Author: AB Tasty

AB Tasty is a complete tool for website and conversion rate optimization. We serve as your digital lab, equipped with everything you need to create experiments that will help you to better understand your users and customer journeys so that you can create the clearest and most engaging user experience possible, ensuring your website performs well and yields the maximum results.

Article

Jul 10, 2019

13min read

How to Get More Instagram Followers for Your Retail Brand

AB Tasty

Changes in shopping habits, advances in technology, and a more competitive landscape mean that high street brands are closing or reducing their physical locations.

Businesses used to be able to get by with a website and basic social media profiles, but now, in order to survive as a retail brand you have to work harder than ever to reach, attract, and engage with shoppers online.

Users want to engage with brands in a personal way. As a brand, you need to build a community, establishing rapport with your existing and potential customers, and tell your brand story.

For this purpose, Instagram outperforms all other platforms. Arguably, it’s the best place for you to promote your brand and engage with your users.

And with a massive one billion monthly active users and 500 million daily users, it’s hardly surprising that savvy retail brands include increasing their Instagram followers in their social media strategies.

But it’s more than just the sheer size of Instagram’s audience.

Take a moment to consider these statistics about actions consumers take after they’ve followed a brand:

87% visit the brand’s website or app
78% visit the brand’s physical store
78% talk about the brand with friends and family
77% choose to buy from the brand instead of another
67% increase spending with the brand
53% engage with that brand on social media

Any doubts about the power of Instagram and social media for your brand should be well and truly quashed by those figures.

If you’d like to generate more followers for your retail brand from Instagram, here are five tips from AB Tasty to do so.

Tip 1: Increase Instagram Followers with Instagram Stories

More than 80% of brands surveyed by SEMRush used Instagram Stories as a part of their social media strategy.

That’s because Instagram Stories are perfectly placed to humanize your brand and engage users, all while generating leads and sales.

The results are impressive too.

A whopping 68% of users on Instagram engage with brands, as opposed to just 32% on Facebook.

That’s because Instagram allows brands to show their personality in a way that’s engaging, interactive, and human, with features like geographical location tagging, gifs, hashtags, polls, and so on, all designed specifically to grow your following and increase engagement.

Brands like Nike, for example, don’t use Instagram Stories to sell products or brag about its successes; Nike uses them to share the experiences of inspirational people and athletes like “thatbigguy700,” the story of a 700-pound man on a journey to lose weight.

instagram-followers-stories — Photo credit to thatbigguy700

Or the story of Paralympian Sarah Reinertsen’s determination to compete despite missing one leg.

instagram inspirational stories — Photo credit to Sarah Reinertsen

Tip 2: Increase Instagram Followers with Macro and Micro Influencers

Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to quickly build your Instagram following and increase brand awareness among your target audience.

In fact, Forbes found that influencer marketing is growing faster than digital ads.

Influencer marketing is successful because it uses a pre-made audience and leverages the relationships, trust, and credibility an influencer has with their fans.

People respect and trust influencers’ content and recommendations and are more likely to buy based on the suggestions of the people they trust.

There are two types of influencers:

Micro influencers: 1,000 to 100,000 followers
Macro influencers: 100,000+ followers

You may be tempted to dive straight in with macro influencers as, clearly, the reach is far greater.

However, the type of influencer you need will depend on your business type, business objectives, and your budget.

Studies show that micro influencers get better engagement, are perceived to be more trustworthy, and are cheaper.

In fact, micro influencers offer the following benefits:

Better engagement: Micro influencers get 7x more engagement than macro influencers
Higher trust: 30% of consumers consider purchasing a product that was endorsed by a non-celeb influencer and only 3% of consumers consider buying a product that was endorsed by a celebrity
Cheaper rates: Micro influencers cost less than $250, while macro influencers can cost upwards of $1000

There’s no right or wrong type of influencer, but you do need to find one (or more) that fits with your brand goals.

For example, if you’re a smaller brand aiming to make sales, micro influencers could be a better fit. On the other hand, if you’re a global brand looking for increased reach and brand awareness, consider macro influencers.

In reality, the most compelling is a blend of micro and macro influencers.

Here’s how to find Instagram influencers.

Option One: Search Instagram

The most basic technique is to use Instagram’s search bar. Enter a keyword relevant to your brand into the search bar.

Browse through a list of profiles associated with the keyword and if you find a good match, send them a message asking about a potential collaboration.

However, there is one important caveat. The results presented will depend on your profile and how you’ve interacted with Instagram in the past.

This means that if you’ve engaged with cat posts but are now searching for kitchen-related influencers, your results will be different to someone who’s only ever interacted with kitchen posts.

This means that while it’s a workable technique, it’s not the best out there.

Option Two: Use Google Search

Go to your Google search settings and set your location results to your preferred location or global.

Then enter the following search term into Google:

[Your Niche Keyword] + [Your Target Location] + site:Instagram.com

You should see a page that looks like this:

Click the profiles and check them out. The first one in my example above is a luxury bed company with almost 250,000 followers, which isn’t bad for a couple of minutes of research.

If you decide that they are a good fit, send them a message and chat about possible partnerships.

How to find instagram influencers

Option Three: Pay an Agency

If budget isn’t your primary concern, you can hire an influencer agency. They will research, find, and negotiate with influencers on your behalf. There are tons of agencies around and you can find them by performing a search on Google for “Influencer Agency.”

Just be prepared to pay for it.

If you’re keen, you can learn more about influencer marketing here.

Tip 3: Increase Instagram Followers with User-Generated Content

People are more likely to buy based on the recommendations of a friend or family.

This is the reason why user-generated content (UGC) is so successful.

UGC is content that is created by your users or customers about your brand.

Because it’s not paid for by the brand, it’s perceived to be much more authentic and trustworthy than other kinds of paid advertising.

The statistics support UGC, showing that three-quarters of people trust content that is shared by regular people rather than by brands, and 100% of consumers trust recommendations from others.

By creating a brand hashtag for your UGC campaign, you can encourage your customers to showcase how your products are used.

Take the online furniture store Wayfair’s UGC campaign.

After purchasing items from Wayfair and setting them up at home, customers post pictures of their new furniture and add the simple hashtag #WayfairAtHome.

The result looks like this:

Instagram-followers-UGC (1) — Photo credit to jessicaviss

Tip 4: Increase Instagram Followers with Hashtags

Instagram acts like a search engine, but instead of keywords, it uses hashtags to rank your content.

Let’s take a brand like Lululemon, for example.

Enter Lululemon into the search bar and you’ll find more than 2.5 million posts using the hashtag.

instagram followers tag example

Click on #lululemon and you’ll see the Top Posts (the most popular posts with that hashtag) and the Recent Posts.

It’s not easy to get into the Top Posts, especially when you’re targeting a highly competitive term, but there are a couple of hacks.

When your post lands in Recent Posts, if your post is well-considered, engaging, and appeals to your audience, then you’re likely to get comments and likes.

instagram followers recent posts

If your post works really well and gets lots of attention, then it can be potentially pushed up into the Top Posts section.

I’m not saying this is easy, but it is possible, especially if you consider your hashtag selection to make sure it’s popular.

Let’s consider the other side of this coin.

If you don’t use hashtags, your brand won’t be found and your carefully curated post will have gone to waste. Don’t be that guy.

If you’re wondering how many hashtags to use, you can use up to 30 in the description of the post. Buffer found that posts with more than 11 hashtags received the most engagement.

As with any kind of marketing, it’s important not to be fake or spammy. In the Instagram community, this means using #hashtags that are relevant to your post.

Here’s how to find popular, relevant hashtags on Instagram:

Create an Iconosquare account
Connect your Instagram account
Use the search bar to enter one hashtag that you are considering

instragram iconosquare

Once you’ve completed the above steps, Iconosquare will let you know how many posts use that hashtag, plus offer relevant suggestions.

Create a spreadsheet of your findings so you can easily refer to them at a later date.

Tip 5: Increase Instagram Followers with Contests and Giveaways

An Instagram giveaway or contest is a promotion in which brands give away a product or service according to a specified set of criteria.

When done well, it is a great way to get more likes, followers, and shares for your brand.

But there’s a caveat. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it is worth considering at the outset.

As the primary driver is the interest in free or cheap prizes, the quality of a user won via a contest or a giveaway and their willingness to pay may be lower than other users.

#1 Choose the Prize

It goes without saying that you need something to give away. It needs to be something that your audience will love, whether it’s a gift card, an experience, or one of your products.

#2 Collaborate

Next, the best giveaways are done in collaboration with other Instagrammers. If you can, try to collaborate with an influencer (or two) or with some of your most active followers.

Getting your audience involved right from the get-go is a great way to skyrocket your campaign.

#3 Decide on the Entry Criteria

Create a strategy for what you’d like your users to do in order to get a chance to win. For instance, to be entered into the draw, they might need to do the following:

Like your photo: More likes on a post could mean you land in the coveted Top Posts spot.
Follow your account: To state the obvious, this will help you increase your following.
Repost your image with an @mention: Get seen by a wider audience and generate more engagement.

Or is it a combination?

There’s no rule, but the key is to make sure the criteria align with your business goals.

Instagram-followers-contests — Photo credit to Fabletics

#4 Choose the Contest Length

You can run your contest for as long as you like. If you’ve got a large audience then a shorter period might suffice, while smaller brands might allow a week to ten days to ensure enough interaction.

#5 Design the Post

Create a beautiful, highly shareable post for the giveaway. It needs to include clear instructions on how to enter, what needs to be done, and what’s up for grabs.

#6 Set Reminder Posts

Don’t publish the giveaway post and forget about it. To get the most interaction out of it, create multiple reminder posts throughout the period of the giveaway.

#7 Spread the News about the Winner

Once the contest has finished and the winner has been picked, shout the winner from the rooftops. This is another great opportunity to get positive feedback for your brand and capitalize on the goodwill of the contest.

Now It’s Your Turn

Now I’d like to hear from you.

Which strategy from this post are you going to try first?

Or maybe I didn’t mention one of your favorite techniques to grow your Instagram following?

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment right now.

If you want to learn more, head over to our blog, 7 Tips for Implementing A/B Testing in Your Social Media Campaigns.

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Article

Jun 24, 2019

9min read

Anchoring Bias and Its Effects on Decision-Making

AB Tasty

Imagine you’re at a vintage store. After a minute of window shopping, you’re drawn to a fancy silk shirt. You check its price tag, and since you see it’s quite expensive – $150 – you put it back on the rack. However, determined to find something similar and cheaper, you continue with your search, only to find that other shirt prices range between $500-850. What do you do next? You go back to your first find and buy it. Know why? Because of a cognitive bias called anchoring.

Anchoring is the fact that people tend to cling on to the first piece of information (or anchor) they encounter, and let their subsequent actions, such as estimates, arguments, and conclusions, be made in relation to it. Think of it as a shortcut or heuristic our brain takes to speed up the decision-making process.

In the above example, the leading anchor was the $150 price tag, which helped you make a price comparison and conclude that the $150 shirt’s a steal!

Origin of Anchoring Bias

Back in 1974, Kahneman and Tversky conducted a study in which one group of high school students was asked to estimate the result of 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8, and the other group was asked to calculate 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1. They had only five seconds to answer.

Now, although the answer to both questions is 40,320, the groups gave different answers. The first group’s median estimate was 512, while the second group’s median estimate was 2,250. What’s the reason behind this big a difference?

Basically, faced with a time limit, participants quickly anchored to the product of the first few numbers of the mathematical expression (1x2x3=6 & 8x7x6=336), which then influenced their estimates: a smaller number for an ascending sequence and a bigger answer for a descending sequence. Ultimately, this experiment proved Kahneman and Tversky’s prediction that people rely on the initial cue to make estimates, even though it may result in an error in judgment.

Examples of Anchoring Bias in Action

Let’s look at how some brands use the Anchoring Bias to appear affordable and increase the perceived value of their products and services.

#1: Display Original and Discounted Prices Next to Each Other

We often rely on the price of a product to determine its worth. Expensive products, for instance, are assumed to be excellent quality, stylish, long-lasting, and hence worth buying. And this is exactly the reason why we’re tempted to buy them for much less on sale.

Here’s an example from the Columbia website where the original price is struck off, anchoring users to consider the discounted price as a good bargain.

Price anchoring example — The offer becomes more persuasive with social proof used as a secondary anchor. Source

Note: The Anchoring Effect can backfire if there’s a ridiculous gap between the original and discounted price. For example, wouldn’t you be suspicious if I propose selling you a brand new BMW whose actual price is $45,000, for $8,000?

#2: Offer a Suggestion

Ever noticed transparent donation boxes for various charities at checkout counters in stores and eating joints? How do you decide how much to give? My guess is you’ll look at the most popular bills in the box. After all, with people from behind the counter looking at you, you want to make sure you come across as a person with a big heart and an equally big wallet!

But unlike in the example above, it’s a good idea to take cognitive load off a customer’s mind. Notice how the folks at The Guardian manage that. The default contribution value works as an anchor, hinting it’s a popular option, thus making people conform to it. Whether people donate the recommended amount or not is a different matter, but, at least they have a number to adjust to.

Charity anchoring example donation — Source

#3: List the Most Expensive Plan First

Agreed it’s not quite the trend, but this Conversion XL study might convince you to change your tactics. Not only did they find out that ordering pricing plans from high to low results in higher revenue, but another of their studies revealed how highlighting a recommended plan results in even greater results.

MailChimp does both. Straight off the bat people anchor to the expensive plan, which makes other options more appealing in comparison.

Another reason this strategy works is the operative rejection-then-retreat technique. Robert Cialdini talks at length about it in his book, Influence. Essentially, you make a larger-then-smaller request so that even if someone rejects it at first, guided by the reciprocity principle, they’ll give in to the next request.

To prove it works, he cites a report wherein billiard table dealers were able to increase the average table sales by 50% by first showing the expensive models and then allowing customers to shop the rest of the collection. Suffice it to say that by organizing your plans from high to low, your prospects are bound to see the mid-price options more favorably.

#4: Leverage Multiple Unit Pricing

Cartoon about the anchoring bias man begging — Source

It’s a pricing technique where you offer a lower price per unit if someone buys a product in bulk. For example, a set of three mason jars for $5 instead of $2 for each.

The main purpose is to get people to anchor on the money-saving aspect. It makes the offer tempting and convinces them to buy more units even when they don’t actually need them. Supermarket giants have been capitalizing on this for years. An example from the E.Leclerc website below:

Discount anchoring effect — Buying in bulk is money-saving, something people don’t say no to.

Other Cognitive Biases Used In Conversion Rate Optimization

Bandwagon Effect

People’s tendency to do something merely because others are doing it, irrespective of whether they agree or not, is what psychologists called the Bandwagon Effect.

One of the best ways you can harness its conversion optimization benefit is by using social proof on your website. Display how many businesses you cater to, your client names, ratings, reviews, and testimonials to establish credibility and influence prospects to ‘hop onto the bandwagon’. Take a cue from the company Box on how to drop numbers and names.

Social proof example on website — Source

Barnum Effect

It’s a psychological phenomenon whereby people accept vague and generic statements as accurate descriptions of their own personalities, without thinking they could be applicable to other people, too.

You, too, can trigger this bias by personalizing user experience. Your prospects will feel unique and heard, when, in reality, you’re appealing to a whole segment, not one person. Think about personal recommendations based on visitor segmentation.

At AB Tasty, we ran a campaign for one of our clients, Sephora, that involved running a personalized, promotional banner exclusively for loyalty card holders. And guess what? The banner led to a 16% increase in transaction.

Framing Effect

The Framing Effect is a cognitive bias where people make decisions based on how information is presented to them as either a gain or a loss.

Generally speaking, people avoid risk when the option is positively framed, but become more risk-averse when a negative frame is brought into the picture. Why? Since the pain of losing something is felt much more than the happiness upon gaining something.

To capitalize on this psychological quirk, use urgency to frame the experience for your visitors. You can shine the spotlight on real-time stock levels, the time ticker, or competition. The intention is for visitors to notice the inevitable loss and avoid it, come what may!

Peak-End Rule Effect

Peak-End Rule Effect is a convenient cognitive shortcut our brain takes to recall an experience as good or bad based on how we feel at the peak (when emotions are intense) and at the end of the event.

From a CRO point of view, this means the focus should be on creating a user journey that concludes on a high note. For instance, at the checkout stage, don’t force registration, rather give visitors the guest checkout option, to lessen any potential for frustration.

Barnum effect check out example — Source

Get Ready To Trigger Anchoring Bias

It’s an excellent psychological tactic to boost your product’s perceived value and influence buyers’ decision-making journey. But first, you’ll need to create anchors that spark a favorable response from your consumers. You may not perfect it in one go, which is why it’s recommended you never stop A/B testing.

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Jun 18, 2019

14min read

The Merits of Storytelling in Digital Marketing

AB Tasty

Think back to earlier today: do you remember the banner which adorned the news site you eyed on your way to work? Or which brand’s commercial played while you waited for your video to load? Chances are, you’ll struggle to put your finger on the advertiser…

If even us marketers hardly pay any attention to these messages, then how can we expect your average Joe to do so? Enter: storytelling applied to digital marketing.

Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories, you tell.
– Seth Godin

Digital marketing has left behind the days where it focused on relentlessly pelting users with the same message, again and again, until their jingles were drilled into their brains. Instead, marketers are aspiring to offer consumers unique experiences, getting users to seek them out, hoping to see their latest creations.
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The Fundamentals of Storytelling

Storytelling activates the part of the brain responsible for feelings; as buyers, those emotions influence how we perceive the brand. Repeat after me: Consumers should not be reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet! Return to your roots as a storyteller and connect with their emotions. Create something so stunning that it drives viewers to rush to their friends and exclaim, “Hey! Have you seen this brilliant new advertisement?”

Tell people who you are, what you represent, and why you exist. Even though your story will most likely be linked to your product, the most important thing is to get clients to pay attention to you. Your goal should be for them to seek you out willingly, instead of “forcing” them to read, listen to, or see your message.

When Old Spice’s sales slumped, they responded by creating a series of side-splitting commercials, aimed not at men… but at women. How could this be, since they sell masculine products? After multiple surveys, the brand had discovered that it was the latter who usually shopped for their partner’s shampoo. The ads had a spectacular impact on their target audience, to the point where a surge of memes and other parodies started popping up – even Oprah Winfrey joined in on the fun!

Source

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Why Do We Tell Stories?

Every single person, from the most seasoned executive to the freshest intern, can tell a story. But where does this love for narrative originate?

There are a hundred reasons to tell stories: from entertaining, to selling, to educating… They’re our way of sharing information. In the interest of saving time, we’d like to highlight the following three:

Connecting with your audience: Consumers usually conceive of brands as untouchable entities which preside over the “common folk” (a.k.a., any consumer without a cushy Swiss bank account). As a result, companies usually come off as foreign and unrelatable, hindering the marketer’s efforts to make them appear authentic. Stories tap into people’s feelings, inspiring them to engage with the brand, and creating an emotional bond between them. Win buyers over by creating a narrative around your brand!
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Simplifying complex messages: How can you capture a user’s attention in a few seconds? With the fast-paced environment they move in, you have a very, very limited window of opportunity to express your idea! Stories provide a way to sidestep this barrier, bringing the concept down to earth.
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Bringing people together: All around the world, people from all cultures understand the concept of a hero, a quest and victory. Stories are a universal language which builds a sense of community among all sorts of people. Take Gillette, for example: by targeting fathers who are welcoming newborns into their homes, the brand has created a movement which boosted their sales, by consolidating a community which sees that the brand cares.

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What Makes a Good Story?

The good, the bad, the ugly… these words are all relative to the reader’s opinion. Nonetheless, there’s a handful of non-negotiable elements which make for an exceptional storytelling experience.

The ‘best’ stories stand out for being…

…universal: All readers can relate to the characters and are able to step into their shoes as they adventure deeper into their quests.
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…enduring: They’re sure to be passed on from one person, and one generation, to the next, be it because of the story’s defining hilarity, brashness or sheer emotion.
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…compelling: Keep the reader hooked! What will happen next?
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… well-structured: They manage to convey the clearly-defined core message, helping readers drink it in.

Be sure to check out HubSpot Academy’s Power of Storytelling course, where you can discover the three elements that make up a good story!

The Storytelling Process

Storytelling is an art. Like all artists, storytellers require skill, creativity, and a lot (and we do mean a lot) of practice. Introducing: the grand storytelling process:

Define your key message: Before letting your imagination run free with formats, length, and design ideas, you must define the core message of your story. Just as a house is built upon a foundation, be sure to have a clear idea of what will hold up your narrative – work on summarizing the concept in 7-10 words; if you can’t, then the message isn’t clear yet.
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Know your audience: Start by digging into your data. Who would want to hear your story? How would they react to the message? Study your target market, define your buyer personas, and show each story to the right audience segment.
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Decide what story you’ll tell: Weave your story together while keeping in mind the reaction you wish to see in your users. What is your goal?
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Fostering a sense of community: spin a tale which inspires readers to share your story with others by employing relatable situations and characters.
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Conveying your brand values: This is particularly relevant when promoting values which some users might not share or comprehend; use familiar characters and plots to facilitate showing how the story applies to their own experiences.
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Inciting action: Narrate how your characters successfully completed a task, and how readers might do the same.

How to tell a story

Choose the most effective medium: A storyteller’s tale can take many forms: some stories are read, others are listened to, and others are watched. The medium you select will most likely depend on the story itself, as well as the available resources (namely, time and money). Some of the most popular are:

– Written stories are told through blog posts, articles… Since these stories require no more than a word processor (Google Docs is a popular free option), this method is the most affordable.

– Visual stories are open to a wide range of media, including videos, games and even interactive stories.

– Oral stories (such as podcasts, radio appearances, and even live events) are, naturally, told “live”. Since they are shared in person, they are characterized by their unedited nature, for which the storyteller shall require more practice and skill in order to convey the correct messages, and elicit an emotional response in the audience.

Take a step further, and figure out their favorite social platforms, where (and when) they typically share content, and what they like to engage with. Additionally, consider device ownership and usage: this will boost your optimization efforts.

Establish your CTA: Give thought to which action you’d like your audience to take when they receive your message. Should they subscribe to a newsletter, purchase an item, donate to a charitable cause?
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Share your story: Be sure to promote your story! Remember that creating the tale is only half the battle – sharing it over dinner with friends is great, but is that really all that it deserves? Remember that the more ground you cover (in other words, the more platforms you use to share your story), the more engagement you’ll find!

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Powerful Brand Storytelling Tips

How many times have you been drawn to a post’s title, hooked by the opening paragraph… and then felt your eyes glaze over because you discovered a bland, mechanical example of ill-disguised self-promotion? Don’t fret – it’s happened to the best of us.

Knowing your audience may seem like the final destination for many marketing professionals, who wrap up their campaign convinced that their presence on the sites their target groups most frequently visit is enough to have consumers riding off into the sunset with their brand.

But there’s a pinch more to add to that recipe: namely, finding how to make your storytelling efforts attractive for the customer. Because if they’re not getting anything out of it, then what’s the use?

Discover the Hero’s Journey

Marketers must clearly identify the three core elements in their message before spinning their tale: the introduction, the narrative arc, and the resolution. Take a step further, and adopt the classic storytelling technique which had stood the stop of time: the Hero’s journey. Developed back in 1949 by Joseph Campbell, it was immediately adopted all around the world, defining how the main character undergoes a specific series of events which make them address their inner heroic potential and change their world forever.

Stages of the Hero's Journey

This all sounds peachy, but how can you use this for brand storytelling? In a nutshell, your target customer (a.k.a., our daring hero) embarks on a quest to overcome trials and, finally, returns triumphantly with their justly earned prize (your product or service).

Given that consumers would rather discover the products themselves rather than be flooded by advertisements, due to a surge of skepticism regarding commercial messages, marketers let customers fill the hero’s shoes, thus building an emotional bond between the brand and its users – making them want to come back, again and again. Try inviting celebrities to tell your story, and make sure it’s a hit!

Focus your marketing efforts on your customer: your customer is the knight in shining armor, you are their wise mentor, and your product is the reward waiting at the end of their daring quest!

The Hero’s Journey is broken into 12 stages and split equally between two halves: the top area is the “Normal world”, where our Hero lives as a mild-mannered customer; while the bottom part is the “Unknown”, that is, the brand new world which unfolds before their eyes when they embark on their quest. Every single prospect you come across will fall into one of these stages – your goal, as a marketing professional, is to identify where they are now, and define a strategy to transform the client into the story’s Hero. Show them how your product is the ultimate gratification!

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

– Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Let us sum up the main takeaways of the Hero’s Journey, applied to Digital marketing:

Your Hero is on an adventure: Your visitor may not have a kingdom to save, but they do have to find the right pair of hiking boots for their upcoming adventure trek with their brother-in-law, even though they never really exercise, and were really looking forward to simply lounging in the sun all day, AND HOW COULD THIS POSSIBLY LAST A WHOLE WEEK?! … So it’s safe to say that the kingdom can wait.
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Your Hero will face hardships on their quest: What obstacle is standing between your customer and what they want (a.k.a. your product)? Take a long, hard look at these hurdles, since your Champion will have to defeat each and every single one! Which impediments can you work to overcome? How many are directly related to your brand or product? How can you guide the client through them so they can discover your true value? What can you do to keep them after that initial purchase?
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Your Hero’s foe is yours as well: According to James Fahy, “Nothing unites humans like a common enemy”, a lesson which merges seamlessly with the Hero’s Journey, as applied to Digital Marketing. Find a common foe, prove your valor, and watch your customer’s loyalty to you skyrocket.

Your customers will feel valued (they are the Heroes in your story, after all!), encouraging them to talk wonders about your product and brand!

When to Use A/B Testing and Storytelling

Every single marketing professional dreams of boosting their conversion rates and utilizing A/B testing and personalization strategies to improve their results. Yet many overlook the opportunity to combine the two tools.

Marketing professionals are increasingly turning to A/B testing and AI when crafting stories for brands’ target audiences. Artificial Intelligence is smart enough to determine the needs of each segment, and A/B tests step in to sniff out the ideal alternative for each and every one.

The use of this tool can range from large scale modifications on a whole online platform, to the smallest details on a single page. Take, for example, the CTAs on the site or in the email’s subject lines: Which colors should you use? Which wording, font, size? Did users with the first version of the subject line open more emails than those with the second one? Which version of the CTA received more clicks from your clients?

As for A/B testing applied to storytelling for digital marketing, the norms remain the same: its efforts should always be aligned with your company goals. Have fun and experiment! Which designs and messages lead to more sales?

For all the data your enterprise may collect, there will always be the eternal matter of employing it well – even if you know your target audience like the back of your hand, trends shift, users evolve, and each segment might react differently to each message than another group!

Optimize your digital experiences with A/B testing – offer your users nothing but the best, and watch it pay off in the long run.

Going a Step Ahead

Big data has ushered in personalized messaging, and it’s quickly become the norm in this new, data-saturated society. The rate at which businesses collect information nowadays is unparalleled; yet, despite this inconceivable wealth of solutions, companies are still struggling to fully grasp the groundbreaking opportunities which are now within their grasp.

The best marketers know that creating personalized experiences is all about the data, and the way you use it. Look no further than the brands which are making the most out of personalized marketing, offering individualized products, experiences, and messages to their users. According to Salesforce, most clients (particularly Generation X and millennial shoppers) are open to offering personal information in exchange for personalization.

Marketers continue to hatch ingenious ways to employ this abundance of data, but there is so much left to be explored! How could they possibly begin to transform this treasured resource into profit?

The answer is right in front of you: adopt a personalized storytelling culture!

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Jun 14, 2019

9min read

What Is Retargeting and How Can It Increase Conversion Rates?

AB Tasty

Picture this: You’re moving into a new home in a month and have started online shopping for furniture. You see a coffee table from Birch & Oak that you like, add to your shopping cart, but don’t buy—yet. You have time to evaluate other options.

A few days later you notice an online ad for the exact Birch & Oak coffee table you were considering. In fact, you see an ad for this coffee table across various websites and social media platforms.

Finally, you decide to buy it.

This is retargeting in action, which (when done well) can be an effective tool for increasing conversion rates.

Consider the following:

Retargeted customers are 3x more likely to click on your ad than those that haven’t interacted with your business before.
30% of users respond positively to online ads.
Retargeted ads get a 10x higher click rate than typical display ads.
Traffic retargeted with ads is 70% more likely to convert on a retailer’s website.

Retargeting Definition

Retargeting is when you use ads to recapture the interest of a website visitor that left without buying or responding favorably to your calls-to-action. It gives you a chance to stay top of mind and encourage them to come back and complete a purchase.

Just the other day I realized I was being retargeted: I was looking to buy Indian wear for a friend on Kilol’s website and later saw this ad on Facebook:

Kilol displayed a retargeted ad on Facebook

How Retargeting Works

Businesses add Javascript code or a pixel to website pages, typically in the footer. The browser then places a cookie on a visitor’s computer when they land on the website. This cookie stores information about the consumer’s online behavior like the products they view, web searches, and social media use. Based on this data, retargeting vendors deliver personalized ads they think will most appeal to the individual consumer.

Note: To ensure that you’re not violating any privacy laws with retargeting, you must clearly state how you collect and use visitor data. (Remember, cookies only track users, not computers.)

notification of cookie use — BBC alerts website visitors about the use of cookies

Is Retargeting Annoying for Internet Users?

Some people don’t mind being tracked and willingly share their personal data to see relevant ads.

why consumers prefer certain retailers — Consumers on why they purchase more from certain retailers

Others can find frequent retargeted ads annoying. This can happen when they see a retargeted ad from visits that didn’t reflect a serious interest.

To avoid ad fatigue among visitors, apply the marketing rule of 7. This is when you use multiple marketing channels (not just ads) to stay fresh in customers’ minds. As it turns out, the more visible and relevant you are to consumers, through multiple channels, the better the conversion chances. In fact, you sell 50% more than you would otherwise!

Are Retargeting and Remarketing the Same?

While retargeting and remarketing have the same purpose, the approach is entirely different.

Retargeting uses ads to re-engage potential customers that visited your website but left without converting (for various reasons).

retargeted ads — Example of a retargeted ad

Remarketing uses personalized email campaigns to re-engage visitors, a tactic that can also be quite useful in reducing customer churn rate. In fact, eMarketer data states that 80% of retail professionals find email marketing as their greatest driver of customer retention.

Amazon sends remarketing emails to users with abandoned carts

Static vs. Dynamic Retargeting

Static retargeting creates several versions of the same ad as a part of a broader campaign. With static retargeting, you can set parameters for which ads display to visitors based on the pages they view on the site.

Dynamic retargeting, on the other hand, is more specific: it creates personalized ads for visitors based on how they’ve interacted with your site (and often incorporates machine learning to help analyze behavior and optimize the campaign).

Tip: For some prospects, retargeting just won’t work. Once you identify these “no-go” visitors, it’s best to delete them from your list and focus on prospects that will be more receptive.

Setting the Stage For Retargeting

While there are various different targeting platforms to choose from, the two most popular ones are Google AdWords and Facebook ads. (You don’t necessarily need both, but you need to know which would be more effective in reaching your prospective clients.)

Then, you have retargeting vendors like AdRoll, Retargeter and Perfect Audience that cover various platforms (including Google).

Here are a few resources to provide a more in-depth view of getting started with these tools:

Best Practices for Retargeting Success

Segment Your Audience

Different visitors have different goals and interests; meaning retargeting won’t work with a “one-size-fits-all approach.”

For someone that visited a product page, a way to retarget could be by displaying a carousel advertisement to encourage new product discovery. For the person that abandoned their shopping cart, a retargeted ad that offers a discount or free shipping could be more effective.

Also, consider segmenting visitors on the basis of how long it’s been since they were on your site. A person who visited a week ago shouldn’t see the same ad as the person who visited a month ago.

Optimize Ads

In a HubSpot survey, 63% of people surveyed said they felt most online ads don’t look professional and insult their intelligence.

To avoid this, try to incorporate the following into your advertisements:

Eye-catching visuals: Images must complement the ad copy. A common observation is that ads with photos of people outperform those without them.
Crisp headline: Set user expectations in as few words as possible.
Clean copy: Without being boring, address user’s hesitation and spark curiosity.
Clear call-to-action: Use an action-oriented catchphrase to draw readers in. Replace overused verbs with compelling ones, such as claim, reserve, activate, etc. Use urgency if it fits the context.
Post-click landing page: Be sure you’re delivering what users expect to find!

Set Frequency Cap

Showing an ad 100 times a day is not a strategic way to pique interest. In fact, more often than not, users will develop a “banner blindness” and ignore the ad completely.

Set a frequency cap to control how many times an ad appears to the same user. While there isn’t one ideal frequency rate, the best way to find the optimal number is to run A/B tests for your campaigns. This will help to reduce campaign costs, improve ad CTR, and increase conversions.

(It’s also worth considering a “recency cap” or how much time passes between when users see the same ad.)

Rotate Ads

A ReTargeter study revealed that running the same set of ads for about five months decreases the CTR by almost 50%. One of the common culprits is the fact that the more people see the same ad, the more easily it blends in the background. It becomes invisible, no matter how compelling the CTA is.

To overcome this hurdle draft versions of the same ad with different visuals and CTAs. Another benefit of doing this is that you’ll learn what kind of messaging visitors are more inclined to respond to.

Use Burn Pixel

Retargeting the wrong audience is a waste of time and your marketing budget. To prevent this from happening try using a burn pixel: a snippet code that’s placed on a post-transaction page to remove users who complete a purchase.

The goal is to not retarget these customers with the same item they already purchased, but move them to campaigns that focus on upselling and cross-selling based on their purchase history.

Conclusion

Retargeting can boost your ROI, create brand awareness and drive conversions. But, when it comes across as pushy to users, it can actually cause prospects to turn away for good. It’s important to segment audiences, establish the right cadence, and to keep testing to stay relevant and incentivize users to return to your site.

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Jun 13, 2019

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Opt-In vs. Opt-Out: A Guide to Email Marketing

AB Tasty

Opt-in email marketing is the process of gaining contact information from a ‘sign up’ or ‘register’ call-to-action on a website, which will be subsequently used to send newsletters or for general advertising.

Whilst they may not have directly agreed to hear from the company, they have registered interest and willingly given contact information.

Opt-in vs Opt-out; the guide to email marketing

Opt-out email marketing is when contact details are automatically added to a marketing list that a subscriber may be unaware of until they receive communications. Whilst this can be a bit of a nuisance for the person receiving the email, it can be another great way of gaining quality leads.

Despite a growing rumbling that email marketing is in decline, between 2014 and 2018, it was estimated that the average office worker in the US sent around 90 emails, with 40 emails being about business in particular. This strongly indicates that reaching people by electronic mail is still by far the preferred method for most people around the world.

The new approach of using opt-in call-to-actions on websites to obtain email addresses has become an increasingly successful way to gather high-quality contact lists to target with marketing campaigns. With open rates for marketing emails remaining around 85% and click-through rates at around 25% for most industries, email marketing is far from dwindling as a successful marketing tool.

When utilized properly, both opt-in and opt-out emails are a great use of your marketing budget and time, with significant click-through rates and growth in new subscribers credited to opt-in techniques.

We explore the difference between executing these tactics and offer some guidance when it comes to running a successful opt-in email marketing campaign.

Opt-in vs. Opt-out; Which is Best?

So, what is the difference between opting in to receive marketing emails and opting out of communications – and where does the term ‘unsubscribe’ fit into email marketing tactics?

The concept of opt-in emails is a straightforward marketing approach; you reach out to people who have given their contact details via a website sign-up. The opt-in method is rapidly becoming a popular option, as companies build a solid list of contacts directly from users on their website, instead of relying on the more traditional approach of buying a list of potentially relevant contacts.

Opt-out email marketing is slightly more tricky when it comes to maintaining interest, particularly for timely offers, as many recipients lose interest on receiving initial communications and this can sometimes lead to people hitting the dreaded ‘unsubscribe’ button – not ideal.

Using opt-in email marketing is the perfect opportunity to captivate and nurture initial leads, as someone has shown an interest in your company or product. It is then up to your excellent marketing campaign to be compelling, well-written and generally engaging enough that those potential customers become fully-fledged revenue for your business.

The Advantages of Using Opt-In Email Marketing

Compared to opt-out marketing, opt-in offers additional confidence to many brands, as the people receiving email marketing have expressed interest in the company or products. Building a strong, quality marketing list via ‘opt-in’ has become a more secure way for businesses to visibly see a return on investment, via their e-marketing.

Another advantage of using opt-in marketing is the years of consistently high open rates for companies all over the world, compared to it’s ‘younger cousin’, social media marketing. Brands try alternative methods of directly reaching potential new customers on platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, by sending direct messages about discounts and offers that they assume their followers would be interested in. The results, however, indicate people simply are not ready to be contacted directly on their personal social accounts, with a measly 0.58% open rate for direct messaging.

A slightly less interesting but sensible advantage for opt-in emails is that they are also regulated, in a bid to protect people’s data when it comes to how companies store and use it. Which leads us on to the topic of regulation…

What is GDPR?

Ah, legal regulations. They may have all the appeal of a soggy sandwich, but they have recently become an important guideline for companies operating in the EU when it comes to storing and using people’s contact information. May 2018 saw the rollout of GDPR, which stands for General Data Protection Regulation, and was put in place to protect personal data, particularly when companies build marketing lists with the intention to reach out. Similar to the GDPR roll out, companies operating in the United States have to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, brought in by George Bush in 2003, to protect individuals from receiving marketing communications they didn’t opt-in for.

GDPR and email marketing

Whilst they may be rather dull, regulations have been introduced to protect both companies and recipients from having their details misused. As previously touched upon, when sending any type of communication to someone, there is a certain level of consent that the recipient will exercise. They will either choose to opt-in to hearing from you (via a sign-up), or they can be unknowingly added to a list and contacted because they have shown an interest in a third-party or related company. Ultimately, all of these methods involve storing and using someone’s personal contact details.

Whilst there is nothing wrong with building an email list via opt-in or opt-out marketing methods, email consent has come under scrutiny in the last few years. Regulation has become an even bigger requirement to prevent the misuse of data, since many a company have recently suffered security breaches, with customer details being stolen.

Double Opt-In and Nurturing Leads

The double opt-in option requires a further ‘click’ via a link sent in another communication, such as an email or text message. This additional click-through confirms their interest in your company and that they want to hear from you, making them far more likely to convert and respond to your communications. The double opt-in is not necessarily right for every email campaign, but rather offers extra security for companies looking for a great-quality contact list.

By sending a confirmation message, you begin to nurture a lead, reassuring both yourself and the email recipient that they are interested in receiving information and offers from your company. Once they have gone through the effort of re-confirming, it is down to the quality of the marketing material to reach the ultimate goal of converting them to becoming a customer.

The double opt-in method is great for companies who offer coupons and other discounts that may be exclusive to subscribers, and it also avoids any emails being sent to spam folders. If an email list is not primarily focused on offers etc, the single opt-in option is fine. As long as your business offers some kind of opt-in email marketing, your correspondence list will stay clean and secure.

From a regulation point of view, the double opt-in is the ‘belt and braces’ approach – it ensures the contact is compliant and willing to be contacted.

Timing is Everything When Sending Emails

As with many things in life, timing is everything when it comes to sending campaign emails – and reaping the reward. Depending on whether you target B2B or B2C audiences, the day of the week will affect the open rate success. Tuesday is widely known as being the best day to send B2B newsletters and general marketing communications, whereas B2C companies find Saturday morning a great time to achieve excellent open rates. Then there’s the actual time of day your email is received. Avoid any time that is widely considered busy, for example, 9am is a big no, but anything between 12-2pm is highly likely to be seen.

timing is everything in email marketing

Avoid the Spam Folder

Email providers such as Gmail and Microsoft have spent many years developing algorithms when it comes to spotting ‘spammy’ words in an email, making sure to automatically file any potential spam emails away, without the user even knowing they are there. The key to avoiding this ‘automatic filing’ is to send good, well-written content. Inform your reader of the topic straight away, avoid using words such as ‘buy’, ‘spam’ or ‘free’ in your subject header and try not to overwhelm them with lots of imagery, once they have opened your email.

Avoiding the 'spam' folder

Takeaway

Ultimately, the level of success from your email marketing campaign is going to depend on many factors, such as quality of content, the time of day it’s sent as well as the quality of contacts it is sent to. Despite the pesky rumors stating email marketing is dead or on the way out, the stats simply prove otherwise. Above the noise of social advertising, clever cookie options and other tried-and-tested digital methods, opt-in email marketing remains the most successful campaign tactic, with the Independent Department of Marketing Bureau, or IMDB fully endorsing it as the most successful way to communicate with potential customers, in 2019.

Feature Image Credit from HostReviews.

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Jun 3, 2019

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How to Use Psychographics in Digital Marketing

AB Tasty

Buyer personas matter. Who can contest that? They bring you tête-à-tête with consumers. You get to know who they are and their preferences, resulting in marketing more efficiently to them. Simply put, you get bang for your buck! A Demand Gen report states that having buyer personas in place contributed to a 175% increase in Thomson Reuters’ revenue, a 10% increase in leads sent to sales, and a 72% reduction in lead conversion time. Incredible, you’d agree!

Want to ape their success? Start by making your customers feel you’re addressing them and them alone. For that to happen though, you’ll need more than demographic data. Simply put, you’ll need to start recording your customer’s psychographics.

What is Psychographics?

It’s the study of a consumer’s not-so-visible characteristics, such as their interests, activities, opinions, lifestyle, and attitude.

Qualitative data is highly valuable. You discover the real motivation behind why people love, as well as advocate for, a few brands. Keeping that in mind, you can alter your messaging to bridge the gap between you and them. You’ll forge a much deeper connection and hear your audience say: “This brand totally gets me!”

Why does this happen though? Because you treat them as individuals with a distinct personality, not as a number. By focusing on their inner drives, their problems and what will actually help them, you become relevant, increasing chances of conversion.

The Key Difference Between Psychographics and Demographics

Unlike psychographics, that concerns itself with the ‘why’ and ‘personal’ aspect of customers, demographics is about ‘who’ this person is, with a focus on quantifiable details like age, gender, ethnicity, employment status, marital status, income, etc.

Both are equally important to refine buyer personas, and when coupled with behavioral stats, can result in a better understanding of your audience.

Difference between psychographics and demographics (1) — Source

With a bit of ground covered, let’s shift focus to what psychographics deals with.

Types of Psychographics to Keep Your Eye On

Going back to the definition, psychographic profiling is done on what is known as the IAO variables, namely interests, activities, and opinions.

Interests

Interests center on a person’s curiosity about something and what they care about. For example, wildlife, theater, economics, climate change, etc. So target people based on what intrigues and fascinates them. They’ll respond much better to your calls-to-action.

Activities

This includes everything that people busy themselves with, such as gardening, hiking, bird watching, or reading, among a gazillion other things. With that knowledge, you can write content and use vocabulary that resonates with them.

Opinions

People form opinions as a result of their interaction with people around them, their socioeconomic status, personal experiences, etc. Clearly, you’ll need to keep their perspective in mind to influence them in your favor.

How Do You Gather Psychographic Data?

You go where you can find it!

Google Analytics

Click on Audience > Interests. Depending on variables already set as ‘secondary dimensions,’ you will know more about your audience. If not, click ‘add segment’ and track them.

Google Analytics Audience Interests

Surveys and Questionnaires

Asking questions makes you stand out; you come across as a brand that’s concerned about its customers. What’s more, you get suggestions from people who’ve experienced your services/products. Who knows, you might come across common denominators you had no idea existed before. For example, if 10% of your customers follow a certain influencer, you can collaborate with them.

Personal Interviews

Have a conversation with your favorite client and in an effort to ‘get-to-know-them-even-better’, ask questions that’ll help you collect psychographic data. Not possible? Speak to people (from your social circle) who are somewhat ‘similar’ to your target audience.

Social Media Analytics

Head to the audience insights section to discover a wealth of information that people share. From their life events, hobbies, political opinions to interests and pages they like/follow, there’s a lot that can make a world of a difference in your next marketing campaign.

Psychographic data you can gather from Facebook — Some common Facebook Ad targeting options. Source

Additionally, social media listening can tell you how your competitors’ followers feel about them, which you can use to your advantage to differentiate yourself.

Difference between social media listening and social media monitoring — Source

Sales and Customer Support Teams

Why talk to these teams? For the simple reason that they interact with your customers on an everyday basis. That alone makes them a perfect data source to help you get to know your prospects much better. Dig out the FAQs, the key phrases and words that customers use in reference to your brand or industry. This could be pretty useful in brainstorming ideas for your sales page, for example. Make their words yours.

How to Use Psychographics in Digital Marketing

#1: On Your Website

David Ogilvy famously said: ‘What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.’ You’ll agree it makes a huge difference in how your audience perceives you. So to hit the nail on the head with your copy, you need to take the words right out of your customers’ mouths!

Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers dug up reviews of six best-selling rehab and alcohol recovery books while researching how to write website copy for a rehab center. She picked phrases that gave her a peek into the minds of a recovering/recovered addict. This helped her understand their trajectory of thoughts, wants, and pains.

Collecting phrases to mine psychographic data of customers — Source

She then went on to use one direct quote from a reviewer as the headline. The payoff? 400% more CTA clicks and 20% more lead form submissions. Talk about the power of psychographics! Related: 10 Techniques To Build Lead Capture Forms.

Joanna Wiebe implements psychographic data on website copy — Source

#2: On Sales Pages

The purpose of a sales page is to convince people to take the offer on the table. But it won’t happen unless you know the actual problems your audience is facing.

Check out the sales copy by the Girl Gone Strong team. They use their target customer’s psychographics to create perfect sales copy. You’ll notice they’ve used the PAS framework. For those who don’t know, it stands for ‘Problem’, ‘Agitate’ and ‘Solution’ and here’s how it’s applied on their page:

Problem: Create a context with video on the first scroll.

Agitate: Go specific, highlighting ‘real’ problems: ‘seeing little to no results’, ‘restrictive dieting’, ‘body image issues’.

Solution: Overcome doubts with the guide created by women for women, backed by the recent finishers of the training program as well as fitness experts.

Psychographic data used on Girl Gone Strong's Sales page — Source

No matter the industry, you can implement the framework and make your audience’s challenges clear to them. Make them see the negative implication of being stuck in the rut before plugging your solution.

#3: On Your Blog

You know what they say about the benefits of having a business blog? All of it is true.

Today, 47% of buyers view 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. Yes, it’s a zig-zag path, but one that leads inevitably to you. Meaning, if you want them to come knocking on your door, your content must center around their interests.

A perfect example is Neil Patel’s marketing blog. He understands his readers’ psychographics and addresses their burning points in the most simple, conversational and comprehensive manner possible. In fact, there’s content for people at all stages in the funnel, which makes him everyone’s go-to resource. His readers love him:

Psychographic data use success seen on Neil PAtel's blog comments — Source

You, too, can generate this kind of admiration with your posts. Follow Brian Dean’s Skyscraper technique 2.0 which puts the user right in the center.

Figure out user intent: Google the keyword you want to rank on and analyze the content of top-ranking posts.

Satisfy user intent: Write a long blog post if that’s the pattern you noticed in top results. Indeed, BuzzSumo partnered with Noah Kagan of OKDork.com to analyze 100 million blog posts and found that ‘people are more likely to share longer articles’.

Long blog post appeals to people across different funnel stages — Source

Optimize for UX: Prime your readers for an excellent experience on your blog. It begins with adjusting to the information-foraging audience and making your content skimmable. Nielsen’s research states that 79% of people scan web pages.

Additionally, read comments of your competitor’s top performing content. You’ll get a fair idea about what your audience thinks and worries the most about. Perhaps you will even get new content ideas that people are interested in!

Mining psychographic data from blog comments — Source

#4: Create Hyper-Targeted Landing Pages

With psychographic data by your side, you can design and write conversion-optimized landing page copy. You’ll no longer rely on guesswork – rather, you’ll be sure of who this person is, and you’ll impress them with your on-point message. If you really hit your mark, you’ll even strike an emotional cord.

Check out the landing page below by TransferWise. With psychographic segmentation in place, they promptly address their customers’ biggest pain point in the headline. Then there’s an interactive calculator for convenience, plus real-time exchange rates for people to track. They also add social proof for reassurance’s sake because this is monetary transaction we’re talking about, after all!

Addressing customer pain points example on TransferWise website — Source

#5: Write Better Ads

You’ve reached a point where you know psychographics works, so don’t let that data go to waste. Use it to write targeted, appealing ads. However, first, make sure you’re channeling your money and effort where your audience spends time. That way, you’ll be present at the right place and in front of the people who’ll actually ‘get’ and respond to your message.

Let’s say you’re an eco-friendly, sustainable fashion label. You know your audience demographics is females between the ages of 25 and 40 in the US. Now, throw psychographic variables into the mix and your target audience will look like this:

Demographic:

Female
Age between 25 and 40
Single/married
Household income $60k-$100k

Psychographic:

Interested in environmental issues and climate change
Striving for a zero-waste lifestyle
Shops from farmer’s markets
Follows environmental activists and influencers
Volunteers

See what a difference psychographic profiling makes? There’s no way this core audience won’t connect with you and help you achieve your ad (read: brand) goals!

#6: Email Marketing

Understanding the psychographics of your customers plays an important role in building an email list. That’s because the inbox is a sacred space and people won’t subscribe to you unless you promise to send them stuff that really interests them. Perhaps it’s time for you to become that brand people can’t wait to hear from, eh? Remember: The more people on your list, the more conversions you make.

If you already have an incredible list of subscribers, then the challenge is in continuing to stay relevant to them – otherwise, you’ll see many leave. Psychographics can lead the way, telling you your audience’s needs, fears and expectations. This, in turn, will prep you to create highly personalized emails. A report states that marketers who used segmented campaigns noted as much as a 760% increase in revenue.

Personalization stats to consider — Source

So go back to your past campaigns to learn why the messaging resonated with your audience. Then – repeat it. It’s likely going to lift open rates and engagement. Also, keep up with current trends to boost your email CTRs. Interactive emails, for example, are quite engaging. So think along those lines.

HubSpot follows current trends to appeal to customer psychographics — HubSpot regularly sends interactive quizzes in their emails.

That’ll Be All For Now

Psychographics allows you to get into the head of your customers. And that alone makes it an important piece of data for marketers that want to create passionate brand subscribers. When used in combination with demographics, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities to stay relevant and interesting to your target audience and customers alike.

And while it’s true that mining psychographic insights is hard work, it’s the gains that make the whole process worth it. Once you have your hard-won data, apply it to your website, sales page, landing pages, ads and emails to create an in-sync omnichannel experience for your audience.

Over to you now. How else do you use psychographics?

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May 27, 2019

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What is Personalization in Digital Marketing?

AB Tasty

Personalization is the process of keeping in mind the needs and preferences of your audience so that you market the right product and experience to the right person at the right time. By doing this, you stand a better chance of making customers feel heard, having more meaningful interaction and nudging them to convert.

Some businesses, however, have been unruly and rightly punished for their ignorance or disinterest in their customers. Need proof? Here you go: In 2017, Accenture reported that due to poor personalization and lack of trust, 41% of consumers switched companies, which cost U.S. organizations a staggering $756bn.

Suffice it to say that people demand personalization. Their appetite for personalized products is stronger today – so much so that they’re willing to pay for products unique to them. They also don’t mind sharing personal data in exchange for receiving personalized recommendations and offers.

Stats on customer's preference to receive personalized recommendations — Source

How Personalization is Different from Customization

It’s quite painful to see people use personalization and customization interchangeably. Yes, it’s true that both keep users at the center and want to engage them with exciting, contextually relevant experiences, but their ways are completely different.

So how are the two not the same?

Personalization, as you know by now, is about creating a one-to-one marketing experience for customers. It begins with collecting ample, qualitative data about your audience. Amazon is a brilliant example of personalization done right, and so are Netflix and YouTube. Recommendations rain down depending on users’ on-site activities.

Here’s Lancôme’s product recommendation engine telling me what else I should consider buying, based on the product I’ve added to my cart:

Powerful product recommendation for personalization - Lancome

Customization, on the contrary, is about giving people the liberty to be able to custom-make a product or service, based on their particular taste. Put simply, it puts them in the center, having complete control over everything they’d like to keep or lose.

For example, Canva, a free online graphs and chart maker, has plenty of customizable templates. Users can make changes in fonts, color, layout etc. and also add/delete elements in an existing design or start from scratch.

Customization option on Canva — Canva houses several customizable templates

In e-commerce, the most commonly used customization technique is product customization. Shoppers feel empowered as they can design their own clothes and accessories, unique to their sense of style. It goes without saying, customizing their own product boosts their satisfaction levels, for the outcome is the fruit of their own labor!

Nike uses customization to great effect, letting shoppers edit the shoe design and even sharing the customized design on their social networks. Of course, flaunting on social media is an additional way to give shoppers’ ego a boost, because someone out their may praise ’em! For Nike, it could translate to more people dropping by their website and buying their products.

Example of customization - Nike — Source

What is Web Personalization?

Website personalization is the practice of tailoring relevant and unique experiences to every website visitor. It dumps the one size fits all approach and works to make customers feel special.

Extending this definition to our everyday life, there’s a reason why we prefer going to cafés where the staff knows us not only by our face, but our names and mood. There’s nothing greater than that warm, mushy feeling of being recognized!

In marketing though, personalization is more than just addressing customers by their names. Aware of this, according to The SoDA Report, 83% of marketers and C-level executives plan to increase their personalization efforts for 2019, with 32% pointing to a ‘significant budget increase’.

Sounds promising? Hang on, there’s more.

The report further states that of the 67% of global leaders that rate their organizations as ‘Masters’ or ‘Experts’ with robust and advanced levels of personalization capabilities, only 40% are utilizing even the most basic targeting personalization tactics.

Bizarre, but true. Tom Beck, Executive Director at SoDA, says that the reasons for the majority of the organizations are:

Constrained budgets, limitations with their technology platform, and challenges with their data as some of the biggest barriers hindering their progress. It’s also worth noting that more than half of all organizations lack an adequate strategic roadmap and investment plan for their personalization capabilities.

See yourself citing the same issues? Probably the next section will convince you to buckle up and stop finding excuses or reasons to not prioritize your customers’ wants and expectations.

Why Create Personalized Digital Experiences?

Because personalization affects consumers’ perceptions of your brand and also how they shop:

74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized. (Business 2 Community)
Nearly three-fourths (74%) of online consumers get frustrated with websites when content (e.g., offers, ads, promotions) appears that has nothing to do with their interests. (HubSpot)
77% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience. (Forrester)
Over 78% of consumers will only engage offers if they have been personalized to their previous engagements with the brand. (Marketo)
Personalized home page promotions influenced 85% of consumers to buy while personalized shopping cart recommendations influenced 92% of shoppers online. (Business 2 Community)

What do you say now? Guess I hear you’re more than willing to learn some personalization tactics. So let’s get ready and wrap our heads around how some brands play on human psychology and create some of the most holistic and pleasant website experiences for their customers.

Examples and Strategies to Optimize Personalization

#1 Allure First-Time Visitors With an Exclusive Offer

To start with, I’m going to happily plug one of our client success stories! Best Western® Hotels & Resorts triggered a pop-in to visitors who weren’t logged in to their membership account and were specifically looking for at least a two-night stay, with an offer that was especially for Rewards account holders. And guess what followed? A 12% jump in account creations.

Best western mock up personalization

Meanwhile, here’s another example from the Steve Madden website:

Offer personalized, unique offers for first-time visitors - Steve Madden

#2 Personalized Recommendation During Checkout

Showing products that compliment ‘in-the-basket’ products as well as others that might catch a customer’s fancy works to your advantage. First, because people discover new products, without having to look for them, served on a platter. And second, they feel they’re being attended to exclusively! Final result? Increased average order value. Who’s the winner? You. Of course!

Personalization with the help of recommendation engine on Ebay — Ebay lures shoppers with ‘frequently bought together’ products.

Here’s how Amazon makes recommendations in three different ways by taking into account users’ browsing and shopping history.

Power of Amazons personalization tool (1)

#3 Go for Geo-Location Based Targeting

Identifying your visitor’s location is a great way to serve content they can readily connect with. So redirect them to their country-specific stores. It inspires confidence in you when they read a language familiar to them, plus see content and offers that are geographically more relevant to them.

Let’s say the website visitor is from a country expected to experience winter, you can suggest winter wear. It’s going to keep them interested and prepare them to buy what seems to be a perfect purchase at that moment in time.

Using geolocation for personalization - ASOS — On the Asos website users are redirected to their country-specific stores.

What also cuts down on their anxiety is seeing multi-currency and preferred payment options. Apparently, inMusic decreased cart abandonment by 30% with localized payment processing.

#4 Embrace Interactive Content

With interactive quizzes, you can make shopping a joy by eliminating the paradox of choice. How? Because this format is an online version of the sales fella from a brick-and-mortar store that helps you find what you’re looking for from a mountain of options! But for it to work, you must have compelling copy and equally interesting questions. Much like the charm and gift of gab of the sales chap!

Below is the welcome page of ‘The Original Fit’ quiz. The copy is conversational, there’s data backing their claims and a promise to make the shopping experience pleasant. Now how could you not take this quiz?

Use interactive quiz for better personalization of digital experiences — Source

If you’re worried about not having enough time to design interactive quizzes, then you’ll be happy to know about platforms like Outgrow, SnapApp and LeadQuizzes. They have templates you can easily customize without knowing how to code.

#5 Lure Customers to Finalize a Purchase With Exit Intent Pop-Ups

So if someone’s been lurking on a particular product page, interested in a product but not quite ready to buy, you can sweeten the deal with a discount on an exit intent pop-up. Perhaps even add a testimonial. Or based on the items in their cart, you can offer them free shipping if they buy in the next couple of hours (think scarcity).

Personalization example - Special offer to reduce cart abandonment

#6 Give Them Ease of Access

From showing a homepage that reflects your customer’s browsing history to making it easy for them to find their past orders and wish list, the key is to keep the user bang in the center. It shortens their path to purchase and increases conversion opportunities. Take a page from Amazon’s book. Everything under one drop down = many problems solved!

Personalization example on dashboard - Amazon (1)

#8 Take Away the Pain to Find Recently Searched for Products

Online shopping is overwhelming. No doubt. People jump from one product to another, unsure if it’s ‘the one’. But while they’re still on your site, for their sake, display previously viewed products. It increases the site engagement time and makes them feel confident about you being on their side, helping keep track of past searches.

E-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooComerce and others already have created apps that make this possible. So go for it!

Shopify personalization app - Show past viewed products (1) — Source

Going Forward

People demand you create highly personalized experiences. So it’s safe to say that the time has come to be awesome and become a brand that’s empathetic to its customers’ needs. You’ve already seen how some of your peers are raising the bar. Plus, you’re already in the know about which strings to pull to magically surprise whoever drops by on your website. So you better get going!

The key is to know your audience. Next thing you know, your customer is thanking your for reading their mind! And that’s when you’ll know you’ve arrived!

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Apr 25, 2019

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You’ve Been Framed: How The Framing Effect Impacts UX Testing & Design Choices

AB Tasty

Did you know that it takes about 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion about your website? Or that 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a website after a bad experience?

Well, now you do. And what these statistics imply is that you can no longer push user experience design to the back burner. Rather, know who your target audience is and involve them in the design process. Ask them questions to understand their struggles and desires. Eventually, you’ll begin to notice patterns in their answers that you can then use to identify design solutions.

But it isn’t as easy or straightforward a process as it seems.

When you test your website with users, a cognitive bias called the Framing Effect can interfere. If you remember, we’d talked about it at length with respect to loss aversion. If not, give it a read. In the meantime, let’s go over its Wikipedia definition:

Framing Effect is where people decide on options based on if the options are presented with positive or negative semantics; e.g. as a loss or as a gain.

Put simply, people’s responses are influenced by the way a piece of information is presented to them. In your case, as a UX researcher and designer, it means that led by your own biases, you may frame questions that confirm your hypothesis instead of finding the objective truth. And that’s a major fail because if you don’t recognize it early on, you’ll end up with a website designed for yourself.

With that in mind, let’s figure out how you can you keep this bias in check.

Don’t Ask Leading/Manipulative Questions

…for the simple reason that they can prime users and influence their answers. They will say what you want to hear instead of giving you honest responses.

To understand this better, read the following questions out loud. Which of them, according to you, will provide more reliable feedback:

I saw that you were confused when navigating the website. What was the issue?

What was easy or difficult about navigating the website?

You were having difficulty navigating the website. Why so?

My guess is that you’re going to pick #2 because #1 and #3 are leading questions. They encourage a certain type of answer that can result in inaccurate feedback and bad decisions. Wondering how? Let’s break down all three questions.

I saw that you were confused when browsing the website. What was the issue?

The problem: First, the interviewer assumes the user was confused. What if they were not? But now that they’ve said it, the user may believe they were having trouble browsing the website. Second, they use the word issue, which seems to imply that there must be an issue. What if there was none?

What was easy or difficult about browsing the website?

This is a good question because there’s no pressure to answer a particular way. Left to their own devices, the user will stay true to their experience. In fact, the interviewer may even get surprising insights that enable them to see problems and solutions from a completely different point of view.

You were having difficulty browsing the website. Why so?

The problem: Like in the first question, here too, the interviewer assumes that the user was having troubles navigating. This leads them to believe that they were indeed browsing with great difficulty. The outcome? A biased and unhelpful response that may not necessarily truly reflect their actual experience and thought process.

But how do you get around to not writing leading questions?

You purge them out of your system and out on the paper. Forget about whether they serve your confirmation bias or not. #NoFilter
Leave them on the table for a day or two.
Next, edit and re-frame questions until they are neutral and don’t stick out like a sore thumb.
Run the list past your peers because two pairs of eyes are better than one.

Et voilà! You have successfully made it to the other side of the fence. That being said, you may still make mistakes because the Framing Effect isn’t easy to overcome. So let’s move on to know what more you can do to stop it from messing with your efforts.

Watch Your Words

When a user asks a question, Kara Pernice, Senior Vice President at Nielsen Norman Group recommends you try the Echo, Boomerang, or Columbo techniques. Here’s a summary of what she says in the article:

Echo

Repeat the last phrase or word the user said in a slight interrogatory tone. This will naturally put the user in the mindset of answering the question by elaborating on what he meant by those exact words. For example:

User: This table is weird, well, hmmm, not sure what, uh…
Facilitator: Not sure what? Or, Table is weird?

Boomerang

Bounce user’s questions and comments right back at them to make them solve the issue by imagining they aren’t in a research environment. For example:

User: Do I buy without creating an account?
Facilitator: What would you do if you were doing this on your own?

Colombo

Ask only a part of the question so that the user helps you by answering their question. It’s effective because fewer words mean that you’re less likely to influence their answer. For example:

User: If I close here will I lose my work?
Facilitator: Uhm, you are wondering if [pause] you might [pause.]
User: I am just not really sure if I should pick “close” or “cancel” or “ok.” I guess I don’t know the difference between these buttons.

Kara concludes the article by saying that these techniques aren’t a ‘license to interrupt the user any time he makes a sound’. Determine:

Whether the user was thinking out loud or if it really was a question that must be answered.
Whether the comment made was audible to you to get talking with them.
Whether there’s any real benefit from probing them, or you have enough information.

Bonus advice: Record usability sessions to analyze your non-verbal behavior because that can be leading, too. Check if you were you smiling and nodding to get a response, or were you poker-faced?

When all is said and done, let’s not completely discredit framing. It can be useful, especially when you want to elicit a user’s true behavior. Let me illustrate this with an example.

Imagine you want to know a user’s path on your website. Frame your question in a manner that introduces context and focus without being suggestive at all. How do you do that? Instead of saying, ‘You are here to buy a bookcase. Now find one, add it to your shopping cart and checkout’, you say:

‘You have 50 books lying stray in your house. Please look for a suitable product to stack them, add it to your cart and complete the checkout process.’

Doing this, you’ll have your hands on rich insights because neither did you instruct nor prime users to search for a bookcase. Had you done that, they would have straightaway used the search functionality on your website instead of acting on their own.

In short, framing allows you to establish boundaries. You become more focused to form research questions that support your research goals. Everything else gets excluded.

Moving on, let’s talk about how design decisions are vulnerable before the framing effect.

How the Framing Effect Affects Design Choices

The way test findings are framed can heavily influence how it’s interpreted. NN Group tested this and found out that decision frames do affect design choices.

About 1037 UX practitioners participated in a quiz and were randomly shown a version of a hypothetical study’s findings: Half of them saw the negative frame and the other half saw the positive frame. In the end, both groups were asked the same question: ‘Should the search function be redesigned?’ Practitioners that saw the findings expressed as a failure rate were 31% more likely to believe the design needed an overhaul.

Then, there were a few of them who said they weren’t sure or that the design needed no change at all. And, that’s quite interesting because whether a website needs to be redesigned depends on a range of factors, such as the type of website, the overall importance of the search function and implementation costs to the participants. Since none of this was mentioned in the quiz, it’s clear that these participants were more critical of their choice and didn’t want to make snap judgments.

Much like these practitioners, you, too, can make reason-backed decisions. Here’s how:

Critically analyze decision frames rather than jumping to conclusions. Refuse to pick one frame over another in case there isn’t enough data. Find out what’s amiss to support your argument.
Re-frame the findings and look at it from a success/failure or gain/loss perspective. You should then have a fair idea if you were being framed.

Connecting The Dots

We can all agree that the Framing Effect is like mercury that can slip through the tiniest crack. You can’t pull a trick from under your hat to banish this deep-seated bias, but you can definitely become more mindful of the trap.

Ask if the question is framed to yield a response you want, or will it motivate the user to be unbiased. What if you word the question differently? Will it change the answer? Point being, once you are more critical you will have more confidence in your choices that will reflect in your research practice as well as your website and products.

Remember, you can use this bias to work for you, especially to support research goals and help boost e-commerce conversions through loss aversion tactics.

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Mar 6, 2019

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Loss Aversion Strategies to Dial-Up Your Ecommerce Conversion

AB Tasty

Let’s get straight to the point: Losses are intimidating. They trigger negative, unpleasant emotions of pain, fear, and regret. No one in their right mind would ever admit they get a kick out of losing!

That said, a few of you who are brave at heart might be willing to take risks. You spontaneously weigh outcomes—as gains or losses—based on your vantage or reference point. What you also like to do is consider what and how much is at stake, something which behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky discussed in their work, The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice.

They conducted a study to measure loss aversion in relation to how a problem is framed. In their experiment, two groups of participants were asked to imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual disease that is expected to wipe out 600 people. The first group was then proposed two alternative programs to combat the disease:

If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved.
If Program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and 2/3 probability that no people will be saved.

Result: About 72% of participants voted for program A because they were risk-averse. To them, saving 200 lives is much better than a risky prospect of equal expected value (⅓ of 600 =200).

For the second group, the programs were framed in a different way:

If Program C is adopted, 400 people will die.
If Program D is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and 2/3 probability that 600 people will die.

Result: A majority 78% of respondents voted for program D. They were more risk-taking as 400 people dying was scary and less acceptable than the two-in-three chance that 600 will die.

Kahneman and Tversky noticed a pattern:

Framing the option in terms of saving lives made people risk-averse and losing lives turned them into risk takers.

Why, though? It’s because losses loom larger than gains which also perfectly sums up the loss aversion theory. The pain of losing something is much more intense than the happiness of gaining something, even if it’s of equivalent value!

And while this was loss aversion in the context of health, the same is applicable in marketing, too.

Loss Aversion Strategies in Marketing

We now have a fair idea that people can do anything to dodge losses. So frame your marketing messages to introduce/highlight imminent loss. A word of caution: Don’t make your customers nervous by focussing only on what they’re about to lose.

Think about being subtle and direct at the same time. But is that even possible, you ask? It is if you apply the following power moves.

Create Urgency

Play upon people’s fear of missing out (FOMO). Brands of all stripes make use of FOMO, and there’s a good chance it will work for you, too. The best part is that although people are aware of this marketing tactic, they aren’t completely immune to it. In short, it works! Every. Single. Time. Just a week ago I impulsively bought something because I noticed a message saying ‘only 1 left in stock’!

Anyway, here’s what you can do:

Display stock level: When your customers realize the product they want may soon go out of stock, they will put their misery to an end by buying it right away! After all, they know the aftertaste of losing what they’ve been eyeing up for so long will be too much to deal with later!

But that’s not enough because a lot of people—even when they are ready to buy—abandon their carts. In 2018, for instance, the average cart abandonment rate was 78.65%. Now although the reasons to drop out vary, you can still recover your customers by mentioning the stock of each product in the shopping cart. Here’s an example from the Esprit (France) website where they clearly state that stocks are limited:

limited stock esprit

Pro tip: 10 Techniques to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

Limited time offer: This gives you the chance to limit the time your customer takes to make a decision, meaning you get them to convert faster!

reduce cart abandonment

Others are also looking: When you prompt a customer with how many other people are looking at the same product/offer, it automatically creates a sense of competition. And along comes the fear of losing to this anonymous person, which they don’t like. Result? They cave in and buy.

Create urgency

A fair warning: If you overuse these scarcity tactics people will catch up to you and may even feel cheated. So practice restraint for maximum, positive impact.

Discounts

For anyone who’s looking to save money, discounts work as a huge motivation to buy something. So work it to your advantage and make your offers more noticeable and appealing.

Check out how Yves Rocher lure their website visitors with a perfectly framed discount. The strategy is fairly simple: Highlight the new discounted price + display the referent, original price for comparison’s sake. It makes people think of buying now rather than paying much more for the same product later on.

Yves Rocher Discounts

Coupons

Another brilliant conversion practice is coupons. A coupon creates a sense of loss for two reasons. First, it’s something people earn without having done anything – and yet they feel the fear of losing it if they don’t use it. Second, the offer seems too good to let go.

However, these two factors alone don’t convince people to buy anything. A lot depends on how you frame the offer. If it doesn’t inspire fear of loss and gain in equal amount, it will never convert.

Here’s what I found on RetailMeNot’s homepage – a Forever 21 deal evokes as much fear (limited time offer) as it makes the visitor happy (Make My Monday). Then there’s World Market where free shipping seems like a good bargain which not a lot of people would like to lose out on.

retailmenot discount

Social Proof

Online reviews are the most popular and persuasive type of social proof to encourage purchasing behavior. According to BrightLocal, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. And that’s largely because people find safety in numbers. But what most of us don’t realize is that solid social proof works because it also triggers FOMO.

Upon seeing solid, unbiased reviews a lot of people change their perception of your brand. They assign more value to your brand, begin to trust you and consider it as their loss if they don’t buy from you. Plus, they also love to keep up with trends. Seems like Figleaves, a UK clothing retailer, understood this and added customer reviews to their product pages. What was the outcome? A 12.5% spike in conversion rate as compared to those pages with no social proof.

You can do the same. Puravida uses a phenomenal number of glowing reviews to highlight what the visitors are missing out on.

Social proof example Puravida

Cart Abandonment Emails

This one’s a classic cart recovery strategy and requires you to create a sense of urgency so that people complete their purchase. Depending on whether the stock’s running low or the discount is time-bound, you can write a personalized email copy. For those who still don’t budge after the first nudge, you can offer an additional discount + free shipping.

Now let’s take a look at an email sent by Ghurka. It’s a reminder that the product has been ‘saved’ for them, but there’s no guarantee the stock’s going to last forever! They also mention the exclusivity of their products, which makes the saved item even more valuable.

Ghurka

Coming to when you should send these emails, folks at Email Monks say you should send three emails, with the first one sent within an hour of abandoning the cart. Nevertheless, that’s not the rule of thumb. A/B test to see how your customers respond. Also, find out where your customers exit so that you can fix why they’re leaving in the first place.

Use the Endowed Progress Effect

According to Changing Minds, Endowed Progress Effect is based on the idea that when people feel they’ve made some progress towards their goal they feel more committed to continue and achieve it. But what’s it got to do with loss aversion? Good question. Well, what happens is that when some progress is made, it creates a fear in people’s mind that if they abandon mid-way (or earlier on), they will lose out on whatever’s at the other end.

Now over to how and when to use the endowed progress effect.

#1: In interactive content: Let’s consider the Which Iconic Handbag Are You quiz by Try Interact. They show progress made by the customer by showing the progress bar + the number of questions left to answer. If they would love to get a personalized recommendation, they better keep going!

endowment example

#2: Reward and Loyalty Programs

Your customers should be able to see the progress they’ve made so far in the loyalty tier. For first-timers you can make the program more interesting: Positively reinforce them by gifting them ‘welcome points’. Seeing those accumulated points in their panel will motivate them to shop and collect more reward points to advance to the next level.

Rewards example

But with all the hard-earned points collected comes the fear of losing them if they aren’t redeemed on time. So send a reminder asking them to use their points before they expire. It will create urgency and trigger them to become repeat customers. Remember to send personalized recommendations to make your message more appealing and relevant.

Closing Thoughts

By now you know that your go-to power move is to highlight what’s at stake. At the same time, since you’re walking a tightrope, make sure you don’t paralyze your customers with fear so much that they completely shut you out. The key is to find the balance and make the offer compelling enough for them to take action. Unless you do that none of your discounts, coupons, reward programs, and cart recovery emails are going to move the conversion needle.

Next, practice restraint when applying the principle of scarcity and urgency, otherwise it could backfire.

Signing off with the hope that this catalog of loss aversion strategies brings you results!

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Feb 5, 2019

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Halo Effect: What it is, Why it Works and How to Use it

AB Tasty

What is the Halo Effect?

The Halo Effect is our tendency to make an overall impression of a person based on a single trait. If X is good-looking, X is also a duty-bound citizen and will follow the law to the letter. Illogical, but that’s how it works.

Let’s go back in time and surprise ourselves a bit.

A 1974 study found that when it came to sentencing defendants in the court of law, jurors showed leniency towards physically attractive individuals over unattractive ones, even though they had committed exactly the same crime. Another study revealed that social workers found it hard to digest that a beautiful person can commit a crime.

Can you believe it? A more important question: Do people continue to take good looks this seriously?

Very much so. Even when there’s enough information available to make accurate judgments, our brain prefers taking shortcuts. The short cut, in this case, is a cognitive bias called the Halo Effect.

To an extent, the Halo Effect is a type of confirmation bias, since we judge people in a manner that confirms our first impression of them or what we already believe about them. We turn to it to fill the gaps in our understanding of a person, who we don’t know yet. In that sense, it can also backfire because if we don’t like them then it will lead to negative biases. X criticizes, X is arrogant.

Tracing Its Origins

It was Edward Thorndike who first introduced the term ‘Halo Effect’ in a 1920 paper, A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings. In his research, military commanding officers were asked to assess a series of traits, including intellect, leadership skills, personal qualities (intelligence, loyalty, responsibility, selflessness, and cooperation), and physical qualities (voice, neatness, physique, etc.) of their subordinate soldiers. The researchers found that high ratings of one quality correlated with high ratings of other traits, whereas negative ratings of one quality pulled down other trait scores.

Although this theory was proposed in reference to people, the metaphor extends to brands, website design, marketing strategies, and advertising.

In each case, it reiterates one fact: We are not always as objective as we believe we are. Even our most rational decisions are sometimes flawed and misguided.

We are not always as objective as we believe we are. Even our most rational decisions are sometimes flawed and misguided.

How to Create a Halo Effect

Marketers have actually been benefiting from creating a Halo Effect on their websites and brands for a long time. To get ahead of the game, the key is to know where the limit is – consumers aren’t blind to these efforts, and overdoing it can backfire.

Now, if you’re ready, here’s how to pull all the right strings to create a positive, first impression.

Put Attractiveness to Good Use

When someone good-looking becomes the face of your brand, the perceived value of your product increases. It’s called the attractiveness halo effect. And marketers dig this strategy because it pays off. What really transpires? Scientists claim that, when seeing an attractive man or a woman in an advertisement, people bypass their rational faculty and buy on impulse. They assume ‘what is beautiful is good’ and transfer the model’s attractiveness (easily observed characteristic) to the product. Though, what’s interesting is that this phenomenon is mostly restricted to products related to beauty.

Halo Effect attractiveness — Gucci Bloom campaign

Now if you’re a beauty brand, it’s worth noting that some researchers have recorded negative responses (pg.22) toward attractive models, especially among female consumers. This, in turn, had a negative impact on the ad’s effectiveness. One likely explanation is social comparison with models. That said, even men’s self-esteem takes a blow seeing stereotypical male models.

Other studies demonstrate positive consumer responses to less stereotypical depictions, like the Dove “Real Women” campaign. This has encouraged many brands to feature real, un-photoshopped photos of models to keep it as real as possible. Needless to say, the Halo Effect in such cases is phenomenal!

Bottom line: Use attractive models if they are relevant to the products and services you offer.

Pleasing Website Design

From people to websites, we do prefer anything that is remotely good-looking. The logic goes: Beautiful = Trustworthy.

Findings published by ConversionXL Institute confirm: People look at design-related elements to determine whether they should trust a website or not.

See for yourself. Of the two screenshots below, which website do you think you trust more?

The second one, because it looks better design-wise? Correct. It’s less cluttered and more purpose-driven.

This brings us to the next point: Creating an eye-candy of a website is a job half-done. Unless it is easy for users to find what they are looking and carry out necessary functions, they won’t care to stop by later.

The question to now ask is: What do you do?

You identify user experience issues because even one bad experience can hurt your company’s reputation and no amount of cosmetic changes can fix that. Marks & Spencer tried and failed. Their redesigned website had several usability and performance issues, which caused an 8.1% of drop in sales.

Bottom line: Aesthetic web design and usability go hand-in-hand.

Borrow Celebrity Influence

Signing-up celebrities to endorse you is the fastest way to amplify trustworthiness of your brand. How does it work? Well, fans admire their favorite celeb and by extension, they trust the brands they represent.

celebrities in ads — Tommy Hilfiger x Gigi Hadid Spring 2018 RTW Collection

That said, getting a celeb onboard is a complicated process. There are a few things to take care of:

Celeb’s public image and your existing and intended brand image should be a natural fit.
Their celebrated status shouldn’t overshadow your brand and products.
They shouldn’t endorse multiple or your competitor’s products. It dilutes your ad’s recall value.

But even when all the necessary safety precautions are taken, companies face backlash when a celeb goofs up. This can, of course, never be predicted, which is why it’s always better to monitor what the celebrity has been up to.

Nike severed its ties with cyclist Lance Armstrong when he was found guilty of using illicit drugs

Bottom line: Celebs are a means to an end; use their popularity such that they don’t overshadow your brand.

Create A Solid Brand Equity

Moving on from your website to your brand.

Your brand equity or value hinges on your customer’s perception of + preference and experience with your brand. If you want them to think highly of your brand, focus on the quality and innovation of your products and services. In the end, both must exceed their expectations.

Once you become a household name, your products will start selling owing to the Halo Effect. This happens since people positively associate with the rest of your product line-up. A classic example is when in 2003, Nike used its brand recognition to enter a competitive golf equipment market.

The opposite is also true: One negative experience and your sales figures will plummet. Back in 2017, for example, Samsung’s brand equity declined when Galaxy Note 7 was recalled. Surprisingly, though, it maintained a strong emotional connection with consumers at the master brand level over Apple. Would you be as fortunate as them? Honestly, there’s a one in a billion chance!

Bottom Line: Working your way up the popularity charts is an ongoing process.

Cash In On The Popularity Of A Star Product

A lot of companies benefit from a Halo Effect that stems from the popularity of one of their products. Not only do their other, old products start selling like hot cakes, but even the future products are expected to be well-received.

Here’s how iPod became a halo for the rest of Apple products:

In 2004, Apple focused solely on bombarding the public with ‘TV advertising, print ads and billboards touting its iPod’. The iPod brand took over the world by storm and ‘Apple computer and related businesses were up 27% in fiscal 2005 over the previous year. And, according to industry reports, Apple increased its share of the personal computer market from 3% to 4%.’

Bottom Line: Create a star product and let it work its magic on your catalog.

Ready With A Plan?

Obviously, you are!

Go on and use the Halo Effect to make a genuine connection with your target audience. Get them to like you right from the start, because you never really get a second chance to create an incredible, first impression!

At the same time, remember to conduct usability tests to gather enough data. You’ll ultimately learn what’s working, identify new opportunities to optimize conversion and know where the leaks need repairing.

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