receiving their offers.
• Mark spam to stop receiving messages from the sender. Just deleting email advertisements doesn’t prevent more messages from that sender.
• Opt out of tracking on every website. Even sites that don’t sell you things can collect and sell your data to companies that will try to sell you things.
• Limit social media instead of endlessly scrolling, so you see fewer ads. Unfollow accounts that purely promote their products or services.
• Use technology like ad blockers and privacy-first browsers to prevent advertisers from collecting your data and serving you extra tempting tailored ads.

5. Actively Manage Your Money

The best way to avoid manipulative marketing is to create and stick to a budget. You’re more likely to spend wisely when you monitor your spending. You’ll know exactly how much disposable income you have, which may make you choosier with how you spend it. But if you’re still struggling to keep your debit card holstered, consider a method like envelope budgeting. 

Setting and tracking financial goals can help, too. When sneaky marketing tactics tempt you, thinking about how a purchase will or won’t fit with your goals can help you decide if it’s the right purchase for you. You’ll find more lasting satisfaction in reaching meaningful financial goals than making bad purchases.

The Takeaway

Understanding manipulative marketing tactics isn’t just about avoiding bad buys. It empowers you to make confident choices, save, and maximize your money every time you shop.