A newsletter reader gave me some great feedback in his unsubscribe commentary:
The idea that your wonderful product will only be available until 11am rings the alarm bell for me and I will bet it does the same for many people.
What he was referencing was the last message I sent out about Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit, and he’s absolutely right that the sales window Chris had on it triggered people. It would have triggered me a few years ago, too.
Being an entrepreneur has changed me, though, in that I’m now more observant about what goes on the world. The truth of the matter is that we are constantly being bombarded with sales tactics, but most of the time we don’t know that it’s happening.
For instance, it’s not uncommon for restaurants to run monthly specials on, say, cheesecake. When the waiter tells us that this month’s cheesecake is the White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake, not too many people get triggered and walk out the door.
Yet one of the very reasons that restaurants do that is to get you to buy the cheesecake today rather than sometime in the future – which often amounts to never. The difference is that we don’t perceive it that way, just in the same way that we don’t perceive waiters as sellers like we do entrepreneurs. (Trust me, they want you to buy that cheesecake as much as I want you to buy something from me, if not more.)
Stop Upselling Me, Bro!
Upsells are another interesting thing that people get triggered by in online spaces. A lot of the robust shopping cart solutions have an option to cross-sale or upsell people who’ve bought something from you, and many online entrepreneurs use these solutions effectively. A few people get triggered by it in principle – after all, didn’t they just buy something from you?
Let’s return to the restaurant, though: the cheesecake mention is an upsell, as are the wine and appetizers. If you look at the prices of desserts, appetizers, and drinks and compare them to the prices of entrees, you’ll notice a discrepancy – with the entrees, you get four or five items, and depending on the restaurant, the entrees are priced 2-3 times higher than those other items. Simply put, you get a much, much higher amount of actual food for the price.
Some keen restaurants have figured out that lower-priced entrees get people to come back more often, and, since the entree prices are lower, people are more likely to buy drinks, appetizers, and desserts. The total bill for these customers is actually higher per visit, and they happily return more often than they do other restaurants that are “pricey.”
For this model to work, though, the waitstaff has to be proactive about upselling you on the appetizer, drinks, and desserts. In some ways, we expect to be upsold at restaurants, and, again, we don’t get triggered and walk out the door when our lovely waitress smiles at us and tells us about the monthly cheesecake.
Enrollment is Limited…
Another thing I’ve seen people get triggered by is online courses that have a limited enrollment. Mark Silver’s Heart of Money course is a great case in point.
I’ve seen people get triggered by three things when it comes to online courses: 1) there are a limited number of seats, 2) there’s a limited time to enroll, and 3) there are often early bird prices. Rather than handle each in turn, let’s head over to your local university.
At your local university, there are a maximum number of seats available for each class; a professor or instructor can only teach so many students. The course starts on a certain day and ends on a certain day – you can’t just walk into Calculus midway into the semester as a regular student. And, yes, there are fees for signing up after a certain date, which effectively makes the prices before those dates the early bird prices.
What’s true of your local university also applies to other educational institutions, and we may get triggered because we’re running behind or didn’t get into the course we wanted, but we don’t question the character of the institution or people offering the class. At least, we don’t after we get over the fact that we’re not the center of the universe.
Yet, when entrepreneurs use the same schemes in their offering, we do question their characters or offers. Interesting.
Buy Now and Save 30%!
Everyone loves a discount, it seems, yet a few people get triggered by the fact that virtual goods are frequently discounted when they’re launched. The idea seems to be that its value shouldn’t change – if it’s worth $47 now, it shouldn’t jump to $97 next week for no reason.
I can offer a different perspective about this in two words: Black Friday. For those not in the United States, Black Friday is the day after the American holiday of Thanksgiving in which the average, mildly crazy consumer goes completely freaking nuts because retailers are offering huge discounts on almost everything they sell.
“Savvy” shoppers know not to buy anything in November because that same item will be sold for a discount after Thanksgiving. Smart shoppers know not to buy anything from November to December because most of the crap will be discounted the day after Christmas.
But, wait, I thought that if something was worth one thing one day, its price shouldn’t arbitrarily change the next day? As I’ve said before, there is no absolute correlation between price and value.
I’ve seen entrepreneurs offer discounts on their birthdays, anniversaries, or other days of personal significance to them. It may seem arbitrary for them to do so, but why is it any less arbitrary than the insanity that happens on Black Friday?
The bottom-line is that discounts get people to buy stuff and they’re used by almost everyone who has anything to sell. We expect offline sellers to use discounts but are triggered when online sellers do the same thing. Again, interesting.
All the World’s a (Sales) Stage
There are plenty of examples of scummy and despicable internet marketers and online businesses, and I’m in no way excusing them or their actions. What has been fascinating for me, though, is seeing how people react to the same techniques used by offline businesses and marketers when they’re used by online businesses.
I understand that online commerce can be scary since you’re sending money to people you don’t know and you’re often not sure of the quality of what you’ll get. I also understand the different price points that you’ll often see for things you buy on the Internet are much higher than you’re used to seeing. These are valid fears and frustrations.
However, the technology that powers online commerce is simply a tool, and like fire, it can be used to cook or to burn. There are plenty of people who are using the fire in good ways, and they’re using the same techniques to sell their goods as offline businesses. To be triggered by online entrepreneurs for having a limited product availability window while being okay with the monthly cheesecake implies that you’re either unaware of what’s going on with the monthly cheesecake or that you have different preconceptions of the character of online businesspeople.
What I’m hoping you’ll do the next time you’re triggered by an online offer is to consider how it relates to the offline offers you’re bombarded with every day from commercials, shows, stores, restaurants, billboards, telephone books, text messages, telemarketers, books, movies, and lemonade stands.
It’s not just online entrepreneurs that are always trying to sell you something, after all.
Update 3/26/15: A great read on this is Dan Pink’s To Sell is Human which shows that we’re all selling something in one way or the other and shows how to sell with integrity.
Charlie, you make a great point here, but I am triggered by offline sales as much as I am online. It’s why I canceled cable (no commercials) and refuse to shop at certain stores b/c they tell you you need their product. Not worth it to me.
I love that you’re consistent here, Liz. It’s the inconsistency that fascinates and frustrates me. :p
I don’t totally understand the triggering around sales. I have compassion for whomever is having trouble with whatever – but I do find myself wondering why it’s such a huge issue for folks.
You know, I detest when I go to a car lot and some guy is all up in my face within 20 seconds, but I understand he’s doing his job, trying to make a living, and I’m polite and usually he is too. I confront the over-eager sales-y-ness of his greeting with real human interaction, and everything is fine. We proceed to talk about my needs and his offers, and if things match up – bingo. (I should note I haven’t bought a car in almost 7 years).
In situations where there’s no face-to-face interaction (such as commercials, email sales pitches, gargantuan sales pages, etc…) I can do something similar. There’s a person behind every sales page, an everyday human being trying to make a living behind every upsell. I simply try to think of them as such, and respond as if they were there in front of me. If their offer meets a need, and the price is reasonable, I go for it. If not, I don’t. No need to get my dander up.
It always seems like people who get bent over backwards about this kind of thing have something a little deeper to work on. Something that Mark Silver’s Heart of Money course might help them work out. Just sayin.
Eric Grey
You know, what I wish I would’ve said more of is that being an entrepreneur has given me more perspective, patience, and tolerance because I can see things from their perspective now. We all have to put food on the table, and, while I may not wish to be sold to in certain ways, it’s relatively easy for me to defuse myself or the person.
I saw several people the other day on Twitter complaining about sales tweets, which made me curious.
I mean, to me, it’s obvious that most of us are selling something whether it be a product or service and as long as we’re not being annoying or overly-aggressive about it, I can’t understand why that alone triggers people.
If we were just connected with friends and family and we promoted our sales to them, that’d be a different matter.
That would be a different matter, indeed. That’s one of the reasons I never used Facebook as a place where I sent PF stuff until I made my fan page.
I think limiters are fine if they’re used with respect for the buyer-seller relationship AND if they’re implemented they way the seller promises (taking down a sale price by a certain date for e.g.).
Limiters don’t have to have the ick factor.
Decisiveness is worth a great deal to both parties when you really think about it, but especially if your offer is of great value to a well defined group of people.
Agreed! The decisiveness is critical, especially when your product is one that really favors rapid responders.
Hey Charlie,
quite a challenge – sincere entrepreneur or scammy marketer. If you don’t watch your steps, you can easily cross the line.
I can understand your “former” reader, I hate it when people put a fake time limit on digital products – I expect that from scams but not from the digital crusaders I admire.
The time limit thing is a hard one, for sure. For instance, every digital product that I’ve released, I’ve given newsletter readers a limited time discount. In that way, it’s a fake time limit – I could give them an indefinite coupon just the same. But how do they get it? When?
There’s a balance in there somewhere, and I’m not sure I’m hitting it. But I’m sure I’m trying. 🙂
I also got several pieces of feedback about the promotion in question, and I wasn’t even promoting it.
In this case, I have a feeling that some of the complaints were not so much about the tactics, but about the people executing them. Tuesday’s affiliate circus became a bit “Et tu, Brute?”
The affiliate promotions were seen by less savvy readers — ones far less accustomed to internet sales techniques than you or I — as tacit approval of the tactics. They expect it from me or Navarro or even you, but from certain people in their circle, it came off as a betrayal.
Yep, it’s about the expectations, but managing expectations is a notoriously difficult challenge. And I love your point about approving the tactics because you’re supporting the product. There’s an assymmetry there that I find interesting: on the one hand, if you support ineffective promotions, you’re showing your tacit approval of ineffective marketing techniques, but that seems to be okay. On the other hand, if you support effective promotions, you’re supporting effective promotions, which, given the echo chamber, can mean supporting the noise.
Very insightful post, calling people out on their inconsistencies. Brava!
Personally, the “limited number of seats” ploy only rubs me wrong when it feels artificially imposed. When you’re talking about a college class, there are a literal number of seats in that room (with a fire code to abide by) and a professor who can only build valuable, learning-rich relationships with so many people per semester. When an online course meets either of these requirements (and we’re usually dealing with the latter), the limit actually feels good because it shows me that the instructor cares about the success of his or her students.
Yep, one thing you can look for in a community is how many people are part of it. If it’s open enrollment, you can bet that the model is built on content delivery more than actual teaching interaction. If that’s not part of the deliverables, cool, but there’s only so many people you can effectively teach interactively.
@ Naomi Dunford: I think what it all comes down to is managing people’s expectations. If you never promote anything or only lightly mention products, absolutely it’s going to seem spammy.
What annoys me most is so many bloggers that “want to be business owners” yet can’t make up their minds about promoting a product. I have yet to seen a successful business that doesn’t generate income. But who knows…
One of the key differences I see between the cheesecake and the online short-term sale is the amount of echo & deluge. When the waitress offers the cheesecake, it’s very rare that someone at the table next to you would turn to you and say, “Yes, you should get the cheesecake! It’s delicious and only available for a short time!” It’s even less rare that someone else would come dashing across the restaurant to say, “Yes, I too think you should get the cheesecake! It’s the best cheesecake ever made and I can’t recommend it enough!” Repeat the scenario with five, ten, or twenty restaurant patrons, and even if the waitress’ initial offer of the limited-time cheesecake didn’t trigger you, the bombardment of “Do it! Buy the cheesecake! It’s only good for this month!” echos from surrounding patrons would be… a bit much, shall we say.
If I read about a product whose sales period is brief, I may wonder about the sales deadline, but I don’t necessarily feel triggered. However, if I’m inundated with the same “buy now! buy now!” message from dozens of other websites and tweets, the triggering, it happens.
It’s not the offer standing alone for me, but the amplification and repetition of it from an entire sphere of blogs or Tweeps which (unlike commercials or traditional advertisements that might carry word of the restaurant cheesecake) I usually turn to for conversation. It’s the pressure to be a part of the “Buy the cheesecake now!” crew–the sense that you’re risking success and a friend or mentor’s affection for not pressuring others to buy the damn cheesecake. That’s triggering.
For products that stay on the market long-term, the reviews and hype are heavier at the launch, but can at least trickle out over a longer period of time, so that you’re not drowning in them over one specific 24-hour (or one-week) period. For products that have short-term launches, affiliates are on the heavy-promotion bandwagon along with the author/creator, hoping to get a piece of the sales pie, and that creates a deluge of sales pushes, promotional blog posts and “buy now!” echos from otherwise conversational friends or connections the likes of which a restaurant scenario does not replicate (thank goodness).
That deluge, I think, is as responsible for people feeling triggered by the original offer as anything else. It’s difficult to not be triggered by something you cannot escape in your usual spheres of connection.
@Marissa
Oh, yeah. That’s a big trigger for me too. Nothing worse than feeling pressured to buy something in order to feel a part of the “cool crowd”.
Also, totally in agreement with you about the repetition. The thing about that is, is that it’s hard to measure the reach individually. You personally may hear the same message several times, but someone else may only hear it once.
True what you say about the difference between short term & longer term promotions & the amount of replication though.
Wow, this is a great comment. Maybe you should write more about this. ;p
Marissa,
That makes a lot of sense to me. The offline version of that, however, would be WAY more triggering to me than the online version. What’s interesting though is that certain products of mine get SUPER ECHOED (like some, uh, recent launches) and others only lightly echoed. I have to admit that I take more notice of the former. I may become a little laughably annoyed when I see the fortieth tweet come across promoting the product, but it still makes me think… “Hm, if ALL of these people I admire are interested in this product, it must have some merit.”
And, in all of my experience, that has ended up true. The latest launch that fell victim to the SUPER TWITTER ECHO was easily the best product I’ve ever purchased online. Easily.
Product that were less echoed, but that I purchased anyway, were good – but not as good.
So, maybe a little irrelevant to your comment. But interesting from where I’m standing.
Eric
When I read this, I thought of the placebo factor that often comes with the echo chamber. As much as we might think we’re making an unbiased assessment, the fact that we expect it to be so much better often does make it so much better (for us). Of course, the hard part is that you can’t really compare them equally by pretending you didn’t get caught up in the anticipatory conversations – it’s one of those “bridge too far” phenomena.
No answers here, just food for thought.
Greetings everyone! Yes indeed, I was semi-responsible for Tuesday’s affiliate circus. What can I say? The partners were excited, they wanted to promote it, they believed in it enough to pitch it, and so on.
In the end it’s all about trust and value — giving someone money, whether for cheesecake or a Dojo, relies on how much you can trust the messenger, and how much value you expect to receive from said cheesecake.
And now I’m off to Central Africa… the real reason (not manufactured at all) why Tuesday’s thing was 24-hours. I said I didn’t want to sort out PayPal stuff from Cameroon, and I wasn’t exaggerating.
cg
P.S. I also agree with what Jonathan said — “I have yet to seen a successful business that doesn’t generate income.” Some people just have hangups about money, though thankfully not here at PF since the readers are so smart.
I keep examining my contempt for Internet marketers because I like to fully examine whenever I am resistant to something.
They always say that whenever you are resistant to something, it’s something you should pay attention to. And I think Internet marketers use that argument a lot to manipulate people into questioning their own thinking, discernment and gut instincts. They get things so twisted around that the other person begins to be brainwashed and starts believing. Which by the way is exactly what abusers do to their victims.
For example, I am resistant to liars, to murderers, to pedophiles. Does that mean I should start questioning my resistance to those things?
For me, a lot of the triggers aren’t so much to do with the techniques as the people themselves. There’s so much regurgitated garbage out there, people who really aren’t expert at anything except selling. Those are the types who roll out of bed one day and decide they are a [fill in the blank] expert, without perhaps one bit of education, training or actual experience in that thing. That’s what I get triggered by.
The preconception of the self-made experts in online business run rampant, but, again, the same thing happens in offline situations. In fact, it’s easier to persuade people offline than online since you can get into a hyper-influential conversational dance with them.
I’ve often pondered the challenge of expertise when it comes to new technology and mediums. “Expertise” as we know it has a heavily social component; you don’t decide you’re an expert – others do. At the same time, who are the bonifide experts, and what legitimacy do they have to grant expertise onto other people?
Without those institutional or communal structures in place, no one can be an expert in the traditional sense. Yet there clearly are specialists that perform their skills at the expert level.
This doesn’t happen just for experts, mind you. For instance, what makes a person qualified to be a VA? Couldn’t one just as easily roll out of bed, claim they’re a VA, and put their shingle up?
This reminds me of something Dan Kennedy said one time. He spoke at another’s conference and afterwards most of the room runs to the back to buy his product. One guy comes up and says, “I counted you saying, ‘um’ 387 times.” Dan was stumped and replied something like, “If all you got out of that was the ‘um’ then look to the back of the room. In fact, if you were buying somethine then your criticism might hold more value but since you missed every message in the presentation.” Dan, even when selling, provides great value everytime. The point of the story was, don’t listen to critics and those that don’t buy.
You’re going to upset people. If you only listen to critics then you’ll never succeed. When people stop buying then you know you’ve done something wrong and you’re not listening to your audience. This person is not your audience.
At the core here is trust, and the cheesecake analogy ultimately doesn’t work because my relationship with the waitress is based on only a limited amount of trust (I trust she won’t spit in my food; I hope she really wants me to enjoy my meal, but I don’t ultimately think our relationships is about her keeping my big-picture best interest in mind).
I don’t want to think that my doctor is trying to sell me anything. I want to think that she is doing whatever is best for my health. I don’t want to ever question whether she is having me come in for extra appointments so that she can make money.
An internet guru-type is somewhere in between the waitress and the doctor.
Interesting. This seems to be another case of expectation management. I have a series of posts to be coming out that discusses components of this – I’ve been thinking about them for a while but the conversation in the comments here have provided some new impetus to share them.
I can’t tell you how well said this post is! There have been so many times I have had these conversations with potential clients or fellow entrepreneurs about every single tactic you mentioned. The amount of skepticism that people have when it comes to making purchases online can almost be impossible to overcome without a good response.
The analogies that you made with each point were exceptional (and will come in handy!). After reading this post, I seriously feel like I now have a little arsenal to fire back with when someone comes at me with a “why do you have this deadline, promotional discount, upsell, yada yada…?”
Thanks for giving us an intelligent response (not a justification) to help people understand that business is business and this is how it works! Well done.
Thanks, Britt. I’m really glad that you read it not as a justification but what I wanted it to be – a response and explanation of what’s going on.
This is a style debate. It’s impossible to frame or time an offer that is going to hit everyone’s sweet spot – the place where they feel there is sufficient investment (on either party’s part) in the relationship that risk is minimized or eliminated.
I happen to think too much beating around the bush is annoying, too. We all know we’re going to want to sell each other something at one point – whether there’s a money exchange associated with it or not.
You can sell me a lot earlier in the relationship if I’ve derived sufficient value from it already. That’s substance. Too much style and no substance doesn’t do much good for long. Hit the right amount of balance and I’ll pony up. Boils down to the fact that all I want to buy is something I can count on.
Great points, Betsy. What’s been interesting to learn about is how much style can influence the decision-making process. I used to think that the steak would sell itself, but it turns out that the sizzle goes a long, long way to getting people to buy and enjoy it.
Sometimes I limit the number of workshop participants, because I want a uniquely personal experience for each participant and I can’t do that with a large group.
All of this other stuff, anything that seems like an arbitrarily-imposed limit: limited time to register, limited number of electronic copies, early-bird discount, it makes me wonder why the sales person has to game me to get me to buy their stuff. And that makes me not trust them. And that makes me sad.
The early-bird discount is not a huge thing, if the percentage off is 25% or less, but if it’s a 75% off discount, than what is the value of the thing that’s offered? Is it the full price? really?
I don’t see a reason to be gamey. I don’t buy product that’s gamed, even if I think I’d really like it. I don’t feel respected by the game.
Maybe I’m overly sensitive. I doubt that I’m alone.
You’re not alone in either your lack of the gaming or in the sensitivity. I’m definitely with you about the gaming (and probably sensitivity, too).
The problem, of course, is that people actually forget to buy things that they would otherwise want or need. So the time limits often do get them to make a decision, but I worry that often, it’s the wrong decision, and then people feel pressured to keep what they bought.
And that makes me sad.
I think it’s important to point out that getting triggered by online marketing is not about the quality of the products being offered (Chris’ Empire Building Kit looks stellar) or the authenticity of the launch strategy. It has to do with our own stuff.
It’s stressful for me to read a lot of sales emails or posts because I’m constantly being asked to make a decision about whether to spend my time and money on a very appealing product. My brain goes wild with primal instincts:
– I want to be in the tribe! Let me in! I want to be part of the privileged coterie, the inner sanctum. I don’t want to miss the party.
– I’m so curious. What are the 365 steps like? What kind of business could I build? I want to know!
– If I don’t buy this, I won’t be able to do it right. I will miss something. I will make a mistake. I will fail.
– I need help. I want someone to hold my hand and talk sweet to me. I want validation. Please notice me.
And I’ll point out that the quality of the products being marketed actually intensifies my triggered reaction. Because I know if I bought the product and took the time to implement it, I would probably get a lot of benefit from it. But I have limited resources. So I am forced to say, over and over, “No, I choose not to improve my life in this particular way today” (and I agree with Marissa, the echoing really amplifies the stress. A lot of us creative entrepreneurs read the same circle of blogs, so I ended up getting pitched by 8 different affiliates yesterday.)
So Chris, I wouldn’t say you did anything wrong with your launch per se. The fact that it’s triggering reactions like this points to how powerful the offering is.
And I take responsibility for my own triggering and how I respond to it. For me it’s been a lesson in limiting the people I give permission to sell to me in my Inbox. I remind myself that I already have everything I need (my skills and inner wisdom). And I renew my commitment to actually using the products I’ve already bought.
I see you on this, Alison.
Earlier today, Johnny and I were talking about things very similar to this, and I shared that I actually think we have more responsibility to our people than many others do. I could be wrong, of course, but I think we do need to assess why, how, and whether we should trigger people; just because someone has an arrow in them (their Stuff) doesn’t mean that it’s their fault if we bump into each other and jiggle it.
And, yes, it sounds like you already have a lot of what you need.
@Marissa: Excellent point. Now imagine those fellow diners were being paid every time one of their targets bought a piece of cheesecake.
Yes, but money is only one resource that’s exchanged by recommending goods – so many recommendations are given with the desire to raise one’s esteem with others.
It turns out that it’s easier to recommend things when you’re not putting your own credibility on the line as you can with affiliate programs. If someone buys something that you recommend and they don’t like it, you can get as much credibility seep as the original creator.
Cheesecake for thought…
@Marissa: Or diners who didn’t pay for their cheesecake or whose slices were discounted.
But my favorite scenario involves the diner who didn’t even eat the cheesecake. They saw the cheesecake, they smelled the cheesecake and they knew the baker to be excellent, but they never actually ate a slice.
As for the seller needing to leave for distant lands the next day. This is a totally logical reason. However, what about this option: launch it at a time when you are not leaving for a distant land the next day. Even an intrepid traveler is home occasionally.
Also, in comparing online to offline promotions. I am having a difficult time finding examples of offline promotions where I could buy the product for one day only. Yes, there are special discounts for “one day only.” But products that are available for sale for only one day? I am not able to recall any. In addition, offline products are normally available for close inspection. Did you hear a book being promoted? Head to the local bookstore and thumb through it. Amazing jeans available? Go to the store and try on a pair. Not so easily done with a program that is available for one day only.
In short, I believe the tactics may have been beneath the product. It is a product that I can see myself possibly purchasing. The tactics, however, came across as a cheesy hard sell that turned off this potential customer.
Thanks for providing a forum for discussing this!
There are many, many good points here, Karen. Thanks for adding them.
To continue the discussion, though, if we wanted to have a full comparison of the different products, we’d also address the fact that you can’t return jeans after you’ve washed them. And there are many other examples of products that, once you open them, you can’t return them at all.
What this really brought up for me, though, is that the physicality of offline products has urgency and scarcity baked right in. Once I’m in the bookstore, I don’t want to have to come back, so I’m more likely to buy it than duplicate effort. I’m not sure about you, but I’ve walked away with many an item that I didn’t need to buy in the first place and didn’t take it back because it wasn’t worth the hassle.
I have been taught, by a couple of online sales experts, that the purpose of tactics that create urgency is to help the would-be buyer — by giving them an incentive to make up their mind, one way or the other. That, in fact, we are doing them a favor by getting them to take action (or decide not to.) But I think we have to tread lightly if we do this, because there is a fine line between triggering someone to make a hasty, not-well-thought-out decision to buy, and encouraging someone to make a sound decision to invest in themselves, their business, etc.
The distinction is subtle and probably different for different people. A tactic that encourages me, might feel smarmy to someone else. That makes it difficult to navigate for the online seller…what tactics should I use, to get the desired result while limiting the number of people who are turned off?
I think it comes down to knowing your target market well, and for most solo entrepreneurs — that means knowing yourself well. If it feels ok to you to sell an online product for only 24 hours, given that you are going out of town the next day (although as @Karen pointed out, certainly it could have been launched at a different time? Or have someone else handle the sales while you are gone?), then by all means do so. Your target audience will see how your reasons make sense to them, will buy and will get a product that offers them a lot of value, because they and you think alike.
On the other hand, if you are doing a 24-hour sale because “that’s how this other guy did it”, and it doesn’t feel quite right…then don’t do it. Use tactics that feel right to you, and don’t let yourself be swayed by anyone who encourages you otherwise.
Great, great comment, Terri. Some of my clients get frustrated when I ask them what marketing/promotion style feels best to them because they don’t understand that, in some senses, they are their customers or clients. In many cases, if it doesn’t feel right to them, it won’t feel right to their right people.
(This doesn’t hold true for experienced entrepreneurs and experts, as their thought processes are dramatically different than their audiences’ most of the time.)
Charlie wrote: “(This doesn’t hold true for experienced entrepreneurs and experts, as their thought processes are dramatically different than their audiences’ most of the time.)”
I had an immediate reaction to that statement…but before I delve deeper into my own thoughts, can I ask you to expound more on that concept from your point of view?
Sure!
New entrepreneurs who are apprentices at their specialties often don’t understand that they’re clients are a reflection of them. A lot of their solutions are solutions to problems the entrepreneur themselves are having. As the entrepreneurs become more skilled both as entrepreneurs and in their specialties, they begin to operate more on intuition and less on steps and rules. Their customers/clients, though, often don’t have those capacities, so experts and experienced entrepreneurs think differently than their audiences.
However, there still tends to be a lot of overlap between the way they feel and the way their clients/customers feel – in large part, this a different way to think about “right people” and resonance.
So, in some ways, the experts and experienced entrepreneurs think the same as their audience, and in other ways, they don’t. This trips both sides up occasionally.
Does this help?
I guess one way to summarize that is the feelings are still coinciding, even if the thought processes are not.
That also leads into how entrepreneurs know what their audience needs, but the audience thinks they want something else. (Example: I may want to learn how to better manage my time, but what I really need is to let go of being a perfectionist…but I wouldn’t “buy” that!)
Very insightful, thanks for sharing that thought process Charlie!
great convo! thanks for setting it off with your post, charlie.
i think what’s ultimately triggering some people is the money stuff that’s coming up for them. seeing a product promoted, that you may want but feel you can’t afford can feel disempowering. with the cheesecake, if you don’t have money for dessert that day…no problem. you’ll get dessert when your cash flow is better.
a product on the other hand, especially one that you believe valuable and could give you with tools to alleviate your money stress is a whole ‘nother ball game. on top of that, you have to buy today or who knows when you’ll have the opportunity again…that’s hella frustrating.
rather than talk about that, it’s easier for some folks to rationalize their feelings and externalize it by talking about sales tactics & “slimy” internet marketing marketing.
Here’s where I went sideways: I am very familiar with internet sales, and have spent enough at Ittybiz to keep Naomi’s youngest in diapers. What disturbed me in this case was that all the hype I saw mentioned the $147 price, and then when I got to the sales page, I saw that $147 got me the watered-down, basic package. The “real” stuff was $447+-.
Essentially, I felt that I was “sold” the benefits of the big package for the basic package price, and then when I got to the Buy Now page, felt ripped off. I was expecting to receive a TON o’value, and then found out I couldn’t have it for the price that had been dangled in front of me.
This is a tactic I have NOT seen many marketers use. If the $147 price had not been mentioned at all, I would not have been surprised to see the various options on the Buy Now page. I might even have been interested. But as it was, I felt ripped off.
I can understand sales windows, and limited time offers, and pricing options. What I don’t like is bait and switch.
Maybe real-world marketers do this, but I can’t think of an example at this moment. Airlines and hotels add fees and taxes, but not 200% of list price.
Wow, that’s really frustrating, Karen. I see how that could make you go sideways.
I have seen examples offline of this very thing, though. Automobile commercials are notoriously bad about this, as are many computer and electronics advertisements.
A Civic for $13k! That’s awesome. Wait a sec…that’s for the one without air conditioning, speakers, power services, etc. The “nice” Civic runs at $24k.
The affordable Civic gets you on the lot, but that’s not the one most people buy. The manufacturers and salespeople know this and use it on us all the time.
Some people just have an entitled attitude. I recently conducted a survey of my blog readers, and one reader commented that he doesn’t attend my free teleclasses for writers because he’s afraid that I use the class to pitch my e-courses. Um, yeah. That’s what makes the teleclass free. Somehow it’s okay for him to get paid at his job, but I have to provide content and services for him for free.
I recently started limiting my class size, and was afraid that it would come off as a cheesy sales tactic (“sign up now, only one space left!”). But when I need to answer the questions and critique the assignments of 10 gung-ho students — that’s a lot of work. I want to be able to provide quality feedback. Not every students hands in all their work, but I need to be prepared for the happy eventuality that I get 10 very motivated students.
On another note, we creative professionals provide a valuable service, and we can’t be shy in trying to get paid by the people who consume and find value in that content. My husband runs a very popular boardgame site that runs on ads and donations, and my husband is afraid to post occasionally asking for donations. Every time I convince him to post, he gets a bump in donations. Yet, he’s afraid that he’s being too “huckstery.” This is my husband’s job; he puts out tons of content every week and gets thousands of daily visitors who consume that content. Why fear putting people off by asking them to contribute to the site they use?
Don’t you know that information should be free, Linda? I mean, aren’t we writing because we enjoy it? ;p
I love your point about people expecting to get paid for their job but unwilling to see that this is how we put food on the table. I think I’ll ask the banker to come in after hours, unpaid, to cash my check to see how she likes it.
Oh, and I think this is your first comment – thanks for piping up!
Was thinking on this when I was driving this morning. To continue with the cheesecake: suppose the waiter came by after dinner and said, for dessert, we have raspberry cheesecake today only, $4.95. You order a slice. The waiter brings one of those “bite sized” mini-cheesecakes you get from Sam’s Club in a box of 24. You look shocked and ask what the guy at the next table is eating, and the waiter says, “Oh, that size is $15.95.”
I think it can be very helpful to compare digital products with physical products, and the online environment with the “real” one. Marissa’s thoughtful comment where she describes the situation as having other guests at the restaurant recommending the famous cheesecake is brilliant! Alison pointed out that it’s likely that a person follows several blogs in the same circle, which leads to you getting bombarded with the same sales offer. I think this has the opposite effect in the long term…
Just like you hurry by the market where the sales men are selling aggressively, charging after by passers “3 boxes of strawberries for the price of 2 only today, madam”. In the end you avoid the market, taking the long route around it. On Twitter perhaps you begin to ignore, or unfollow.
In the case of the White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake, it tells me that raspberries are in season now, they might be local produce, and represent good quality as well as a restaurant management that cares about its menu. If I don’t like raspberries, I still know that there’ll be a different cheesecake next month, and that it’s worth paying attention to the menu, because it changes according to the season. This makes a lot of sense with food.
Are there ways this can be applied to other areas, in a way that brings the buyer real value, shows the producer’s expertise and care and awakens the customer’s curiosity around the biz in question?
Great comment and question, Kate.
I’ve often wanted to tweet about doing Email Triage on Wednesday because it’s a particularly good day to do it. It sets up Thursday and Friday so they can be used to clear up the weekend, and so on. In that sense, the raspberries are fresh.
I don’t do it as often as I could or as often as I think about it, but I think things like this would qualify. How about you?
I think there are many reasons why the online entrepreneur is seemingly ‘punished’ for the same stuff that flies, sometimes under the psychological radar, in the real world. But I think one of the biggest ones comes down to experience.
When you’re at a restaurant, there’s an atmosphere. There’s usually socialization with someone else. personal interaction with the wait staff. Then all the physical and psychological responses that go along with food in general (taste, smell, childhood memories…)
We get caught up in all that, whether it’s eating out, or fighting the Black Friday war at Best Buy. Our emotions are in high gear. We often shop or make decisions reactively/impulsively.
But put us somewhere onilne, and our emotions aren’t quite so tangled up in atmosphere and experience. Logic plays a stronger role. Skepticism has more room to kick in. And if someone has visited a sales page that reeks alarmingly like 50 others they’ve seen, alarm bells go off. The lack of this visceral online experience has us more on guard. So we criticize tactics of entreprenuers that we’d otherwise ignore or not even recognize.
Unless, of course, those entreprenuers are gifted at creating an experience and story for us.
Reese — I would definitely agree that experience affects how we react to online tactics. Sales pitches that would have gotten me to buy under pressure a couple of years ago, I can now look at calmly and click away without any doubts that I might be missing something.
The sad thing is that for the less experienced, who have less exposure online…they are still vulnerable to scarcity tactics. And online marketers that use those tactics, leave a bad taste in the mouths of their neophyte buyers — making the job of more conservative online marketers all that much harder…
Absolutely, Terri!
How does one sell ormakemoney on this lovely internet without being lumped in with people whose business & tactics we may abhor?
Some of it’s instinct. I respect how Charlie and Chris and Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein, for example, offer their stuff. Not everyone may feel the same, but conservative marketers can emulate the methods of people whose values & morals strike a note. And they can gut check their own techniques….’does this feel right for me? Is this really the message I want to send?’
Thanks, Reese! I really appreciate the compliment. Regardless of how it may land, I do the best I can to align smart strategy and genuine compassion & integrity.
Your last paragraph strikes at one of my real concerns. When you look at this post and Marissa’s, you can sense it, too: we’re all pretty savvy about this stuff and have saturated each other.
A sustainable business requires at least one of two things: 1) new customers or 2) repeat business. If we’re saturated, the role repeat business will play in our future may be limited, so we have to look at new customers.
Yet they’re jaded because they’ve been yellow highlighted and scammed. They know why and how those tactics work, but, at the same time, they also aren’t aware of their own buyer psychology.
So conservative marketers come along and don’t use the “effective” strategies, but the consumers still wait for those prompts to buy something. If they’re not getting the prompts, they won’t buy.
If they don’t buy, those marketers learn that those methods don’t work…
Great comments and the post wasn’t bad either:) Thanks Charlie.
I was an affiliate and felt awkward about that too. I agree if the products I recommend are crap that makes me look crap. But I know they’re not so I’m happy to recommend them.
I wrote a post about the launch of my shop and explained how I would get paid if someone bought a product. I’ve had my blog a year and have never tried to make any money from it before so I was worried by what my readers would think. The post, Confused about the fastest way to grow your business, got a strange response from readers. They thanked me for opening the store and helping them save time! They congratulated me for making money from my blog. I even made a bit of cash. Does that make me a problogger? Lol:)
See, that’s the thing about being a good affiliate: you save your people time and effort. In a world with so many choices, that’s invaluable.
I don’t know what it takes to be a problogger, to be honest. Am I a problogger? I use my blog as a vehicle for a lot of things, but I still don’t know that I’m a professional blogger.
I’m just happy that you helped your people and were rewarded for it. We can let the labels go. ;p
From what I’ve seen / heard, people were caught off guard a little by 1) the # of emails received and 2) the people who sent them cos it was unexpected and ever so slightly reminiscent of a certain group of spammy affiliate marketers from not so long ago, albeit MUCH classier.
What a tricky sitch – on one hand, to be a non icky marketer and on the other, still make sales. Peeps have been burned in the past and so view anything sales-y as gimmicky. And yet, how else does one make $ from business?
I’ll be upfront – was a little surprised at how many emails I got but cos I know and highly respect all the people who did, I didn’t go “off” any of them. I understand how it works and so just watched with interest, as I hadn’t seen this coming.
That makes the difference, IMHO, having some sort of personal connection and taking the relationship beyond email lists to in person connections (not viable for everyone to do I know).
It did make me wonder though – is there really no other way to make sales online if everyone from the “icky” to the “non icky” people (and I’d like to think of myself as belonging to the latter!) use the same methods?
This is all about human psychology, and concepts of scarcity, fear and validation / wanting to belong.
In an ideal world wouldn’t it be awesome if people who needed what someone offered would just find them by way of magnetic attraction? Yes I know, Pollyanna way and yet … it could happen.
Very interesting discussion & topic Charlie!
And congrats Chris, on building a tribe of loyal, trusting and engaged readers, buyers and sellers around you. That doesn’t come easy and speaks volumes about the person that you are.
Tia @TiaSparkles
What’s interesting is that Chris’s launch seems to be one of those extreme successes that can become challenging. As a partner and behind-the-scenes guy, I saw how he let his affiliates know ahead of time about the launch, so he did a wonderful job of syncing the promotion and launch.
Of course, since people were synced, we heard a lot about the promotion, so conversations turned into bombardment.
A consequence of a smart and informed consumer set is that they’ll be able to see what’s going on, but I worry they’ll be smart enough parts of it but not the critical parts. In other words, they’ll be savvy about seller behavior without changing their buying behavior.
Thanks for commenting, too, Tia Pollyanna. ;p
Charlie, stopping by from Third Tribe…
This is a fascinating discussion and it all boils down to human psychology [I’m a psychologist by training, a marketer by choice :-)].
Humans respond to scarcity, peer pressure, fear and urgency. It’s how we survived in prehistoric times and evolution is slow.
The fact is, all the tactics you outline above,whether we love them or hate them, WORK. People buy stuff when there is scarcity, deadlines, testimonials, etc.
As someone who makes a living online, to not use some of these tactics is a bad business strategy.
The best way to avoid a revolt is to manage expectations, set up pre-launch lists (so only those who really want the product get the pitch), and have a plan to address JV enthusiasm. Even an email that says, “this is coming, be prepared. If you don’t want the product my apologies for the onslaught. Things will calm down in 24 hours,” could help in the future.
That said, the online space and idea of “relationship” is odd. People read our blogs and we give them a sense (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) that they “know” us. There is that “know, like, trust” factor that lots of readers/customers take very, very seriously. If that angle is played too long and too deeply, people will get ticked off when their online “buddy” hits them up for money.
When that happens people have emotions similar to those they have with “real life” friends. They ask, “How could he do this to me? He was so nice! Why didn’t he launch at a different time? Who runs a business on the fly like this? He isn’t considerate of MY feelings.”
However, for the business person/blogger, they have no such emotional investment in their 1000s of readers. Sure they appreciate them, know many of them by name, but they aren’t sitting down saying, “Wow, Joe might feel slighted by 8 tweets on my product launch.” Because there are 1000s of Joe’s. The relationship is not equal from an emotional investment angle.
So, it’s a delicate dance of being honest and authentic, while at the same time establishing a sense that we are in a business relationship.
In an earlier comment you mentioned the responsibility of online marketers. I agree with that. It’s similar to that of a therapist-the relationship is not equal. a good writer can strongly influence how people perceive and relate to him/her. Good writers evoke feelings in people and if those feelings are warm fuzzies and the sense that they are special there is a responsibility there to respect that dynamic.
I’ve seen this play out in a few of my Third Tribe-ish friends’ launches and I think it happens because they don’t realize that relationships are happening they aren’t aware of and they stumble into these bee’s nests unawares.
Something to consider as we all go forth and build online businesses.
Just bringing the book up because I haven’t seen it mentioned – but Robert Cialdini’s “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” is a must read and addresses everything you all are discussing and more.
In fact, it’s probably more timely than ever since the net has exploded the amount of information we’re all subject to. (see p. 275 in the book)