Establishing Value For Your Products is a critical objective in the product launch process. When your product sales page goes live, you don’t want your potential customers still wondering about whether the product is worth the price. At launch time you want them clamoring to get a copy before you sell out or raise the price. If your customers need to mortgage their home or sell a kidney to buy your product, they need to know in advance so they can free-up the cash and not miss out on your limited offer!
Continue reading “Product Launch Secrets: Establishing Value For Your Products”
Category: Psychology of Selling
Commitment And Consistency In Action
I wanted to share a brilliant use of the psychological principle of ‘commitment and consistency’ in action. I recently saw this influential technique employed in a very novel way by a non-profit group looking to build a new base of donors for their cause.
The core concept behind the ‘commitment and consistency’ trigger is that people are pre-disposed to continue doing something once they made a commitment to start. Years ago, companies like Columbia House would give you 10 CD’s or cassettes (this is pre-iPod) for a penny – if you agreed to join their music club for 6 months or a year. They knew that a significant percentage of the people who got the initial deal would continue on as customers and earn them back all of the costs of the initial offer plus a profit.
The non-profit group’s plan to engage new donors involved taking funds provided by existing large donors and using them to underwrite the issuing of credits that could be given out to non-donors who had some interest in the organization’s work. The recipients of these donation credits would then be able to use those credits to make a donation to any of the specific projects currently underway through the company. In essence, the major donor supplies the cash and the new potential donor gets to choose where to spend it.
The beauty of this approach is that, even though they don’t have to give their own cash, the new potential donors are actually making a commitment to become donors when they decide to participate in this arrangement. They are becoming invested in the support of a specific non-profit project and they are more likely to continue to support it in the future with their own resources. The donation credit lowers the barrier of resistance to becoming involved and makes it easier to persuade them to take the first steps as a new donor. It is the closest thing to giving out a ‘free sample’ that can be done in a non-profit environment.
If implemented well, I can’t see how this would fail to bring in a significant base of new donors. They will, in turn, provide the social proof required to convince others to join in as well. As the new donors study the various opportunities for giving they will learn more about the work of the non-profit and as they get feedback on the results of the project they chose to support, they will grow to like and trust the group even more. This will continue to reinforce the relationship and create a new base of financial support.
This is a great example of how implementing the basic tools of influence can amplify the results of a promotional project. It takes the initial focus of the new donor relationship off of the money and redirects it to the various projects underway. This same thing happens in the for profit world when a business gives away a gift certificate. The recipient immediately shifts from a mindset of ‘do I want to buy anything from this company’ to a mindset of ‘what should I buy with my gift certificate?’ Once the commitment to buy something is made, it is much easier to add extras to the sale and start moving the new customer into being a repeat customer.
Do you know of any examples that show the psychology of influence at work in a well integrated fashion? Leave a comment below and let us know more.
If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we encourage you to visit the website at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com.
Mike Filsaime’s 7 Figure Code And The Value Of A Good Reputation
The value of a good reputation is worth at least $524.50 USD today! That is how much money I spent buying Mike Filsaime’s “7 Figure Code” on the recommendation of John Reese.
Continue reading “Mike Filsaime’s 7 Figure Code And The Value Of A Good Reputation”
Email Marketing: Building A Trust Relationship
Fellow email marketers, does this ever happen to you when trying to build a mailing list?
Recently I purchased a copy of John Reeses’ ‘Traffic Secrets 1’ course to try and improve the success of my online marketing efforts. Continue reading “Email Marketing: Building A Trust Relationship”
Social Proof, Feeding Frenzy, Or The Mysterious X Factor
If you have spent more than 5 minutes exploring the world of Internet marketing someone has told you how important your ‘list’ is. This ‘list,’ of course, is your list of email addresses for people who have opted-in and given permission for you to send them emails.
You may also have heard that the majority of sales come from the 6th or 7th email you send to someone. It can be difficult, expensive, and nearly impossible to get someone to visit your site 7 times but, if you have their email, it is easy to send follow-up emails.
This article is not about email marketing strategies. (I have several e-books on the subject that you can download for free by signing up for my newsletter mailing list.) This article is about my recent experience trying to get people to sign-up for my list.
I Can’t Even Give Away Free E-Books!
I spend a lot of time and energy hunting down useful resources on the web. I have built up a collection of e-books that I think have valuable information in them and also give me resale/giveaway rights. All of the ‘Build Your List’ gurus tell you to create a squeeze page (a webpage whose sole purpose is to get visitors to give you their email address and sign-up for your mailing list.) They encourage giving away a free gift (like an e-book) as a thank-you for signing up. It is essentially a legal bribe! I decided to put my collection to work.
My squeeze page promised more than just one e-book, I opened the vault and gave access to everything I had. (See my sign-up page.) I promoted it through a Pay-Per-Click campaign and also through some traffic exchanges and other sources. The results, 1 sign-up – not very encouraging.
I tweaked the page, updating the copy and polishing up the graphics. I took advice from a couple of the advertising and copywriting e-books in my library and revised the body copy before trying another promotional run. Results – 3 sign-ups.
20 New Sign-ups In Less Than 7 Days
After a couple attempts, I let this whole idea slide for a while. And then I came across a promotion for the Viral Marketing Giveaway 2. The concept is simple, you sign-up as a Joint Venture partner and offer a free giveaway item to the effort. All of the partners then promote the giveaway and, as new members join and download the freebies, you get to gather new people for your mailing list. They land on your squeeze page and then sign-up. I joined the fun and sent people to exact same old squeeze page to get my freebies. There are over 35 pages of offers in the giveaway and mine landed near the end.
Within days I had added 20 new names to my list. Same squeeze page, but now they were signing up (and they had probably signed up for dozens of other offers before getting to mine.)
These giveaways seem to be popular right now. I have received invitations for 3 more in the past week:
I signed up for all of them and connected to the same squeeze page. The first went public last week (the other two are still gathering JV Partners as I write this.) My list has added more than 30 new subscribers.
Why All The New Mailing List Subscribers?
My offer, and the content of the squeeze page, has not changed. Why are people signing up now? I have a couple of guesses why this is happening.
Trusted Referrers – The giveaways are promoted by all of the JV partners sending messages to their lists. A known person is making the recommendation and essentially endorsing the whole thing. This kind of social proof that the operation is legitimate puts visitors in a trusting frame of mind before they get to my page. The copy on my site does not have to convince them to trust me, only that I have content they want.
Momentum – Once visitors start getting some free stuff they get into a feeding frenzy. They start siging up and downloading everything – my stuff is just in the pile with all of the others and the giveaway has created the momentum.
The X-Factor – Maybe there is some other factor that is motivating folks to sign up. If you have other ideas why people are more willing to sign up when my squeeze page is promoted through one of these giveaway sites, leave a comment with your ideas.
What Is The Quality Of The List?
So far the emails and names I have gathered seem okay. Very few people are giving obviously junkmail addresses and bogus names (there have been a few – ‘Pho Nee.’) I’ll have to make a few mailings to the list before I can determine how responsive it is, but my list is growing.
This list is made up of folks looking for online business and marketing opportunities. My current plans are to use it to recruit affiliates for some of the info products I am developing.
Andrew Seltz
The GoTo Guy!