Three tips for influencing your buyer

Decisions, decisions. If you are in the business of influencing buyers to buy then you have lots of decisions to make about how best to communicate your message to secure the behavioural outcome you want.  Here are three tips to get started.


1. Eliminate barriers to buying

The Red Box eliminates a barrier

Often we get stuck by convention, and it's only when a new market entrant pops up that we see opportunities for doing things differently.  For instance, a few short years ago it was convention to buy clothes from a bricks and mortar retailer, and now that has been changed with the emergence of online. The barrier of "what if it doesn't fit?" has been mitigated by free return policies.


And convention has been that you have to wait for your dry cleaner to open their doors to drop off your clothes right?  Not in a suburb of Sydney where The Red Box allows its customers to get on with life according to their schedule, not the shop's.

Tip: Look for any barrier to the buyer doing business with you.  Opening hours, location and trading policies (eg payment options) are a great place to start.

2. Reduce choice regret 
Part of your buyer making a choice is assessing whether they will regret their final selection. Buyer's will try to avoid putting themselves through any pain of regret which means they may defer their purchase unless you help them over the hurdle. 

Coles' My5 forces choice

On the subject of choices, I think one of the failings of the Coles' FlyBuys program's "My5" is that it forces people to make a choice about which items they will buy most often and commit to that as the basis of their discount.  The risk is that whenever they buy things other than those nominated they regret their decision - creating an unhappy psychological tension that will dilute the 'loyalty' proposition.


Tip: money back guarantees and/or price match guarantees can reduce choice-regret.


3. Normalise the behaviour
We all want to be normal.  I know, I know, you are above average but for most of us we are greatly persuaded by what others are doing and we seek social acceptance. Why else would be buy ridiculously expensive cars and use Facebook?  If you can tap into the desire to be normal through your marketing communications you will increase your chances of success.

Rexona ad uses normalising

One of my favourite advertising examples is Rexona deodorant's "Do you sweat more than normal?". This works because no one really knows what a 'normal' amount of sweat should feel like, we just know how we sweat.  The ad plants the seed of doubt that we are not normal and provides a solution to that tension. 


Tip: Use "most popular" and "best selling" to help guide your buyer's choice but be selective and authentic - buyer's will be able to smell if you are lying.


Communicating with your buyers in an effective manner is a deceptively complicated task. Set yourself up for success by being clear on what behaviour you want from the buyer, eliminate any barriers to buying, reduce any risk of regret and use the desire of the buyer to be socially accepted to influence their decision.

PS Why not join the People Patterns mailing list?  Every month you'll receive a short wrap-up of top news from the behavioural sciences and other nuggets of goodness from me. Click here to sign-up.

Lessons in behavioural economics from a small business owner

"Find your happy place" is what my photographer kept telling me as he snapped away for my website head shots. Well, I want you to find a happy place too by learning about how my photographer Con intuitively used behavioural economics to persuade me to buy his services.


1. Present services as clustered packages
Con offers three packages for professionals, Start-Up, Professional and Entrepreneur.  By packaging up the options Con was doing a couple of things.  First, he was creating a perceived value gap between them to support the price ladder, and second he was reducing the complexity of the decision. Contrast this with a longwinded and overwhelming conversation where the customer has to define their requirements such as number of shots and intended use - packaging options is a much smarter play. 


2. Include special offer pricing

Con uses anchoring in his package pricing.  Anchoring is where we fixate on the pricing information first presented, and then judge other prices in relation to that.  Every business can and should use anchoring to help their customers contextualise value. In fact as the price tag image showcases, retailers use this technique all the time to make the sale price seem like great value compared with the Recommended Retail Price (RRP).


In this case, the most expensive package was presented first on the page to anchor me with the other two below, helping to persuade me that they were reasonable.  


Then, under each package was quoted the "Regular Price" followed on the next line by a "Special Offer" price in larger font.  As an added bonus the amount saved also specified.   Now not only was I anchored to differences between packages, I was primed to work out how to qualify for the significant savings.  By this stage, I had mentally accounted for the Special Offer price, triggering my behavioural intent to avoid paying full price before even knowing how to qualify for the discount.


Whatever you do with your pricing, do not underestimate the power of the pain your customers will feel by missing out on the discount.  Intellectually I know that the RRP and the 'amount saved' is a fabrication, but that doesn't mean it does not persuade me.  


3. Use payment terms to your advantage
The Special Offer price was related to the payment options. The first option was to pay 50% on booking with the balance on the day. The second option and "by far the most popular" according to the collateral was to qualify for the special offer by paying 100% upfront at the time of booking.  Cash flow is king for small businesses, so locking in payment ahead of the work is a great strategy.  Note the "most popular" is a clever way of using social norming to influence adherence to Con's preferred option.


4. Up sell once the cost is sunk
Having elected for the most frugal package before the shoot, I was then caught when the number of photos I liked exceeded my allocation.  No problem, I could pay extra on the day.  This is a great way for businesses to drive some extra revenue for two reasons. One, I had already worn the cost of the initial outlay so it was a 'sunk' cost, and two, I had by that stage engaged in the process and so it was harder to walk away. Known as the 'endowment effect', we find it harder to let something go when we've had a hand in creating it.


So there you go. As a small business operator Con was effectively using behavioural principles such as anchoring, social norming, loss aversion, endowment effect and choice architecture to guide buying behaviour.  Con's found his happy place, so you can too.  


PS Why not join the People Patterns mailing list?  Every month you'll receive a short wrap-up of top news from the behavioural sciences and other nuggets of goodness from me. Click here to sign-up.

Jabadabado flu shot for you?

Imagine you are marketing a service that deliberately gives people disease, is physically painful, requires them to come to you and they have to pay. Welcome to flu shot season!

Two Australian pharmacy chains are approaching the task of enrolling flu shot customers in subtly different ways, so let's look at my reaction and, perhaps more meaningfully, the behavioural techniques at play.

Example 1 Arm yourself against the flu

Terry White Chemists

• "Arm yourself against the flu".  Hmm clever arm joke...except now I'm thinking about the painful jab in my arm.
• Date range is kind of helpful, though I'm not sure if this means you'll only take bookings for that period and after that I'm on my own. If you are creating a sense of urgency why not provide a countdown of days left?   
• $25, not sure whether that's good value or not and an asterisk makes me nervous that there are conditions attached.  Yes, I was right, maybe I'm not eligible.
• Nurse Practitioner in store. Good for them. 
• Good information that no prescription is needed
• Quick and convenient. What does quick mean?  Why is it convenient?  To whom?
• Background image of a needle. Are you kidding?!!

Example 2 Get the jab not the flu

Priceline

• Get the jab not the flu is likewise a funny line but also effective because it helps me understand the trade between outlay (mild "jab") and outcome (avoiding flu)
• Nice use of "jab" to diminish the pain of the experience
• Why wouldn't I? Well, of course there's no real reason not to!
• A $30 vaccination protects me?  Hey, I like to be protected and $30 seems reasonable.
• No prescription and only 10 minutes. Yes, 10 minutes is do-able.
• Two options to book, online or in store so there's no excuse.
• Background image of a hip young chick. Well if she can do it, so can I plus she makes the bandaid look cool!  Wonder if they come in different colours.

Lessons from jab central

Every aspect of marketing should be regarded as an opportunity in choice architecture, and you have the power and responsibility to shape the behavioural outcome of your communications.  Both ads were created with the objective of stimulating flu shot bookings. Both ads were presented as banners on their home page. Both ads articulated price and attempted to create a sense of value.  

And yet the behavioural influence exerted by "Get the jab not the flu" is far stronger than "Arm yourself against the flu" because it overcomes status quo bias (ie where we can't be bothered to get a flu shot) by creating a sense of scale between what we have to gain vs what we have to lose.  The loss (discomfort of injection, price, inconvenience) is minimised to such an extent that the gain (avoiding flu) seems appealing enough to act.

So if there is one call to action from flu season it is this; you must overcome our innate tendency to do nothing by ensuring the gain of changing behaviour exceeds the loss.  If a jab can do it, so can you. Happy jabbing.

PS If you like my blog, join other kind people who have supported my fundraising trek of the Larapinta trail.  It feels good to give, so jump in at https://www.gofundraise.com.au/page/BriforICV Thank you!