A previous post I mentioned using ’scarcity’ – this post I’m going to talk about my single, favorite psychological hot button I use in nearly every promotion. (Yes, it’s that powerful!)

I have found the subject of persuasion endlessly fascinated. It never ceases to amaze me that I can write words on paper (or the computer screen) and then have people send me money.

Side Note: In the current Underground Secret Society® issue I cover part I of 11 little-known secrets and triggers I’ve discovered for getting people to say “Yes” and open their wallets. You can grab a free 1-month copy with my compliments here. In order to protect the uniqueness of these ideas and resources the membership is strictly limited to just 925 (or less). And we won’t be releasing any back issues. There will be NO archives set up. So if you decide to come in at a later date (if there are any spots available) you’ll miss out on previous issues and interviews – including this BIG, 32-page issue with part I of the Psychological Hot Buttons.

I know not everyone who reads this blog is right for a subscription so I’m going to share with you an excerpt of the most important psychological hot buttons you can profit from immediately:

Hot Button #2: Reason-Why

If there’s just one thing I could use in my marketing – this would probably be it. I typically try to use ‘reason-why’ in nearly any promotion and you’ll see the inside scoop in just a moment.

Telling people the reason why you are doing something is one of the most powerful influencers of human behavior. Robert Cialdini, Ph.D. in his book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” talks about an experiment by Harvard social psychologist, Ellen Langer, that concluded people like to have a reason for what they do.

Her experiment consisted of people waiting in line to use a library copy machine and then having experimenters ask to get ahead in line.

The first excuse used was “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?” This request coupled with a reason was successful 94% of the time. However when the experimenter made a request only: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” this request was only granted 60% of the time. A significant drop.

Okay now for the shocker…

It may seem like the difference between those two requests was the additional information of “because I’m in a rush”, but that’s just not the case.

Because in a third experimenter, the experimenter asks “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” There’s no reason mentioned or new information presented, just the words “because“.

This time a full 93% of the people said yes simply due to the word ‘BECAUSE’! And it didn’t even matter that there was no reason given. Just the word because triggered a magic response.

Using this psychological ‘trigger’ can massively increase your Marketing success. Maxwell Sackheim, famous for the long-running ad “Do You Make These Mistakes In English” and originator of the book-of-the-month concept, says this: “Whenever you make a claim or special offer in your advertising, come up with an honest reason why, and then state it sincerely. You’ll sell many more products this way.”

And this powerful strategy works just as well today.

Using this secret weapon for my Dad’s medical equipment company, I helped them produce a massive 1,073% return on investment simply using “reason-why” copy. (This was a huge breakthrough because typically you’d have to do one-on-one sales to doctors for items like this.)

The premise was how can we sell a product for the incredibly low price of only $447? (Regularly this product sells for about $695 – $895.) Then the ad went on to explain that the reason why the price was so low was because the manufacturer wanted to gain market share and get nurses and doctors accustomed to using their product. It was a huge winner and a big moneymaker for the client.

Here’s some of the copy if you can’t read the ad:

* * *
“The manufacturer, Huntleigh Healthcare, wants to gain significant market share by introducing their new Flexi Dopplex 3 MHz fetal Doppler and they are offering our company special discount pricing to push their sales.

But instead of buying these units for this special pricing and selling them later at regular prices and keeping the higher profits — we want to pass on the extra savings to you, right now! And we figured the best way to sell Dopplers is simply getting doctors and nurses into the habit of using a particular brand. Then we’re hoping you’ll continue buying more from us. Seems fair, right?

That’s why for a limited time, now through June 30, 1999, you can get the new Flexi Dopplex for only $447. That’s a savings of $ 103.00 off the regular price (and hundreds more off any competitor’s models).

* * *
Here’s another ad I wrote using the ‘reason-why’ concept that’s ultra simple to apply to your business. Simply jotting down “X” number of reasons why a customer should purchase from you is usually more than what most competitors do. It provides a logical crutch to an emotional buying decision.

You can come up with lots of reasons-why to have a promotion. Look at your calendar, if retailers and car dealers can use “made-up” holidays like Columbus day – you can do even better. There are lots of ways to use this idea. Keep brainstorming a reason why you are doing something. Let people in “behind the scenes” at your company…

Whatever the reason.

Here’s one I used a few years back – it was the “Save Yanik’s Marriage Sale”. The whole premise being Missy, my wife, was really annoyed at me for the basement being so overloaded with boxes. Truthfully, she WAS really mad and made a big stink about it – but I embellished the story a little bit. We totally cleared out all our inventory and made a tidy profit (pun intended).

Another sale I’ve had a lot of success with is a milestone type sale. When our first child, Zak, was born – I did a promotion for him. That promotion nearly tripled my expectations for what it would bring in (it made $4.60+ for every visitor who came). And more importantly people connected with me as a real person – you should have seen the dozens and dozens of congratulations notes. It was really cool.

Now in this case I didn’t just do email only. I thought it would be great to send out a “birth announcement” to our customers. I’m a big believer in using multiple types of media to hit customers/prospects. For this I really wanted it to look like a real birth announcement – here’s how it turned out:

When Zoe was born a few years later – I did the same thing and it worked even better so now she’ll have bragging rights forever on Zak.

For some reason everyone wants to be mysterious about their business. If you’re lowering the price nobody thinks you’re doing it just because you’re “such a nice guy (or gal)”. So let people in on the reason why.

I know this probably goes against every grain of business sense, but I promise if you give people a good, believable reason why they’ll respond with open wallets.

Side Note: In the current Underground Secret Society® issue I cover part I of 11 little-known secrets and triggers I’ve discovered for getting people to say “Yes” and open their wallets. You can grab a free 1-month copy with my compliments here.

* * *
Okay quick change of subject – with the Underground® 4 Seminar in LA over it’s been quite a whirlwind.

Each year the Underground® seminar gets bigger and better! It’s going to be pretty hard to top this year’s event since the speakers businesses totaled nearly $1B in annual online sales. Speakers ranged from Eben Pagen (a $20M virtual publishing empire) to Dr. Joe Mercola ($15M online and the most visited natural health site). Or how about Cameron Johnson, an Internet millionaire in his teens and now on Oprah’s primetime “Big Give” TV program? Mr. X#1 and Mr. X#2 (who won Underground Marketer of the Year) with their secrets to accidently building a $4M+ membership site.

Plus, a totally different take on online marketing from one of the leading wine eCommerce sites and insights on future trend of podcasting from Jody Colvard. And we had Dean Hunt & Barry Dunlop giving everyone the secrets they need to take advantage of the power of Social marketing. Or under-the-radar marketers like Jim Lillig and Mike Hill (who hasn’t appeared on stage since 1999).

We even had Tony Hsieh, the CEO from Zappos.com as one of the keynote speakers the first day. The cool thing is Tony was totally low-key and laid back. I don’t know why I continue to be surprised but most of the super successful people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting are incredibly genuine people. I think that’s part of the reason they got to where they are.

This year’s theme was “24” and it was interesting to see who was a fan of the show because they were super excited about the fact we had Carlos Bernard AKA Agent Tony Almeida there. But then a whole lot of the audience didn’t get it. It’s okay – I’m a fan of the show so sometimes I’ll just do fun things for myself. Actually, the real back-story on the theme is something some of you may remember. I originally wanted to have a 24-hour seminar based on the ‘24’ theme. Yep, we’d start at 10pm and end at 10pm the next day. We had like 7 people sign-up and I canceled it. Whoops. Not all ideas are good ideas.

Here’s me and Carlos Bernard AKA Tony Almeida from “24″ (btw – he wasn’t acting – Carlos actually was choking me pretty hard)

Each Underground® we do a fun VIP networking dinner and activity for the Early-Bird sign-ups and all the speakers. This year we did something totally different and sent everyone out onto the streets of LA for a SPY mission. We didn’t know who was in on the game and who was just a regular person on the street. Here are a few pics of my squad. “Team Bullocks” in honor of our overwhelming majority being from the UK including speakers and MasterMind members Dean Hunt and Barry Dunlop. Only myself, Michael Holland and Ryan Lee (Mr. X from Underground® II were the token Americans.)

I’ll let you make your own conclusions with these photos from some of our VIP guests, speakers and MasterMind members part of the infamous KONA boys team. Most definitely the loudest team we had that night.

I think it’s safe to say everyone had a great time and that was still the first day. The 2nd day we had more incredible speakers plus a Rock N’ Roll party for all the attendees with Mini KISS, an all little person KISS tribute band. (The party was sponsored by Icontact.com, Maverick Business Adventures™, Selby Marketing and InfusionCRM.)

Here are a few pics:

Here’s a little video footage:

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Marketing-O-Rama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.