It’s that time of the week again. Before we get into the smack down of education this week I wanted to touch base on a few notes for ACP. Things have been going extremely well this New Year and wanted to thank each and every one of you who are actively driving traffic with us and communicating with me to make ACP the premier affiliate network available. I’ve spoken personally to quite a few of you now and can honestly say I’m honored to be the network manager of such a great group of publishers! For those of you who I haven’t spoken to yet personally don’t be shy. If you need help getting going hit me up and I’ll do my best. I can’t spoon feed you campaigns but I can guide in the right direction.
To keep the momentum going into 2012 I’m asking all of you who are active on ACP to NOT keep us a secret. Talk us up in your normal affiliate groups, forums, or wherever you hang out with likeminded individuals. I’m asking this because I need your help in keeping our community strong with the best affiliates available. If you refer someone over tell them to respond to their thank you for signing up email and have them let me know they’ve applied so I can expedite their application and give you proper credit (pay bumps) to you.
Alright, enough of the selfless promotion, on to the goods:
As promised from last week’s C.P.M. we are going to be diving into Robert Cialdini’s Influence 5th Edition. This week we’ll cover Chapter 1: Weapons of Influence. I sincerely hope you have purchased or downloaded your copy and are following along. There’s no possible way for me to cover every bit of the book in these newsletters and you owe it to yourself to pick this book up, make time to read it, so you can digest what I’m putting here.
1. Weapons of Influence
We as humans all of have blind mechanical actions ingrained into our psyches just like our animal counterparts. The difference lies in the fact that most animal “Click, Whirr” (you know what I’m talking about if you read the book) responses are ingrained in their instinctual DNA whereas human’s “Click, Whirr” actions are learned from our upbringing. These fixed-action patterns can be trigged often by a single feature. For birds, a certain color of feather can cause them to go territory protecting crazy. With humans we can get a much higher rate of compliance for a favor just by giving a reason why we need them to do it. For instance, people are more likely to comply with a line cutter simply if the line cutter provides a reason for cutting in line. Doesn’t even have to be a good reason, just add the word Because and compliance % skyrockets. Notice in the previous section where I asked you guys to send me referrals? Did you feel more compelled because I gave you a reason for giving me the referrals? That’s a natural response for the human race, if we are given a reason to do something we are often times more likely to comply then if we were simply asked to do something.
How does this relate to your ad copy? Think about it. Brainstorm how to add a reason behind your calls to action. You’ll see conversions increase. If at all possible use the word Because, since it has shown to be the most effective verbiage.
Some other automatic triggers for us is the stereotype expensive=good. If we don’t have a ton of background knowledge on a product or service then we default to the if it’s expensive it must be good mantra. Split test higher prices if you’re promoting a physical product to sell.
For you dating publishers, women always describe their physical attractiveness and men always describe their material wealth in personal ads. Ad copies designed to promote to men perform better with a hot girl and the copy talking about how many attractive women there are on the site and if you’re promoting to women describe how wealthy or financially secure the guys are on the dating site your promoting.
Why do humans need to use so many short cuts to make decisions for us on a daily basis? Because, we are exposed to entirely too much information in a given day and if we had to think, in detail, about every decision we’d never make it through a 24hr period.
One of these shortcuts is the “If an expert says it, then it must be true” mentalities. We put way too much faith in experts. But, if you can position yourself as an expert in your niche it will be an easy sell. Yes, there are ways to do this even if you’re just pushing CPA offers. Just sit down and have a good think on all the ways to play this strategy.
Another shortcut. The discount coupon. People LOVE coupons. Even if there is no real discount, volume will increase because of the “discounted” coupon.
The contrast principle: If a second item is fairly different from the first we will tend to see it as more different than it really is. Use this tactic for your review style landers. Brainstorm and share your own ideas to use this on the Facebook page.
That sums up Chapter 1. Again, this is not meant to flush out every single angle you can use these strategies on. It is intended to get you thinking of your own ideas and how to twist them for your own use. Next week we’ll cover Chapter 2, Reciprocation.
Feel free to hit me up and let me know what you think of the newsletter and input any advice or additions you’d like to see in future issues.
To your Piles O Cash!
Jim