Marketer pack
Claude Skill

Marketing Psychology Advisor

Applies behavioral-science principles — anchoring, social proof, loss aversion, framing — to a specific marketing decision, ethically.

What it does

Maps the relevant mental models and cognitive biases to a concrete marketing situation — a pricing page, a launch, a hesitation point in the funnel — and turns them into specific, ethical applications. Covers foundational thinking models (first principles, jobs-to-be-done, inversion, Pareto, theory of constraints) and persuasion principles (anchoring, social proof, scarcity, loss aversion, framing).

When to use

  • Deciding how to frame an offer, a price, or a message
  • Diagnosing why people aren't converting through a behavioral lens
  • You want principled reasoning, not a copied tactic

When not to use

  • You want dark patterns or manipulation — this is for ethical influence only
  • It's a purely technical or analytics problem, not a human-decision one

Install

Download the .zip, then unzip into your Claude skills folder.

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
unzip ~/Downloads/marketing-psychology-advisor.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

# Restart Claude Code session.
# Skill is now available — Claude will use it when relevant.

SKILL.md

SKILL.md
---
name: marketing-psychology-advisor
description: Use when applying psychology, mental models, or behavioral science to a marketing decision. Triggers on "marketing psychology", "mental models", "cognitive bias", "persuasion", "why people buy", "anchoring", "social proof", "loss aversion", "framing".
---

# Marketing Psychology Advisor

Mental models are thinking tools, not tricks. Match the model to the situation, explain the mechanism, give a specific application, and keep it ethical — influence, not manipulation.

## Foundational thinking models

Use these to solve the right problem before optimizing tactics.

- **First principles** — break the problem to basic truths; don't copy competitors by default. (Do we need content marketing, or do we need the outcome we assume it brings?)
- **Jobs to be done** — people hire a product for an outcome. Frame around the job, not the features.
- **Inversion** — ask what would guarantee failure (confusing message, wrong audience, slow page), then prevent each.
- **Pareto (80/20)** — find the 20% of channels/customers/content driving 80% of results; cut the rest.
- **Theory of constraints** — fix the one bottleneck first. Great conversion can't fix a traffic problem.
- **Opportunity cost** — every channel you run is one you didn't. Choose deliberately.

## Persuasion principles (apply ethically)

Each with its mechanism and one application:

- **Anchoring** — the first number sets the reference. Show the higher tier (or the "before" price) first.
- **Social proof** — people follow people like them. Use specific proof (named customers, hard numbers), not "thousands love us."
- **Loss aversion** — losing stings more than gaining pleases. Frame around what they keep losing by not acting — truthfully.
- **Scarcity / urgency** — real constraints move people; fabricated ones destroy trust. Only ever use genuine limits.
- **Framing** — the same fact lands differently by framing ("95% fat-free" vs "5% fat"). Choose the honest frame that aids the decision.
- **Reciprocity** — give real value first (a tool, a teardown, an insight); the ask lands better after.

## The ethics line

Influence helps a good-fit customer make a decision they'll be glad about. Manipulation extracts a decision they'll regret. Never fabricate scarcity, proof, or urgency — it's a short-term lift and a long-term trust collapse (and often a legal liability).

## Anti-patterns

- Reaching for a bias before understanding the actual decision being made
- Manufactured countdowns, fake stock counters, invented testimonials
- Stacking ten principles on one page until it reads as a con
- Treating models as tricks instead of as reasoning tools

Example prompts

Once installed, try these prompts in Claude:

  • Our pricing page isn't converting. Walk through it with the relevant psychological principles — anchoring, social proof, framing — and what to change.
  • Apply loss aversion and the theory of constraints to our trial-to-paid funnel.