How to Use Language Psychology to Boost Your Marketing Results

If you're like most marketers, you've spent hours sweating over subject lines, product messaging, or that elusive brand tagline that "just feels right." But here's the thing, language is the architecture of how people understand your product, your pitch, your value. And that architecture has structure.

Lately, I've been fascinated by how language shapes marketing effectiveness, down to open rates and as far up as company names. The words we use frame perception, build emotional resonance, and even rewire buying behavior. And once you start noticing it, you can't unsee it.

This is rooted in deep linguistic theory, much of it popularized by cognitive scientist George Lakoff.

What Marketers Can Learn from George Lakoff

Lakoff's groundbreaking book Metaphors We Live By, co-authored with philosopher Mark Johnson in 1980, argues that metaphors are fundamental to how we think. When we say "time is money" or "argument is war," we're not just being poetic. We're shaping the way people conceptualize time or conflict.

Lakoff's key insight for marketers: people absorb frames, not facts. And those frames determine what facts even make sense to them.

In his later political work (he's also the guy behind the now-famous analysis of conservative vs. liberal framing), Lakoff showed how naming a policy, even if the name is misleading, can change how people feel about it. Sound familiar? It's exactly what we do in brand positioning, product messaging, and demand gen copy every single day.

Great Framing in Action: Marketing Hall of Fame

Let's look at a few standout examples of framing that made brands magnetic:

Think Different – Apple Two words. One worldview. This iconic campaign positioned Apple as the brand for rebels and visionaries. It framed Microsoft as conventional without ever saying the name.

Belong Anywhere – Airbnb This reframed strangers as future hosts and hotels as cold, impersonal institutions. It evoked emotional safety and human connection, powerful drivers in travel. As Lakoff might say, it tapped into the "friend not stranger" moral frame.

Where Work Flows – Slack Slack didn't just offer faster communication; it framed email as outdated, clunky, and slow. By casting itself as the modern workflow, it defined the category in contrast to the status quo.

Inbound Marketing – HubSpot HubSpot reframed outbound as interruption and inbound as magnetic. "Attract don't chase" became the rallying cry, and with it, a whole new playbook for modern marketers.

Tactical Framing: It's Not Just a Big Idea Thing

While strategic brand framing gets the glory, the real work happens in the trenches: subject lines, email bodies, social hooks. This is where smart language decisions compound every day.

Email Subject Lines: Framing = Open Rates

Lakoff reminds us that frames come first. Subject lines like "Stop wasting leads" (loss aversion frame), "How fintech marketers are automating outbound" (peer frame + credibility), and "The #1 mistake in B2B emails" (conflict and curiosity) often outperform flatter, more literal headlines. CoSchedule and Omnisend found that emotionally framed subject lines can boost open rates by 20–30%.

If you're using tools like Headline Studio (which I reviewed in a previous article), you'll see firsthand how subtle changes in emotional tone or structure can radically shift predicted engagement.

Email Body: Less Facts, More Frames

Rather than listing features, use metaphors or framing devices. Instead of "automates outreach workflows," say "Your SDR team, on autopilot." Instead of "data enrichment platform," say "X-ray vision for your leads."

The difference is clarity, emotional pull, and most importantly, memory retention.

Social Media Hooks: The 2-Second Frame

Scrolling is a war for attention. You don't have time for context. That's why framing is your best friend.

Here are three types of fast, Lakoff-inspired frames for social posts: Pain Framing ("No more clunky handoffs between sales and marketing"), Moral Framing ("Why your team deserves better lead data"), and Journey Framing ("From chaos to clarity in 3 steps").

Each tells a mini-story in one sentence. That's the power of framing. It lets the brain fill in the rest.

Framing in Product Naming and Branding

This is the most permanent and most costly place to get framing wrong.

Would Salesforce have become Salesforce if it were called "Enterprise CRM Suite"? Doubt it.

Lakoff's framing insights apply directly to naming: Is it metaphorical? (e.g., Firefly, Notion, Snowflake). Does it evoke action or identity? (e.g., Stripe, Clarity, Gong). Does it tell the user what kind of product it is, without saying so?

A well-framed name becomes a positioning tool. A poorly framed one becomes a liability.

Final Takeaway: Words Create Worlds

Lakoff's work gives us more than theory: it gives us a toolkit. Every time we write an email, name a product, or launch a campaign, we're choosing a frame. The question is whether we do it deliberately.

The best B2B marketers shape perception.

They frame what the product does. 

So next time you're stuck writing that headline or refining your product description, ask: What metaphor am I using? What frame am I evoking? And is it helping my audience see the problem, or just read about it?

Because in B2B, as in politics, whoever frames first often wins.

Whether it’s your product pitch, homepage, or outbound email copy, we can help you reframe it for clarity and impact. Reach out anytime.