8 Psychological Principles That’ll Double Your Sales

Behind all great marketing, there is one thing…

Understanding.

When you understand your customer, you can understand how to create a great product for them and the best way to present it to them.

If your sales aren’t as high as you’d like them to be, it means you need to spend some time learning about how your customer thinks.

That’s where psychology comes in.

While psychology and marketing are two very different fields, that doesn’t mean that learning psychology can’t help you.

In fact, I think it’s one of the most important things a marketer can study.

In this post, I’m going to show you eight different psychological principles and the ways they can affect your sales.

To take it even further, I’m going to show you how you can apply each principle to your business.

Ready? Let’s start. 

1. People are lazy, this law proves it…

By far, the most common disconnect between marketers and their audience/customers is how much they care about products.

Marketers put a ton of work into crafting great content, landing pages, and products.

It’s pretty common to think your audience is going to be excited when they see them.

But then, when your audience actually does, they gloss over your content and use your products begrudgingly.

Okay, maybe not all of them, but enough so that you notice.

That’s where the law of least effort comes in.

The law states that people almost always choose the path of least resistance, the easiest option to do something.

When you create a great piece of content, say a complete guide to using a pillow, you approach it from the mindset of people who want to know everything there is to know about pillows.

However, most will simply want to know what the easiest way to start using a pillow is.

It might be a silly example, but can you see how that applies to your products and content?

If your product seems difficult, your conversion rate will suffer: Difficulty is relative, so a complex product won’t scare away all potential customers…just many.

And obviously, that’s a problem.

Although I’m going to focus on your products, this also applies to your content. If it seems like it’s going to be hard to find the information a reader is looking for, they’re going to try one of the thousand other options out there.

Now back to your product, what might a potential customer think is difficult?

• It looks like it might be difficult to get the product shipped
• The reviews are varied, so it seems like the product is hit and miss
• They can’t find what they’re looking for easily in your product results (a big issue for large e-commerce stores)
• Your payment or signup options look complex (tons of fields, no easy option like PayPal)

As you can see, when I say a product or shopping experience is “difficult,” it can refer to a wide range of things that make a customer hesitant to buy.

Applying the law of least effort to make more sales: This is one of the easier principles to apply to your business. Well, at least in theory.

All you need to do is make the buying experience as simple as possible.

The tough part is identifying where your potential customers (and maybe current customers) are having difficulties.

It’s going to differ wildly based on your particular business, but the solutions are usually pretty simple.

Difficulty example #1: Customers can’t find the product they’re looking for easily.

Solution: Improve filtering options or remove unpopular products.

Difficulty example #2: Customers are abandoning the checkout page at the payment options.

Solution: Integrate more options such as PayPal and Stripe.

Difficulty example #3: Customers think the product might be difficult to use.

Solution: Add an explainer video to the sales page that shows how simple it is to use the product.

Again, the solution is pretty obvious once you’ve identified the sticking point.

So how do you find it?

There are a few main ways you can do this…

Option #1 – User tracking tools: This is how you get concrete data to base user experience decisions on.

There are a few different tools you can use here.

The first type is analytics tools. For example:

• Google Analytics
• KISSmetrics

These tell you how users are going through your website and checkout process. You can see whether they’re dropping off at one particular stage and then examine those parts for difficulties.

The second type is heatmap software such as CrazyEgg.

This shows you how users interact with your pages. If they’re not clicking something they should, it’s an indication that it’s not visible enough to them, and now you can fix it.

Option #2 – Live observation: The ideal situation is to observe people on your website browsing, buying, and then using your products.

Unfortunately, this is difficult to do.

If you can, offer some sort of incentive to a few email subscribers to allow you to watch them use your website.

Give them a goal (e.g., to buy a black pair of boots), and then simply watch what they do to accomplish that goal.

You can have them record their session using tools such as CamStudio or Techsmith Snaggit (a Chrome extension).

The next best option is to do it yourself. Put yourself in the shoes of a customer, and go through your entire buying process.

Many marketers don’t do this, and they don’t realize that the process has become more difficult as they’ve made changes over time.

Finally, don’t forget about your current customers either. If they are finding your products difficult to use, you will get extra refunds and lower customer retention.

Get in touch with them once they buy, and make sure that they not only receive your product but actually use it.

Find out if they’re having any difficulties.

2. People are overwhelmed easily: Don’t cause analysis paralysis

Have you ever had to make a difficult decision in a high pressure scenario?

It’s tough!

The options keep bouncing back in forth inside your head, but you never seem to get closer to an answer.

Shopping might not be a high pressure scenario, but buying any expensive product is an important decision. People tend to put a lot of thought into the purchase before making it.

Now think back to a tough decision you’ve made recently, where you may have gotten a bit overwhelmed.

If you had an option to not make the decision in that scenario and move on with your life, wouldn’t you have taken it?

Maybe not always, but most of the time, yes.

And that’s what happens to your potential customer. They can opt out of a tough buying decision in half a second by clicking the close button on their browser.

As you may know, that’s exactly what happens when people get overwhelmed. It’s called “analysis paralysis,” describing a scenario in which someone gets so overwhelmed they can’t make a decision.

Do not let your potential customers get overwhelmed.

The famous jam study: Professor Sheena Iyengar wanted to see how variety affected decision making…with jam.

She went to a grocery store multiple times and set up a station offering samples of jam.

Many companies do this. They give out small samples of their products, which then increases sales of their products.

But Iyengar set this up as an experiment. She offered samples of 24 different flavors of jam to some shoppers, and she offered only six to others.

Which scenario do you think led to more sales?

Turns out offering the smaller set of jams was much more effective:

• With 24 jams available, more shoppers tried a sample, but only 3% bought at least one jam.
• With 6 jams available, fewer shoppers tried a sample, but 30% bought at least one jam.

The extra samplers were nowhere close to making up for that 10 fold difference in conversion rate.

The takeaway: More choices usually aren’t better. Limit choices to the most popular options.

How to keep your potential customers from getting overwhelmed: The main way to apply this principle to your business is on your sales pages. I am talking about specifically those that have multiple things a customer could buy.

To apply it, reduce the number of choices.

For most businesses, offering anywhere from 3-5 choices is usually optimal, but you can test what number would work best for you.

An example of this is the Crazy Egg sales page. There are four plans that a customer could choose from, and they are laid out really simply for ease of comparison:

3. Sometimes, being innovative can kill your conversions

At one point or another, every marketer wants to innovate.

Innovation is a good thing! It’s the process of improving upon what we already know.

But it can also be dangerous, mainly because of the law of past experience.

What this law basically says is that when people see something for the first time, they interact with it based on their previous experiences.

For example, if they get a new book, they’re going to try to read it from left to right. However, it could be a book that is read from right to left. Past experiences shape expectations.

At first, you might not see how this connects to your sales, but I promise you it does.

How innovation can hurt your business: Let’s go over a quick experiment that illustrates this principle clearly.

The business originally innovated and created a small “add to cart” button for their products.

But that wasn’t performing as well as hoped, so they created two new variations.

The first variation was a button that had the actual text “add to cart.” This is what you see on most other e-commerce sites, including Amazon:

Variation 2 was another innovative design, different from what most sites have. It led to a 15% increase in clicks. Pretty impressive!

But variation 1 was the important one. The basic button with the text “add to cart” led to a 49% increase in clicks.

From a design perspective, the original cart icon was an improvement. It’s clever and original.

And while it may seem obvious to you and me, it’s not always to customers because they base their actions on past experience.

The customers of this business expected to see the “add to cart” button. When they did, they knew exactly what it would do. With the other types of buttons, they didn’t.

Stick to the basics first: Innovation can be great, but you need to do it in the right way.

Instead of trying to improve every aspect of the traditional sales page and sales funnel right away, do it in incremental steps through split testing.

Start by modeling your sales pages after the best in the business (e.g., Amazon, eBay, etc.).

Then, start trying to improve elements one by one. Run a split test to see if your innovation actually improves the customer experience.

4. Nobody’s perfect, show your customers your flaws

Think about the most capable people you know, the ones you would trust with almost anything.

Chances are they’re not perfect, but they work extremely hard on the things they can control.

Now think about the people you trust the least. They’re probably the ones who always blame their failures on other things, complaining about bad luck.

Well, it turns out that a similar thing applies to how your customers see your business.

This was first uncovered by social psychologist Fiona Lee.

She wanted to study how the way a business presents itself would affect the favorability of the business.

To do so, she created two reports. All subjects involved in the experiment received one of the reports to read.

The reports were focused on explaining why the company performed poorly over the previous year. However, they were written in drastically different ways:

• Report #1 - Focused on strategic decisions. It analyzed why the decisions were made and where the business came up short (their flaws/weaknesses).
• Report #2 - Focused on external events (e.g., the economy is bad).

The results were crystal clear. The business in report #1 was viewed much more favorably than the business described in report #2.

When you admit to your faults and are transparent about your decision making, customers can feel that you’re in control.

However, if you’re blaming external factors, it sounds like you don’t have a lot of control over whether or not you’ll succeed.

Furthermore, Lee also studied hundreds of real reports of this nature. She found that the companies who had reports like the first one also had high stock prices the next year.

The tough part is tying this into your business. If you have shareholders, the takeaway is obvious. But if you’re just trying to increase sales, it’s a bit more difficult.

Transparency needs to be strategic: Customers don’t need to know about every mistake your business has ever made.

It would be silly to fill your landing page with a huge list of mistakes made while creating the product. Customers care about the product at that stage and not much more.

But admitting your big mistakes to customers when you make them can be very effective.

Everyone makes mistakes, and when you’re a large business, small mistakes can get blown out of proportion.

Instead of ignoring complaints or blaming them on something else (like a supplier for not delivering on time), take full responsibility.

If a supplier doesn’t deliver on time and you end up not shipping products on time, you’ve messed up, not just your supplier.

If you want your customers to have confidence in you in the future, explain that you didn’t keep a large enough reserve of products and accepted too many orders.

Then, explain how you will remedy it so that it won’t happen again. It’d also be a nice touch to offer a discount to those affected by the mistake.

This principle won’t result in an instant sales boost, but it is how you keep sales growing over the long term.

5. No one likes losing, and it makes us do crazy things…

Just about all people, successful or not successful, hate losing.

It could be just a game, but it extends far beyond that.

People hate failing on tests, not being able to complete projects, and losing things they previously earned.

In all these situations, something people believe they deserve is taken from them.

Imagine if someone tried to take away your car, phone, or even your coffee maker. You’d be upset, maybe even angry.

It turns out that most people will go to extraordinary lengths to prevent feeling this way. So much so that they do it without even realizing it.

It’s called loss aversion.

Let’s look at a study that illustrates the principle beautifully…

At the beginning of it, all subjects were given $50.

Then, they were asked to choose from two options:

• either keep $30
• or have a 50/50 chance of keeping the $50 or losing the entire $50

It makes sense that the majority decided to keep the $30.

However, in a followup study, they tweaked the phrasing of the first option. Now, they gave the option of “losing $20.”

It still meant the same thing (they’d end up with the same amount of $30), but now, subjects were reminded that they had to give some money back.

Essentially, it was the exact same experiment, but the results were different.

In the first experiment, only 43% of subjects took the gamble, but in the second, 61% took the gamble.

People were more willing to gamble to avoid losing a portion of the money for sure.

Give your customers a chance to lose your product: In order to apply this principle to increase your sales, you need potential customers to feel like they already own your product.

Then, you need to take it away unless they purchase it. In most cases, this will cause a significant increase in sales.

There are three main ways you can use this.

First, add videos of someone using your product. Add voiceovers or text that clearly state that the person in the video owns the product.

When we watch others, we subconsciously picture ourselves in their situation.

Secondly, you can offer free trials liberally. Many online businesses have recognized the power of this.

For example, Buffer offers a no obligation 30-day free trial:

After someone uses a product for that long, they’ll feel like it’s theirs and will become invested in it.

At the end of the trial, users will be much more likely to pay for it because they’ll feel they are otherwise losing it.

Finally, pay special attention to the language you choose.

When you put products on sale, don’t say “get 20$ off.” Instead, say something like “buy now or lose the opportunity to save $20.”

6. The big red button always wins

We’ve looked at a few principles that have basically demonstrated that people are lazy and usually look for the easiest option.

But there’s one more principle that shows us how to take it into account.

It’s called Fitts’ law.

While you don’t need to know it for it to be useful, the law is actually a model that can be used to determine the amount of time it takes to perform an action.

But this post isn’t about physics or mathematics, so don’t worry about understanding the formula.

The only variables you need to pay attention to are the “T”, “D,” and “W.”

The “T” describes the overall time of the movement. As we’ve seen throughout this post, easier is better. The smaller the “T” value is, the more likely a visitor is to do the action (like click the “add to cart” button”).

The “D” describes the distance to the target. So if the mouse pointer is at the bottom left of the screen and a button is at the top right, the distance is large. The larger the distance, the more it takes to do the action, and the less likely a person will perform it.

Finally, the “W” is the width or size of the target. This should make sense to you. A big button is much easier to click than a tiny button. I would also modify this to include the clarity of the button (a high contrast button is easier to click than one that fades into the background).

In summary:

• A small “T” (time) on important actions is good for conversions
• A small “D” (distance) is good for conversions
• A large “W” (width/size) is good for conversions

When “D” is small and “W” is large, “T” will be small, so focus on those two factors.

Applying Fitts’ law to your sales: To apply the law, you want to make it as easy as possible to click buttons that lead to conversions (e.g., download buttons, opt-in buttons, add to cart buttons).

To do that, you want a small “D” and a large “W.”

When someone loads a page, their cursor usually hovers around the middle of the page. Therefore, you want your important buttons to be near the middle to minimize the distance of their travel on the page.

Secondly, you want your button to be large enough so that it’s obvious that it’s an important thing to click. Choosing a contrasting color is also a good idea.

Look at the button on this Google Chrome download page:

It’s large enough to stand out, and it’s right in the center of the page.

Most visitors would click the button before they realize they’ve done it, which is exactly what Google wants.

7. Decisions are difficult, sometimes we just want reassurance

When you know exactly what you want, a decision is easy.

But when a decision is a bit tougher, and they often are when it comes to buying a product, you might not be sure if you really want or need it.

That’s when you look to others for an opinion.

It could be an expert on the product; it could be a close friend; or it could even be a stranger. You’re looking for social support and help with your decision.

Social proof relieves anxiety: Social proof is a concept used by businesses to sell more. It consists of making it clear that other customers (ideally well known ones) use and like your product.

There are many ways to use social proof effectively. You can test and try different combinations of them to see what works best for your business.

To start with, if you have a large customer base, you can simply highlight the number of customers you have, like Basecamp does:

Or like Content Marketing Institute highlights the number of social followers they have:

Alternatively, you can post reviews and testimonials of happy customers on your sales pages.

These carry a lot more weight when a potential customer knows from whom they are coming. Try to get some recognizable names in your niche when possible.

Finally, you can also create in-depth case studies that showcase your product in action.

These are best used when you have a complex product or service that leaves your customers unsure of whether it’s a good fit for them.

One final thing to consider is that social proof doesn’t always increase conversion rates (although it usually does). You should test each type in multiple ways to determine the optimal use of social proof for your business.

8. There are two sides to every customer, know when and how to speak to both

Have you ever read about a successful conversion optimization experiment, tried to apply the results, and failed miserably?

It happens all the time because no two businesses are exactly the same.

They differ in many ways, which is why what works for some businesses won’t work for others.

There’s one aspect of potential customers in particular that produces drastically different buying behaviors.

And it can be explained by the dual process theory.

From my understanding, this hasn’t been proven yet, but it is by far the leading theory of how our brains make different decisions.

It states that there are two main forms of processing in our brains:

• deliberate thinking (conscious)
• automatic thinking (unconscious)

While you probably have a good idea of what each system is, let’s define things a little better.

Deliberate thinking is slow, takes a lot of mental effort, and usually ends with a logical decision.

But the unconscious is different. Automatic thinking happens without effort and is pretty much going on all the time.

Researcher Daniel Kahneman also says that this unconscious system falls on the emotional side of decision making. Ever get that “gut feeling” about something? It’s not exactly logical, but it influences your decisions.

Note that system 1 refers to automatic thinking in the above picture, and system 2 refers to deliberate thinking.

Optimizing your business for dual systems: Your first step is to identify which system your target audience predominantly uses.

If you’re selling super simple products, like combs or spoons, choosing a product is not going to be a tough decision requiring much conscious thought.

Therefore, the vast majority of your customers will primarily be using their automatic processing system.

Alternatively, if you’re selling complex products like computers or cars, almost every decision will be based on the deliberate system.

Finally, there are customer types that are in-between. It may be a no-brainer decision for some of your customers, but others will make a decision based on a lot of consideration. Here, you need to optimize for both systems.

Optimizing for automatic thinkers: This type of thinking goes side by side with simplicity. It harmonizes with the other principles we’ve looked at such as the law of past experiences.

There are a few ways to appeal to this automatic, instinctual type of thinking:

• Use pictures! They make us feel emotions
• Keep messages simple
• Focus on main benefits, not technical details
• Keep user experience as simple as possible. Make “buy” buttons and opt-in forms large and clear

Optimizing for deliberate thinkers: To optimize for deliberate thinkers, you need to include full details about the product.

A logical decision is built around answering the question of whether or not the product is worth the money.

Here is a good example: Nathan Barry makes the contents of his courses very clear on his sales pages.

Then, he goes into detail about why each part of that package is valuable and why it adds to the overall value of the course.

Overall, you want to be able to load your sales pages and ask yourself:

If I were a potential buyer, would I have all the information I’d need to comfortably make a decision?

Conclusion

Learning more about psychology is a great way to improve your marketing and sales results.

I’ve shown you 8 principles today that you can use to increase your sales, but there are many more.

Start by trying to apply 1-2 of these principles to your business, and slowly add more.

If you have any questions about how to apply any of them, I’m happy to try to help. Leave a comment with as much detail as possible so that I can provide some useful direction.

from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1Ukf9Xc via transformational marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1R4uUEa

7 Psychological Principles to Get More Engagement on Social Media

Just about every great marketer I’ve met had at least a bit of interest in psychology.

It’s important to be curious about the ways people think because that’s the only way you can make whatever you’re marketing to someone desirable.

You can apply lessons from psychology to every part of your marketing work.

But we can’t look at it all at once.

Instead, I’d like to focus on how understanding psychological principles of human behavior can benefit you in one area: social media marketing.

In this post, I’m going to teach you 7 different psychological principles and then show you how you can use them in your social media marketing.

However, since social media and content marketing are so intertwined, aspects of some of these principles will spill over to platforms other than social media too.

That being said, let’s start with the first principle. 

1. Children always ask this one question, but adults think it too…

If a kid asks a question, they’re almost never satisfied with a shallow answer.

Consequently, the most asked question by the vast majority of children is:

“Why?”

Why do things work the way they do?

People are naturally dissatisfied with answers if they don’t understand them.

Think of the last time you watched a political debate. How frustrating is it when most candidates don’t give a straight answer to a question?

After they dance around yet another answer, all you want to do is scream at the screen “WHY?”

Eventually, though, most people realize that there are some questions that you just won’t get a satisfying answer to. This is the point where adults give up on asking “why?” even if it leaves them a bit frustrated.

But all is not lost!

That’s because you can provide answers…at least when it comes to your audience on social media.

Answering questions your readers have in full clear detail is one of the best ways to get loyal followers on social media.

Here’s an example:

Stone Temple Consulting knows that many members of their audience wonder why SEO has to be so complex (it certainly seems that way to beginners).

So, they used that opportunity to explain why, using the question as the headline for the social media post.

Imagine it from one of their followers’ point of view.

• They had a question about why something (SEO) is the way it is
• They clicked the social media post to find the answer
• They found a good answer and felt satisfied

That last part is really important because it reinforces the behavior. Over time, they learn that good things happen when they interact with posts from this particular company.

And there’s no reason why it can’t be your business instead.

All it takes is two simple steps, and I’ll show you how to do them.

Step #1 – Find questions your readers want answers to: Remember that your goal is to answer questions that most of your followers have. That’s how you get them to take action (like click through to your website) and give them a good experience.

There are many places where you can find these questions: on social media, forums, groups, etc.

But I strongly recommend starting with question and answer sites because they are obviously filled with questions. You don’t need to waste time filtering out other content.

The big question and answer sites are Yahoo Answers and Quora.

Personally, I’m a bigger fan of Quora, and I even post answers there myself. I think the quality of the site is much higher than that of Yahoo Answers’.

The simplest way to find a long list of questions you can answer is to just type in your niche in the search bar.

What you’re looking for is some sort of “Topic: (your niche),” which is basically a category that collects all questions related to your niche.

As you can see below, it should come up as one of the main search suggestions in most cases:

Click the topic, and Quora will load a feed for you, which will have thousands of questions in it (for most topics). Just keep scrolling when you reach the bottom, and it will load more.

These questions are not organized by date, but rather by relevance and interest.

You can see the number of “upvotes” on each question, which is a good measure of the number of people in the community who are interested in the answer.

You literally have hundreds of great questions at your fingertips. You could answer one a day if you wanted to.

Step #2 – Find the best way to answer them: Now that you have the questions, it’s time to provide answers.

But remember, you’re providing your own answers on social media (or your website), not on Quora.

Your audience on social media is completely separate from the Quora audience, which means that most of your audience still needs an answer to these questions.

This also means that you can read through the answers on Quora if you need help or guidance to answer the question. However, you should, of course, answer the question in your own words and share your own experiences when possible.

After you have an answer, there are 3 things you need to decide on.

First, how long does the answer need to be? If it’s really short, you might be able to answer it all in your social media post (depending on the platform).

If it’s on the long side, a blog post is going to be a better choice, and you can just link to the full answer in your social media post.

Second, you need to decide what format is best for the answer.

Some questions are best answered as regular blog posts, while others are better answered as infographics or videos.

My general rule is that if your audience needs to see the answer in action (like how to assemble a shelf), videos are the best.

If they need to see many parts of the answer at the same time (like the steps to baking a cake), an infographic is the best.

Often, there might be more than one type of content that makes sense. Feel free to make more than one to give your audience more choice.

Finally, the third thing you need to decide is how you will actually present the question and answer on social media.

I suggest keeping this as simple as possible.

Copy the question just as you found it on Quora in the words that your audience used.

Then, if you have the space, provide a little teaser that describes your answer and adds a bit of curiosity.

2. Use the endowment effect to get raving fans

Would you trade your current car for one that’s worth a few thousand more?

Even though that’s a great trade from a financial point of view, most people wouldn’t.

And it’s because of the endowment effect. We get attached to the things we own and subsequently put more value on them.

There’s a great study that clarifies this effect. Here’s what the researchers did:

They gave some study participants a mug. Then, they asked those subjects if they would be willing to trade their original item for an equally valued pen or sell it to one of the other participants.

And the results were fascinating.

If the endowment effect didn’t exist, the people who were originally given the mug would have said that they would sell it for roughly the same amount that people were willing to pay for it.

However, none of the subjects given a mug traded it for the pen even though it was worth the same amount.

In addition, when they named the price that they’d be willing to sell it for, it was twice as high as what the other subjects were willing to pay for it.

In practical terms, the subjects of the experiment got attached to the mug once they owned it.

And you can use the endowment effect in many areas of your business, including social media.

Applying the endowment effect to your business: The most obvious place to use the endowment effect in your business is to give your customers a sample before asking them to buy. You see this all the time in stores.

For example, Buffer has a full 30-day free trial, and not even a credit card is required:

As those new signups become invested in the platform, they’ll put a high value on having their own account.

When the 30 days are up, most of them will value the account high enough that the $10, or whatever Buffer is asking for, will seem minuscule.

However, if they were asked for the money upfront, most people would hesitate when considering the cost.

This is probably the hardest principle to apply directly to social media.

The best way to implement it, from what I’ve seen, is to link to content, but not the full version of it.

For example, Bryan Dean posted a link to his skyscraper technique case study on Facebook:

The post contains a ton of value, and readers get attached to having the technique in their arsenal.

However, even after reading the case study, some readers could use a bit more help, like a checklist of the steps. Bryan offers this as a content upgrade:

Readers need to give their email addresses in order to get access to the checklist.

Since they already know that the first part of the content was great, they’ll want the last part as well and will be more than happy to put in their email addresses.

3. A simple principle behind most engagement: reciprocity

Society only functions because we all adhere to some basic rules.

One of these rules, or “norms,” is the rule of reciprocity.

This was one of the 6 factors of influence that Cialdini found in his decades of research.

I can say with certainty that you’ve been enacting this norm many times in your life. It is seen in all cultures, regardless of the language, location, religion, etc.

Here is what the norm entails:

When someone is given something by someone else, they will try to return the favor.

Typically, the favor will be about the same size as the initial gift. If you lend someone money for ice cream, they will be inclined to lend you money for something like a drink later on.

Conversely, if you fly across the country to help someone in a time of crisis, they will basically do anything for you if you ask them.

This principle has been studied many times and proven to be true.

Back in 2002, researchers studied whether waiters could make more money through tips if they took advantage of this principle.

So, the waiters in one experimental group were told to give their diners an after-dinner mint. Tips went up 3%.

Not bad.

Then, another group was told to pause before giving them the mints, look at the customer, and tell them the mint was specifically for them. Tips went up 20%.

Woah. What just happened?

There are a few things to note. First, you don’t have to ask for a favor in return. The diners, in all cases, tipped extra without being asked.

The second thing is that it was important to make sure that the diners knew that the waiter was doing something nice for them. If they thought after-dinner mints were standard and expected, there isn’t much for them to have to give back for.

So, when you do something nice for someone, make sure they know that you put some thought and effort into it.

Think of your blog posts. You put tons of effort into them just to give them away, and then people spend 10 seconds skimming through one and moving on to the next one. I spend 5-10 hours on each post, and I still get people complaining about the content I’m giving away.

It’s nuts! Of course, only some readers don’t understand the effort that goes into creating content, but that’s why it’s important to try to make them aware of it.

Once they are aware of it, the reciprocity principle kicks into effect, and they return the favor by giving you more of their attention.

How to put the reciprocity principle to good use: Like most of these principles, you can use reciprocity in many areas of your business.

The main way you can use this principle on social media is to help you connect with influencers. You can share their posts on social media and also let them know that you’ve mentioned them in one of your own posts:

When you feature someone in a post, you do them a favor.

Following the reciprocity principle, this means they are more likely to do something for you in return.

The important thing to keep in mind is that a share or a mention is worth different amounts to different people.

If someone mentions me in an article they wrote, it’s nice (and flattering), but it’s unlikely to have any significant impact on my business.

For the medium sized blogger who gets fewer than 50 shares on all their posts, it’s a much bigger deal.

What this means for you is that you’ll need to share several posts by a popular influencer to build up any significant good will. Then, they will likely repay that by either sharing something you created or taking the time to open and read an email you send them.

Of course, you also need to create your own great content, or there’s no way they can return the favor.

4. Ask for a favor to capitalize on the Ben Franklin effect

What if I gave you some money?

Then, what if I asked you to give it back?

It’s normal to assume that you’d be pretty neutral about me and the whole thing. But in fact, that’s not true.

To study this effect, researchers Jim Jecker and David Landy split subjects into three different groups. They gave everyone some money upfront. But then they asked the people in each group different things:

1. In the first group, they asked the subjects if they’d give the money back to the scientist who initially gave it to them
2. In the second group, they asked the subjects if they’d give it back (not to the scientist in particular)
3. In the third group, they didn’t ask for it back.

Then, the researchers gave participants a quick questionnaire to fill out. The most important part of this questionnaire was the part where they were asked to score how much they liked the scientist (who gave them the money).

Surprisingly, the group who got to keep the money gave the scientist the lowest likability score. The guy gives them free money, and they still don’t like him!

Conversely, the group that was asked to give the money back to the scientist (most of them did), gave the scientist the highest likability score.

Introducing the Ben Franklin effect.

The Ben Franklin effect explains how people justify their actions.

In the case of this experiment, the people who simply received the money rationalized that they deserved it.

The group that actually gave the money back to the scientist did a favor for him. They rationalized this by thinking that the only way they’d do this is if they liked him.

In short: Doing a favor for someone else will make you like them more. You feel that you must like them if you did something for them and got nothing in return.

Whom should you ask for favors? You can certainly ask other influencers to share your posts and content. If they do it out of kindness (or because your post is amazing), they’ll instantly like you more. This can lead to a mutually beneficial relationship where you both share each other’s content.

But the more interesting application to me is to ask your followers for favors.

Don’t be afraid to ask readers to help you by contributing stories, commenting, or sharing your content.

No, not all of them will, but the ones who do will think of you more favorably each time they do it. You will see that readers who were hesitant to do you a small favor at first are willing to do huge favors for you after a while.

Here’s an example of Marie Forleo asking her followers to contribute silly stories for a piece of content she was working on.

She does things from time to time, and her followers love to help out (notice the 150 likes). There were several comments on this post with stories that she could use.

One final note: Remember the reciprocity rule. If your follower does you a favor, that’s great. However, you probably want to give them something back. Most commonly, just a public thank you or a mention in a post is a great gesture.

The key is not to offer the reward in the first place. If you do, your readers will rationalize that they only helped you out to get it, not because they like you. Keep the reward as a surprise for after.

5. Reposting content lends well to the “mere exposure theory”

The more you are exposed to something, the more you like it.

At least that’s what the mere exposure theory describes.

We don’t fully understand why or how it works, but studies have shown that this is true in most cases.

For example, in his study, Robert Zajonc showed Chinese characters to subjects who could not read or speak Chinese.

The fun part is that he showed some characters more than others, anywhere from one time to 25 times.

The results were clear: the more someone was exposed to a certain character, the more of a positive meaning they gave it.

This is probably partially why most people like themselves so much. After all, you’re stuck with yourself 24 hours a day.

The mere exposure theory and social media: There are two ways in which you can apply this theory to your marketing on social media to make it more effective.

Most importantly, post on a regular basis. I post at least once a day on almost all of my social media accounts:

Post as often as you can without being annoying to your followers. The more you can expose your brand and content to a follower, the better.

The second way you can use this theory is to share things multiple times.

This calendar by Buffer shows that they share a single post several times after they publish it.

This will expose your followers to your content more often, adding to the effect.

Have you ever felt unsure whether you liked a movie after watching it for the first time? And after watching it again you absolutely loved it?

It happens all the time.

And not just with movies but with content as well.

Sometimes, a reader doesn’t love your content for a variety of reasons at first, but as they come back to it over time, they like it more and more.

6. Social proof and social networking should go hand in hand

Social proof has been proven to improve conversion rates in a wide variety of situations.

We’re typically talking about sales when it comes to social proof, but it can apply to social media marketing as well.

There are many types of social proof, but we’re interested in one in particular—user social proof:

User social proof consists of approval/positivity from current users of something.

On e-commerce sites such as Amazon, this means reviews and ratings. On other sites, this might mean case studies.

The effect is as expected.

The more positive social proof a product has, the better it looks to potential customers.

We relate to other users and expect to have a similar experience with the product or service we are considering that they had.

How social proof affects your social media marketing: Social proof is the sole reason why pages buy fake followers. They know that if real users see that they have thousands of followers, they will be more likely to follow them as well.

I don’t recommend doing that for a number of reasons.

However, it illustrates that social media users look at what other users are doing.

If tons of people like or share a post, they are much more likely to do it themselves. You can see this all the time in action when a post is trending (“going viral”).

The practical takeaway is that when you publish a post on social media, do whatever you can to get those first few “likes” or shares.

It may take messaging some friends or emailing your biggest fans or your peers. But get that initial traction as soon as possible, and the rest of your followers will be more likely to engage with your posts.

If you have employees, ask them to engage with every post as it’s published, at least until you build a larger following.

7. Long term engagement can be secured using the “propinquity effect”

The final principle explains how people become friends.

As you might have guessed, propinquity is related to “proximity.”

And what the effect states is that the closer you are to someone, the more likely you are to like them. For example, tenants who live on the same floor will typically have closer friendships with each other than with the tenants who live on a different floor.

You might have also noticed that the propinquity effect is related to the mere exposure effect, which we looked at earlier. The more you see someone, the more likely you are to feel positively about them.

However, there’s one other factor to the propinquity effect: similarity.

The more similarities you share and the closer you are, the faster and more you will like someone.

Propinquity and social media explained: To continue with the experiment, you want to live as close to your followers as possible. This extends past social media to all other channels of communication with your audience.

Ideally, send them emails on a regular basis. On Quick Sprout alone, I send 3 emails a week to subscribers. If readers want more and also subscribe to the NeilPatel.com blog, they get another 3-4.

It allows me to be in their lives on a regular basis.

But the same applies to social media as well. I post multiple times a day on Twitter and usually Facebook too.

Example post 1:

Example post 2:

The idea is that the more readers see me, the more they will like me.

Did you notice that I left out one detail? If so, that’s a very good catch.

For the propinquity effect to be as effective as possible, those posts and emails also need to be about something that we have in common.

But this is pretty simple for businesses. As long as you are talking about content, events, or products in your niche that your audience likes, you immediately have that required level of relevance.

Then, you just need the frequency to take effect, and you’ll be set.

Conclusion

Psychology and marketing go hand in hand. If you can understand how your target audience thinks, you can figure out the best ways to engage them and the best ways to present your content and products.

I think it’s important to understand how psychology affects every aspect of your marketing, and that’s why I focused on one—social media—in this post.

I’ve shown you seven psychological principles that you can use to improve your marketing in general. However, I’ve also shown you specific ways in which you can apply them to your social media marketing for instant improvement.

Ideally, spend 20-30 minutes going through each principle and thinking about how it applies to your specific business, audience, and marketing plan.

If you have any questions while you do this (I expect you will), I’ll be glad to help. Just leave me a comment below with your questions or comments.

from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1NRdK8Y via transformational marketing
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Simple Tips For Successful Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is difficult but we do have to understand that there are many things that can be done in order to increase the possibility of success. Everything basically revolves around the connection that you manage to achieve between the business and the followers, together with the communication that is established. It is vital that you always focus on this aspect and we have some great tips for you that you want to consider.

image via pixabay.com

Always Have An Attitude

No matter what you sell, people want to see you have a suitable attitude. Never hurry your posting and think about the voice that you use when you communicate with your audience. Focus on having an attitude that is suitable for the industry that you operate in. As an example, when selling corporate software, the attitude needs to be different than when selling couture fashion.

Remember that everything starts with the picture that you use. In social media marketing visuals play a huge part. The very first thing that you see when you reach a new page is that profile picture. After you develop your voice, make sure that everything you create is in a proper accordance with that voice.

Focus On Engagement

Remember that the name that we use is social media. A business has to stop simply broadcasting and has to talk with people. There is no person out there that will follow business feeds covering just pitches. When that feed becomes relevant and valuable, the association is better and engagement is higher.

One of the main benefits associated with social media is that a relationship is developed with the followers. As you offer high quality data through what you share, they will trust you more and will keep coming back.

Use Only Suitable Social Media Channels

There are countless social networks that you can be a member of. Many novice marketers make the mistake of creating an account on as many as possible. This is not something that you want to do since your desired audience is not present on all of them.

It is a great idea to first focus on a couple of platforms. In most situations the choice is made between Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter or Google+. Be sure to highlight when activity will take place on the networks so that people would know when to look for you online.

Brand Monitoring

Third party applications like Hootsuite should be used in order to track when people talk about your business or about you. That is a great source of information that you can use to your advantage. It is really important that you always have a proper presence. If you do not know what people say about you, there is no idea how to modify the campaigns to bring in better results.

Remember that people will talk about you on social media. This cannot be controlled. With this in mind, why not know what they say? You would be able to get more clients and it is so much easier for the business to adapt when business managers know what the target audience thinks about what is offered.

from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1ktbBFU via transformational marketing
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