In the final tenet of Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he examines scarcity.

Like reciprocity, commitment & consistency, social proof, liking and authority before it, scarcity has an undue influence on us due to our desire for shortcuts.

We have been trained that things that are rarer have more value than things that are common. Therefore, to make things appear to have more value, marketers can promote or even fake the scarcity of an object or information.

Like many people, I subscribe to a number of daily deals, like LivingSocial. I know that if I don’t act now, I’ll miss out on 50% off a massage, food  or snow tires. Interestingly, I’ve noticed I’m less compelled to buy a daily deal these days because I know that if I miss this half-off yoga class, there will be another one from a competing studio next week. The deal is still a good one, but the scarcity has been removed.

Scarcity also plays on our fear of loss. In one example from the book, homeowners who were told how much they would lose by not insulating their house bought at a much higher rate than another group that was told how much they would save.

We also hate to lose our freedom; when an object becomes scarce or won’t be available much longer, we don’t want to lose our freedom of choice, so we find the object more desirable. In one study, people who tasted a cookie from a jar with only two cookies found the cookie more delicious than an identical cookie in a nearly full jar.

What I found even more interesting was a sales experiment for a beef company. The first group of customers were given the standard sales pitch. The second group heard the sales pitch plus were told that there would soon be a beef shortage, and not all orders would be filled. The third group heard what the second group heard, but they were also told that this information was secret, and most people didn’t know about the upcoming shortage.

The evidence was clear, as the second group bought more beef than the first group, but the third group bought even more. Scarcity of product combined with a scarcity of information proved an overwhelming sales tool.

So, how can you use scarcity to improve your web marketing and social media activity?

Scarcity works well in all types of marketing and sales, but here are a few ways you can use it yourself:

• Create a member-only group. Provide these members with information only available to them and sell membership at a premium.
• Limit seats. Limit the number of seats for your next webinar or seminar.
• Use early bird discounts. Offer discounts for people who purchase before an upcoming date. Announce this when tickets first go on sale, and then again as the deadline approaches. An alternative approach is to off a certain number of discounted seats and once those are gone, they’re gone for good.
• Give special offers to a small mailing list. Start by giving people on your internal list a special opportunity to buy early, before you announce it to everyone.

Scarcity is a powerful motivator. Do you have any other ideas on how to use scarcity in your web marketing? If so, please leave a comment below. But please hurry…comments will only be open for one week, then they’ll be closed forever!

The Rich Brooks
One of a Kind

Photo Credit: Kim-bodia

We’ve discussed the power of reciprocity, commitment, social proof and liking in Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, so far. Now it’s time to look at the power that authority holds over us.

Like social proof, authority gives us a short cut in dealing with the complexity of the modern world. We listen to our doctors about health care issues, professors about scholarly matters, and talking heads on TV for everything from child-rearing to national security issues.

Often, this is a good thing. People often become authorities after years of rigorous study. However, in a famous experiment by Stanley Milgram, average people were persuaded to shock another person to near death by a person wielding nothing more than a clipboard and a white lab jacket. (Thankfully, there was no electricity and the person being “shocked” was a confidant.)

Experiment after experiment showed that humans are completely unaware of the amount of autonomy they give over to others, just because of a title, clothing, or trappings.

Let’s keep in mind here, that our goal is to become effective, ethical web marketers. To that end, we need to establish our authority, not fake it.

Here are some techniques you can use to establish authority and improve the results of your online marketing:

• Establish your authority…via blogs, video, etc. Not only will people see your expertise (even if you don’t hold an M.D. or other degree), members of the media will find your blog or video and interview you as an expert on the subject. The number of times I’ve been described as an expert because I wrote one blog post on the subject is astounding. Blog posts have gotten me interviews in both Inc. magazine and CNN.com.
• Use an authority figure. Not an authority (yet) yourself? It’s easy to find someone who is and leverage their authority. A vitamin maker could interview a doctor on the benefits of the vitamin. A maker of dog products could use a dog trainer to pitch her wares.
• Leverage authority from other sources. How many blogs and websites promote the fact they were featured on Oprah, or NPR, or FastCompany.com?
• Brand yourself. In today’s world, you don’t need a formal title to establish expertise and authority. Just ask The Ezine Queen, The Dog Whisperer, or The Diet Ninja.
• Create virtual trappings. It’s been said that visitors to our website make a decision about is in just a few seconds. A generic template isn’t going to cut it. Invest in a custom design, logo, and photography.

Perhaps the best place to establish your authority is by adding intelligent comments to a well-respected blog…like this one. Go ahead and share an example of how you have used authority in your online marketing…or an example you’ve seen.

In my fifteen years as a web marketing authority, I’ve seen the value of a well-constructed comment on an industry blog, so get commenting. Don’t make me take out my clipboard.

Next Weapon of Influence: Scarcity

Rich Brooks
You Will Respect My Authoritah!

You like me! You really, really like me!

In Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he talks about the tenets of influence. So far we’ve seen reciprocity, commitment & consistency, and social proof in action, and now we move on to liking.

It’s no surprise that we’re influenced by people we like…what’s surprising is the degree to which we’re influenced by people we like, or even those who leverage the names of people or things we like. (This is why the Tupperware party is so powerful, and why organizations send our kids’ friends to sell us candles and popcorn buckets we don’t need.)

We can see this at work on some of our favorite social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, that “suggest” that we might like a number of other people on the network, thus strengthening the network and lessening the chances that we’ll leave. The social ads on Facebook are similar, when they show a product and let us know a friend “likes” it.

There’s a number of things that impact our liking of a person or brand:

• Physical attractiveness: You want to think you’re above such things, but you’re not. Study after study proves how susceptible we are to the physical attractiveness of people, even when we don’t realize we are. 
• Similarity: In one study, marchers in a anti-war demonstration were more likely to sign a petition by a like-dressed person…even without reading the petition!
• Compliments: It’s amazing what we’ll do when someone says “I like you” in word or deed. Studies show it doesn’t even matter if the compliments are true. (But seriously, your hair does look great today.)
• Contact and cooperation: Studies have shown that the more we see a face, the more likely we are to believe what comes out of it is true!
• Conditioning and association: This is why we hate the weatherman and why we blame the messenger. The flip side of this is associating our offering with something positive. When an attractive model was shown next to a new car, men were more likely to rate the car as faster, better built and more expensive. None of them believed this when it was brought to their attention. (Men…right?) This could explain some of the “green washing” that’s currently going on right now as brands want to be seen as green.

So how do you use this in your own web marketing and social media?

Unfortunately, most of you just aren’t as physically attractive as I am. However, eating right, exercising and wearing flattering clothes can help. Comb overs are a definite no-no.

Here are some ideas on how you can improve and bank on your own likeability:

• Be attractive. OK, maybe being physically attractive is mostly in your genes, but on the Internet no one needs to know you’re a dog. That didn’t actually come out the way I meant. I mean, a smiling profile pic can go a long way. Also, confidence (not to be confused with arrogance) is an attractive feature. A positive attitude can help, too. Studies show that positive tweets get shared a lot more than negative ones.
  
• Act similar to your customers. I’m not talking about being a fake, but I am suggesting that you use the same language that they do. This is especially true as you write articles and blog posts; you need to be talking about the same things they are, and using the same words they do so they’ll find you when they do a search at Google. 
• Be complimentary. Again, don’t fake it. But you can certainly find positive things to say about people through social media, directly in emails, and through other venues. We all know that guy who makes snide remarks and is always trying to cut people down. It didn’t work for him, did it?
• Be everywhere. Or at least appear to be everywhere. I’ve heard time and time again that people always see me on LinkedIn. In actuality, I only spend a few minutes a week at LinkedIn, but I subscribe to the daily email digest of relevant groups, and join in the conversation when I have something to add. I’ve talked to many other social media marketers who always seem to be on Twitter, but are only on there 15 minutes a day in short bursts.
• Associate your brand with popular topics. Create blog posts that tie into current or past pop culture icons that have positive associations for your customers. 10 Things I Learned About Self-Esteem from Miss Piggy or The Amazing Spider-Man Guide to Responsible Word Power.

Do you have any examples of how you’ve used liking in any of your web marketing or social media campaigns? Did it work? Be sure to let us know in the comments below. I promise I’ll like any reasonable comment.

Next Weapon of Influence: Authority

Rich Brooks
Voted Most Likeable Boss At Flyte 15 Years Running

In chapter 2 of Robert Cialdini’s masterful Influence: The Psychology of Persuation, we learned that people have a knee-jerk reaction to responding in kind (or better) to favors…a trait referred to as reciprocity. Now, in the next chapter, we learn that we also wish to be seen as consistent.

Cialdini has a wealth of examples of this in his chapter, but one example that stuck with me is the story of people who agreed to put a giant, ugly sign on their front lawn, in front of their gorgeous home, that said Drive Safely. Not surprisingly, only 17% agreed.

However, in another group, they got an astounding 76% to agree to the same ugly signs! What was the difference?

Two weeks previous, they had asked this second group of home owners if they would put a small, inconspicuous window sticker about safe driving in their window. That’s all it took. These people then saw themselves as people who were serious about safe driving, so putting a gawd-awful sign that destroyed their property value was in keeping with their ideals.

In other words, they were being consistent.

There are examples from POW camps to hazing to getting people to write short essays on why they love brand X throughout the chapter, and how by getting people to make small commitments, (window sticker) you can move them to see themselves in a new light, and then take actions that are consistent with that new belief.

As is the case with all of these chapters, the techniques can be used for good or ill…that’s up to you. But if you make a commitment in the comments section below that you are an ethical marketer and will only use these for good, I think we’ll all sleep better at night.

So, how can you use Commitment and Consistency to improve your web marketing and social media techniques?

Here are some examples:

• Run a Facebook contest where entrants write why they love/use your product or brand. The best answer will win the contest, but meanwhile, so many more people have publicly committed their loyalty to your brand, so now they see themselves as your evangelist. Just make sure that you use a 3rd party approved contest provider at Facebook, or the whole contest could backfire.
• Run a similar contest on Twitter. In 140 characters or less, get people to say why they use your brand using your handle and/or a special hashtag.
• Get a prospect to make a small yes, like download a whitepaper or sample.  If leads them to see themselves as a customer, you can follow up with an immediate, bigger ask. I.e., they download an article, and on the landing page (or at the end of the article) you then say, “Since you’re obviously such a dog lover/fitness buff/savvy marketer, you’ll want to join our exclusive club/buy this Quick Start Guide, etc.

Are there any (ethical) methods that you can think of that would tap into our need to be consistent to build your own business? Let us know in the comments section.

Next Weapon of Influence: Social Proof

Rich Brooks
Same As I Ever Was

Photo Credit: Marcus Q

One of the major tenets of influence, according to Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuation, is reciprocity. Cialdini says:

“We are trained from childhood to chafe, emotionally, under the saddle of obligation. For this reason alone, then, we may be willing to agree to perform a larger favor than we received, merely to relieve ourselves of the psychological burden of debt.”

This is why Hare Krishnas give flowers to travelers at airports before asking for money; they know it’s difficult for people to receive a gift–no matter how small–and then refuse to give a donation.

In another example, the Disabled American Veterans organization sent a donation request mailing that got a respectable 18% response rate. They did another mailing and included those self-adhesive address labels and nearly doubled their response rate to 35%!

These are interesting examples of human behavior, but how can you use them to market your business? (And to do it ethically!)

If people are likely to return or repay a favor, then you should figure out how to create favors. Here are some examples:

• Recommend people on LinkedIn before being asked: I used this for a while before I realized I was leveraging reciprocation. I would recommend someone and four out of five times the person would immediately write a recommendation for me. While that wasn’t my goal, it certainly was a nice outcome.
• Create a Paper.li Daily Paper based on a Twitter list you create: This will give others free promotion to your list, and they’ll get a Twitter mention every time they’re featured. I get thanks and RTs almost every day from a couple of papers I created. I hated to break it to people that the list is created automatically, so I stopped! Plus, the fact that the tweet is automatically created doesn’t diminish the point that I found these people and added them to a list I keep on Twitter.
• Interview people for your blog or video: Ask people you respect to be interviewed for your blog or video. This is especially effective if you have a blog with good reach, or if you can blog for an organization with a wide reach. (I have the pleasure of being able to blog for both FastCompany.com and Social Media Examiner.) Make it easy on them by asking if they want to be interviewed via phone, in person, or by email. (Email allows them to craft their answer and appear much smarter and clever than they actually are…which is why it’s my personal favorite.)
• Offer advertising space on your blog for free: Whether it was unused or not, you can generate a lot of good will by offering advertising space to your customers, prospects, or local non-profits. 
• Put on free, educational webinars: By creating free webinars that help your ideal customer, you have created some obligation. You can then follow up a 45-minute, content-rich presentation with an offer or request. You’ll have much better success than just asking for the sale right away.

Again, you can use these techniques for good or evil. Part of what I love about living in Maine is that it’s a “small town.” What comes around, goes around. The same is true on social media.

If people feel you are manipulating their behavior, you may end up destroying your reputation and your business. (Cialdini shares some examples in his book.)

Instead, just be aware of our human need to repay favors, and use them to improve your web marketing and social media networking techniques.

Have you ever knowingly or unknowingly used the power of reciprocity in your own marketing? Or do you have some ideas on what you might do differently, now that you’re aware of reciprocity? If so, please share your thoughts in the comments section below. Who knows…maybe I’ll feel obligated to visit your blog and return the favor.

If you’re not quite ready to leave a comment, would you consider sharing this post with a friend or colleague who might benefit from it? Just click one of the share buttons at the top or bottom of this article. Thanks!

Next Weapon of Influence: Commitment and Consistency

Rich Brooks
Don’t Do Me Any Favors

Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion starts off with the story of a gift store owner at a tourist destination trying to sell some turquoise jewelery. It’s of good quality and she’s offering a fair price, but no one’s buying.

She tries putting it on sale. No dice.

She moves it to the center of the store. No dice.

She has her sales force push the jewelry. Still, no dice.

In frustration, as she’s leaving for a show, she scrawls a note for her store manager to sell all the jewelry at half-off. When she returns, she’s amazed that it all sold, every last piece.

What’s even more amazing is that her manager misread the handwritten note as DOUBLE the price, which she did.

At the higher price, the jewelry immediately sold out. Why?

The secret lies in the fact that we use shortcuts to help us get through our day. It’s the only way we can manage the complexity of modern life.

One shortcut is that–in general–you get what you pay for. It’s a lesson we learn early on, and is reinforced throughout our life. The tourists didn’t have time to research turquoise jewelry, so once they saw the high prices, their internal tape went whrrrrr…click! and started playing the “you get what you pay for” tape. Suddenly, the jewelry was much more desirable.

In Influence, Cialdini identifies six “weapons of influence”:

• reciprocity,
  
• commitment and consistency,
  
• social proof,
  
• liking,
  
• authority, and
  
• scarcity. 

He has amazing examples of how these each work, how “influence agents” manipulate us, and how we can prevent these weapons from working against us.

As marketers, we can use these weapons of influence for good…or for evil. In the next several posts I’m going to look at each one of these “weapons” and provide examples of how you can use them to improve the results of your web marketing and social media activity.

In the meantime, I strongly recommend picking up a copy of Influence, as the following posts just skim the surface of this amazing book. Even if you’re not into marketing, Cialdini ends each chapter with ideas on how you can defend against these weapons of influence when they’re used against you. That alone is worth the price of admission.

Read the First Weapon of Influence: Reciprocity

Rich Brooks
Influence Agent

Most of us say we want more leads, but in fact what we really want is better leads.

When you work with a customer who isn’t a good fit for you, you do a disservice to them, to your other clients (who suffer because your attention is on this customer who isn’t a good fit for you,) and to yourselves.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this lately. In part because we’ve seen a surge in new leads coming in from our contact forms as well as being approached by a number of referral sources who want to send business our way.

Although having people refer business to you sounds great (and it is), our experience has been that our best clients are ones that we’ve organically attracted, not ones who are referred to us from someone who’s looking to collect a finder’s fee. Consider it the difference between meeting your soulmate and being involved in an arranged marriage.

This led me to wonder what the personal ads might look like if businesses went out in search for “true love.” So I sat down and wrote a personal ad to my ideal client:

Entrepreneurial company seeks like-minded partner

We’re an entrepreneurial, 15-year-old web design and internet marketing company that’s goal oriented but doesn’t take itself too seriously. We’re adventurous, outgoing, and love to measure everything. Hobbies include blogging, content creation, and social networking.

You’re passionate about what you do, and understand it takes hard work to succeed. You’re open-minded and willing to try new things to achieve your dreams. You’re not looking for a one-night stand, but rather are searching for a long-term partner who is trustworthy, can keep a secret, and will always be there with a cup of coffee for you.

No drama queens, please.

So, what do you think? How would you write a personal ad to your ideal client? Would love to see you take a swing at it in the comments below!

Rich Brooks
Hopeful Romantic

Photo Credit: Jeremy Vandel

Having never taken a business class in college, I find myself constantly trying to “catch up” by reading and listening to book after book on marketing, leadership, sales and running your business.

I recently finished two good business books that I wanted to share.

Just by chance I happened to read and listen to them back to back, which was interesting because even though they were on different topics, they referenced some of the same research and mined the same fields.

The first one is Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, by Geoff Colvin. Sorry, slackers, but the answer is hard work. The book states it’s not innate talent, but rather thousands of hours of deliberate practice that creates world-class performers. It touches upon some of the same ideas that Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers goes over.

Along the way it also pokes holes in the “god given talent” stories of such child prodigies as Mozart and Tiger Woods, showing how they had to put in the same hard work that everyone else does who wants to be a world class performer.

The book also looks at developing talent through the eyes of a leader or manager, and ends with the question: why would anyone subject themselves to such a regimen of hard work? What separates world-class performers from the rest of the population.

Although at times the book seems to overstate it’s case, it’s an interesting read…or listen.

Just as I was wrapping up that book I stumbled upon Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Josh Foer. It’s the true story of a journalist with average memory who stumbles upon the US Memory Championship. He’s fascinated by these people who can remember the order of a mixed deck of cards in just a few minutes or hundreds of random numbers. A year later he wins the US Memory championship himself.

The writing is excellent throughout, and although it’s not really a how-to on memory tricks, there’s plenty of good tips throughout. It made me want to dig deeper. He interviews the man with the worst memory (it’s not me, as it turns out), Kim Peek, the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man, and looks into how the importance of memorization has evolved over the years, especially now where we carry computers around in our pants.

As I mentioned, the book collides in theme with Talent is Overrated: as he starts training for the US memory championship he starts learning more about deliberate practice, and again the idea that almost anyone can become a world-class performer if they’re willing to put in the hours AND if they use deliberate practice to get there.

I strongly recommend either of these two books for business owners, and Moonwalking for everyone as it is just a pleasurable read.

Rich Brooks
Future US Memory Champion

Although most of the websites we build don’t need Discovery (notice the capital “D”), whenever we come up against a complex programming job, we strongly recommend it. And what’s more, we expect to get paid for it, even if you decide not to move forward with the project. Why do we do this?

In the fourteen plus years I’ve been running flyte I’ve realized that my assumptions and the assumptions of my clients don’t always match up perfectly. That’s certainly not their fault; building a website is not an every day occurrence for them and so they make certain assumptions based on similar experiences in vaguely-related fields, or just on their hopes and wishes. And on my side, I often forget that building websites isn’t their business, so I make my own misguided assumptions…like they’re no longer using IE6.

I’ve had clients who were surprised to find out that we weren’t writing their copy for them, or creating a logo for them, or setting up their new email login on their iPhones. (All services we offer as add-ons. Except for the iPhone. That’s what your local Genius Bar is for.)

Custom programming takes this to a whole other level.

Even when we’ve listed out the deliverables as specifically as possible there are always issues:

• Do you want the ability to create your own subcategories? If so, do subcategories need to be tied into just one category or several? If you delete a subcategory do all the products/services that were aligned with them also get deleted? If not, where do they go?
• Do you want the system to send out confirmation emails or did you want to be able to override that with a personal message?
• What type of discount codes will you be offering? Will those change in the future?
• How will people create/recover usernames and passwords?

These are just a few examples of what we’ve run into in the past. Even when you think you know what the client wants, even when they feel they’ve been as clear as possible, miscommunication happens.

To limit this, we like to create storyboards that walk clients through what their experience will be (here’s how you approve a new member, here’s how you send them a reminder email, etc.) as well as the experience of the user (this is where they can sign up, where they enter their discount code, etc.)

Doing this takes time. Besides the hours it takes, it’s also based on years of experience in programming and user-interface. What makes sense for your end user? What is scalable? What is affordable?

The way we (and many other firms) set this up is that you pay us for the Discovery work, with the deliverable being storyboards and a firm price on the project. You’re not required to move forward with us at that point, and you can even shop those storyboards around. Of course, if we’ve done a good job why wouldn’t you want to work with us?

If you don’t do discovery, we still need to create those storyboards during the project to be able to do the programming. (You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint, would you?) Unfortunately, if some major misunderstandings surface at that point that cause the budget to change it may be more difficult to extricate yourself at that point…we may already be hip-deep into web design, a keyword analysis, or other parallel work for your site.

In short, Discovery isn’t extra work or a programmer trying to pad their bill, it’s insurance for your job coming in on time and on budget.

Can I get an “amen?”

Rich Brooks
Now I’m Selling Insurance?

Photo credit: BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives

Boy, do I have some issues with this.

There’s nothing wrong with asking customers for positive reviews; when a client tells us that they had an especially good experience with flyte we ask them if they’d be willing to recommend one of us on LinkedIn, write up a review on Google, or let us use their message in our online marketing.

However, the idea of paying someone for a review, especially only if it’s favorable (their underline, not mine) seems, well, unseemly. No need to share your story with others if your experience is unfavorable. Do that on your own time.

I also have issues with the logic behind writing these reviews. “Because they garner awareness of our solutions, which in turn, leads to to direct outreach.” I’m not even entirely sure what that means, but if you want direct outreach, shouldn’t you be reaching out to the people who might need your solution?

Here’s how I might recommend Verio moves forward: teach your account reps to do a kick-ass job, and when your customers are suitably impressed, then ask those people if they’d be willing to write a positive review for you. No incentives other than your undying gratitude.

We got this semi-targeted email in the midst of moving all of our clients’ sites off of Verio to another host after too many frustrations; probably not the best time to ask us for a favorable review of their product line.

I’m still a believer that all hosting companies suck, some just suck less…I can only hope that our new hosting company falls into that latter company.

P.S. Please don’t take this as an opportunity to sell us on your hosting services; we’ve spent too much time and energy moving, and we’re not going to review our hosting again for another, say, 27 years.

Rich Brooks
My Going Price is $50/Review