CXL Week 4
What if I asked you to give me $20 right now? You’d probably say no, since you don’t really know me at all, or have any reason to give me any money. We are strangers. What then, if I asked you to give me $2 to buy a water? You might be more likely to give it to me then, I’d imagine. What if after you give me the $2, I ask you for $20? Consistency and commitment would suggest that now, you’d be more likely to give me the $20. I guess that is intuitive, although I can’t speak for you and if you would or wouldn’t give me the $20. I believe though, that the amount of you who gave me the $20 after my $2 request was much higher than without the $2 request.
Very interesting concept really. We see this all the time with forms and quiz funnels. When marketers ask you to first do one small task, like choosing your color, sharing your opinion, or giving a review, you’re subconsciously establishing that you are someone who does things for this person or company. So when they come back and ask you to check out a new sale, book, or article, you’ll probably stay consistent and go check it out. “Ask for something small, then ask for something bigger”.
If you’ve ever watched the Clickfunnels youtube videos and Russel Brunson’s business model, you’ve probably seen this in action time and time again. Brunson is a marketer who sells exclusively to people who want to be marketers, but even still the way he does business can be applied to any industry. I bring him up because a large part of Brunson’s businesss model is literally just givng out free ebooks, content, etc, and then asking people to pay them money for more content later down the road. They regularly exercise reciprocity, and also apply the principles of consistency. Before I started this mini-degree I was watching loads of Russel Brunson, and it’s pretty clear that a large part of his business is built with these principles in mind.
I was offered to buy a handful of books from Brunson, and at a time where I was thirsty for some concrete marketing lessons (pre-CXL) I went ahead and purchased one of them. This small act of purchasing that book made me very familiar with what I could expect when purchasing something from him down the road, how the checkout flowed and the time it took me to transact. Because of this, I feel it’s made me much more likely to buy something from him again. It was a pleasant experience, and as a customer of his I now feel much more likely to buy from him again. I’d like to consider myself exempt from this kind of persuasion though considering I read about it so often. Yet the naked truth is that the unconscious motivators taught in CXL are, well, unconscious. Even Robert Cialdini himself has confessed that he has been persuaded by some of the principles he’s wrote about extensively, and he plays god in the persuasion/ digital marketing space. This leads me to believe that there’s lots of other people out in the world who aren’t educated about persuasion and are incredibly predictable in their reaction to these persuasion methods. One of the more interesting methods that was discussed by Roger Dooley this week was unity/ tribes / being a part of something.
Being a Clickfunnels user is almost like a tribe of marketers, and by investing and joining in on all of Russel Brunsons shenanigans you kind of feel like you’re a part of a community. CXL references unity on Roger Dooley’s non-conscious motivation course, specifically how it’s used in cults and then how it’s used in business. One of the more interesting applications was that of Warren Buffet, when he was addressing his shareholder’s concerns about the succession of his fund after he steps down. To answer his shareholder’s concerns, he advised them “as if they were a close family member.” In effect, this feeling of community and place came about among the shareholders, and the result was a very persuasive letter. People love to be in groups, and CXL taught me that businesses should be using them to generate more loyal customers.
The final thing I’d like to cover is the idea of actually improving conversions with the advice CXL gives. I’ve been directly applying everything I learn almost immediately, and I’ve noticed it can be difficult to see what’s really working and what isn’t. Oftentimes in small businesses, the scale of your small tweaks is not large enough to justify a lot of thinking. If changing the location of this button boosts my profits by 2%, that’s awesome! But was that natural variability? My business is naturally growing, can I attribute it to that? There’s no real way to gauge things accurately considering the small scale of my advertising, so A/B testing is just not accurate or tangible enough for me. So why not test with the multi-billion dollar companies? I’ve been taking some time out of my days to go and take a stroll on websites like booking.com, walmart.com, amazon, etc. and observing the psychological principles they’re using to get people buying. After gaining a heightened awareness on the psychological primers and triggers used in modern neuromarketing, I’ve built a keen sense for scouting out what other businesses are doing. For this reason, observing what successful businesses (with in-house optimizing teams) are doing has been very effective.
CXL’s Digital Persuasion and Psycology Mini-degree:
