Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

Unlocking Counterintuitive Marketing Strategies with Nancy Harhut: Revolutionizing Marketing through Behavioral Science

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 391

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What if embracing the imperfections in your brand could make it more appealing?

Nancy Harhut, a leading expert in behavioral science and author of Using Behavioral Science in Marketing, joins us to reveal how counterintuitive marketing strategies can set your brand apart in a crowded market.

Discover the unexpected power of acknowledging flaws and strategic misspellings in capturing attention and building consumer trust. Nancy's groundbreaking insights promise to transform your approach to social media, email campaigns, and the overall customer experience by leveraging the quirks of human psychology.

Learn how to harness the potential of the Prattfall effect and the door-in-the-face technique, tactics that defy conventional wisdom yet deliver impressive results. Nancy and I explore how the autonomy bias can double consumer compliance by giving them the freedom to choose, rather than directly pushing for a sale. You'll also hear about the effectiveness of follow-up communications and how subtle psychological cues, like prompts and nudges, can spur desired customer actions and elevate your marketing strategies.

Nancy's wealth of knowledge extends across various industries, offering applicable insights for everyone from marketing professionals to business owners. Behavioral science has the power to enhance your efforts in both B2B and B2C arenas. Don't miss this opportunity to rethink your marketing tactics.

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Speaker 1:

Think you know the golden rules of marketing. Think again. In this episode we're diving into the counterintuitive strategies that go against conventional wisdom but drive real results. From the door-in-your-face technique to strategically highlighting your brand's flaws, you'll discover powerful, behavioral, science-backed tactics that can transform your campaigns. But you got to make sure you stay tuned to this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 2:

Sem PPC email marketing, there's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach. Helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neal Schaefer.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, neal Schaefer here. Welcome to another insightful episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Today we delve into the world of counterintuitive marketing with one of my favorite people, fellow marketing author and speaker, nancy Harhut, a behavioral science expert and author of Using Behavioral Science in Marketing, drive Customer Action and Loyalty by Prompting Instinctive Responses. Nancy shares surprising strategies that defy traditional marketing logic, but are proven to work thanks to principles rooted in human psychology. These tactics can elevate your marketing efforts, whether you're crafting social media posts, designing email campaigns or creating unforgettable customer experiences. Learn why thinking differently is the key to standing out in today's competitive landscape. Without further ado, here is my interview with Nancy Harwood.

Speaker 2:

You're listening to your Digital Marketing Coach. This is Neil Schaefer.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer. Welcome to another live stream episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Today we have a repeater. We're up to like episode 370 something and by the time this gets published it'll be like 380 something. But I've had a number of amazing guests in the past, and a few of them I have had the honor of having on a second time to continue to educate you all on what their specialty is, and I can't think of anyone else to bring back A few of them. I have had the honor of having on a second time to continue to educate you all on what their specialty is, and I can't think of anyone else to bring back for a second time than Nancy Harhut.

Speaker 1:

Now, nancy is the author of Using Behavioral Science in Marketing and she's going to have to correct me on the exact title there, but she is someone that was actually on this podcast. We're going to have to go back to episode number 323. And this is back in June of 2023. If you look on YouTube, you can see that our video was probably published about a year and a half ago. So Nancy is someone that has done incredibly well with her book. She's winning book awards. It's a book that's really gaining traction.

Speaker 1:

And when we talk about marketing a lot we often talk about well, if you understand human psychology, you'll do really well. Or I was at VidSummit just this week and every VidSummit I go to Daryl Eves, who's the author of the YouTube formula and the co-founder and the consultant, mr Beast, and everyone. He always in essence talks about the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, of the community needs and of human intent and and community and the sense of belonging and all these really really core psychology and behavioral science aspects of marketing. That I think if we picked up a little bit and obviously picking up Nancy's book is the best thing you can do, but in lieu of that, having her on the show today for an encore, we're going to go a different direction today. So without further ado, nancy, welcome to the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 3:

Neil, thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here, even more delighted this time than last time because I'm a repeat. This is great, Thank you.

Speaker 1:

No, it's so awesome to have you back, and I first saw you on stage at Content Marketing World, immediately bought your book and then we had you on. So here we are again, and today we're going to be talking about, you know, not to trick people, but the counterintuitive ways in which things that marketers and businesses think should work that don't, and that don't work, that actually do. So I'm excited to get into that, but before that, nancy, so I do a. You know, as part of like creating the show notes for the podcast, always look for the personal website of the person I'm interviewing. And, nancy, you're special because you are a book author, yet your website is your company website and actually that's actually ideal because you want the book readers to go straight to your business website. So if you could give the people that weren't here for episode number 323, a brief introduction to who you are and your book and what your business does.

Speaker 3:

Sure, sure. Thanks so much. So my name is Nancy Harhut, I'm the author of Using Behavioral Science and Marketing Drive Customer Action and Loyalty by Prompting Instinctive Responses, and I'm also the co-founder and chief creative officer of HBT Marketing. Hbt stands for Human Behavior Triggers, and so where the marketing agency and the book kind of intersect is, my specialty is applying behavioral science, and behavioral science is very simply just the study of how people behave, why they do what they do, and behavioral scientists have found that very often people don't consciously make decisions so much as use default decisions or decision making shortcuts. Much is use default decisions or decision-making shortcuts, and so what I like to focus on is prompting or triggering those decision-making shortcuts to make it easier and more likely that people will do what marketers want them to do. So that's what my agency does for clients, and that's what you can find out how to do for yourself if you pick up the book.

Speaker 1:

Amazing, and yeah, I just had to look. I didn't have to go far to find the book. But this is it Using Behavioral Science in Marketing man. It is a legit almost 300-page book. Definitely want to pick that up. But getting back, you mentioned a word there that has become the common vocabulary of the modern marketer, which is prompts. I don't think we talked about prompts. Well, I mean, the thought about prompts for journals and stuff always was out there, but the thought about prompts in marketing and obviously with generative AI, Can you go a little bit deeper into? When we think about prompts, is there another way we should be thinking about them?

Speaker 3:

So when I use the term in the title of the book, it's kind of a substitute for a nudge, a prompt, kind of a guide, as opposed to, you know, writing the right prompts for AI, which has a slightly different meaning. Right, but basically, you know where I from, where I sit. We can't, as marketers, force people to do anything. Right, we can hope and pray and keep our fingers crossed that they'll do what we want them to do, but the other thing that we can do is we can make it more likely that they'll do what we want them to do.

Speaker 3:

We can't guarantee that it'll happen, but when you think about it, you know, if we properly target a marketing message, we, you know we have something that should be of interest to the people that are receiving it. So, therefore, what we need to do is we need to make sure that they notice the message, that they can easily understand the message, that they feel that they, you know, want to respond and want to respond in a timely fashion, and that they recall the message. And so those four areas making the message stand out, making it easy to understand, making people respond to it, making it easy to recall those are areas where behavioral science can really help marketers with some very effective ethical and easy-to-apply tactics, and so that's when I talk about prompting people, that's basically what I'm talking about making it just a little bit more likely and sometimes a lot more likely, honestly that they'll do what we want them to do.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha. So, in tactical terms, like being top of mind, showing up at the right place at the right time, I'm sure it's obviously more than that. But and also, nancy, just for everyone listening, I am not going to be speaking at this year's content marketing world, but I did want to tell you what I propose as a speech, which is writing a book is really the ultimate form of content marketing and, if there's any business thinking about it, this is exactly what Nancy has done and, like I said, it doesn't lead to a personal website. It leads back to our business site. So I'm sure someday you'll have to write a case study of the business that you've gotten from your book. So let's dive into this counterintuitive marketing. When we were conversing about this episode, you said that some counterintuitive marketing moves are actually the ones that work best today. So that got me like well, what am I missing out on? And I'm sure that everybody listening and watching is thinking the same. So what are some of the counterintuitive marketing moves that are proven to be best today?

Speaker 3:

Sure. So one of them is you don't necessarily have to ask people to buy. In fact, maybe you shouldn't. So you'd say to me Nancy, that is crazy. I spend a lot of time and money and effort to get my marketing message out there.

Speaker 1:

No call to action, then huh.

Speaker 3:

Right, well, you know. So it's like, why would you say you know, why would you not ask someone to buy? Well, it's not that you don't ask someone to buy. What you do is you remind them that they don't have to, so you can ask them to do it. But then if you follow up your request with words like but you were free to choose, or but it's up to you, but the choice is yours, you know, certainly it's your call. You know, basically, like you know, you've just sold your heart out, you've asked them to do something, and then you kind of back off and say but you know, it's totally up to you. You know your call, you know you're free to choose, you're free to say no. What that does is it triggers something that people, scientists, have identified as autonomy bias, which is this deep seated human desire that we all have to feel some kind of control over ourselves and our environment. We don't like to feel like we're backed into a corner. We don't like to feel like we're being forced into something. We like to feel that we're the ones making the choices, calling the shots. You know, kind of determining, you know our path forward. And so, simply by reminding people but you are free to choose.

Speaker 3:

Behavioral scientists have found that on average on average, you can double the likelihood that people will do what you're asking them to do. And there was one study that came out of the University of Bordeaux wine country came out of the University of Bordeaux, but it had nothing to do with wine. These researchers were hanging out at a bus station and they were kind of panhandling and they would approach other people at the bus station and say, excuse me, do you have some coins for the bus please? Or they would say, excuse me, do you have some coins for the bus please? But you're free to accept or refuse. And what they found was they got four times as many people four times as many people to give them money and, on average people, each individual contribution was larger than when they didn't use the.

Speaker 3:

But hey, you're free to basically ignore me. So it's really fascinating, it's powerful and it is kind of surprising and counterintuitive. Like why would you ever think that, after you've just laid out your whole case and you've had your call to action, that you would then slip in the? But you know what it's up to you. You know, like why would we do that? But it works.

Speaker 1:

Nancy, you know I've always thought like I hate being told what to do. Does this sort of tie into it that we all sort of have that in us but we might know if it's something special, an offer or something, we might want to do it, but by reminding us of it but then saying, hey, if you miss out now, I may do this again next year. I'm sure there's a language, almost a conversational language, that you can use to say you're not forced into this, but if you don't do now, the next chance may not be for a few months. Is that sort of the language that you're recommending your clients to use?

Speaker 3:

Well, I mean, that's very interesting, because what you're doing there is you're pairing two behavioral science techniques, which is very smart, right, there's autonomy bias. Like you're saying, we hate to be told what to do, we don't like to be forced into things. So you know basically saying, hey, listen, this is what I'm asking you to do, but it's up to you. But then you nicely link that to however, if you don't do it now, we're not going to make this offer again for another year, or something like that. So now you're providing the reason that they should do it now and you're adding in a little bit of loss aversion. It's like, oh, wait a minute, if I don't do it now, I won't get the chance for a whole year. Maybe I better do it now.

Speaker 3:

But even with you know, with those two things together, the person is still feeling it's their decision, they, the person is still feeling it's their decision. They're not feeling pushed or pressured. They're feeling they've got the information and they're making the call. They're deciding ah, based on that, I think I will do this now. So that's a really nice way of linking both the idea of kind of loss aversion with this idea of autonomy, because, as you say, people don't like to be told what to do, they want to call the shots.

Speaker 1:

And I think when you offer in that way, it also and maybe this is part of the behavioral science it also sounds more authentic Like they're being open with me about what's going on, and I'm sure that's part of it. I'm sure there's a lot of things we can dive deep into. But yeah, it's funny, nancy, because I am coming out it's funny Before digital threads. I'm actually coming out with about a hundred page mini book on LinkedIn and I plan to sell it for 99. It's always been a free download, but I added 75% more content. I plan to sell it for 99 cents on Amazon, but I plan to offer it to my list for free after a month.

Speaker 1:

So I plan to be and so this is very top of mind because I plan to send out this email like the next week like, hey, you can get it on Amazon for 99 cents or you can wait until November and it'll be free. It's really your choice. But obviously, if you feel there's value, you know I'd be honored for a 99 cent tip or whatever. That is Right. So that sounds like unintentionally. It's playing into what you're talking about.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, what's nice about that too, is you're being very upfront about it and you're saying, hey, listen, if you want it now, it's not that much money and you can have it in your you know your hot little hands today and start to benefit from it, right. But on the other hand, I do want to let you know that a month from now, you can get it for free, so like if you hadn't said that and people bought it. I mean it's 99 cents.

Speaker 3:

It's not like it was your. You know their life. I, you know, I'm one of his people, you know. So, by being upfront with them, by being honest with them, by being very transparent, you know you're, you're furthering that trust, furthering that relationship and you're yeah, you're giving them the choice. And some people are like you know, that's great, but I want it now. Or you know what? He worked hard on this, he deserves to be paid. You know, whatever their decision, but you know, but you're giving them the choice and they're making the decision. That's great.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, you know a lot of this well. I mean, behavioral science is obviously a science, but there's a lot of also. I think you know common sense and I think we're going to get into more counterintuitive marketing that just you know, like treat people like you want to be treated, right, like how would you feel if we were on the other end? And that's always at the back of my mind, at least with my community, with my list. So let's dive a little bit deeper. That was great advice and I can see how that could be leveraged really, really easily by everyone listening, whether it is the language in a lead magnet pop-up, a promotional email, a landing page offer, that's immediately actionable. So thank you for that. Any other one or two counterintuitive things that you could think about at the top of your head that have been really successful recently.

Speaker 3:

So there's another one I think this would be particularly helpful for people in sales and it's called the door in your face technique. And I know you're thinking like, oh my God, nancy, that just sounds miserable. Why would you be recommending a door in your face technique? But the way it works is you basically make a request that you know people are gonna refuse, or that you expect that they're gonna refuse, and then what happens is you immediately pivot to a lesser request which is essentially the one you originally wanted to make. And what behavioral scientists have found is when you do that, people are much more likely to say yes to the second request. Because, you know, over the centuries and centuries and centuries, you know, as we've evolved as humans, it's been very important to us to get along, to cooperate Right, and so, as a result, we don't like to just repeatedly say no to people, you know, it just doesn't feel right. And so if you, you know, if you start with a large request, people might be like, I don't want to do that, you know. But then, if you immediately follow with a lesser one, it's like, well, okay, I can do that. You know people feel like, well, you've conceded a little bit and there was actually a study it was done with.

Speaker 3:

People went out, researchers went out and they were asking people if they would. First they went out and they asked them if they would take a group of juvenile delinquents to the zoo for a Saturday afternoon. And almost everybody said no. I mean, they didn't know who these kids were. And it's like why would I spend a Saturday afternoon taking juvenile delinquents to the zoo, right? Then they went out and they repeated the study and they asked people oh, how would you feel about spending two hours a week for the next two years counseling juvenile delinquents? And again people were like no, I don't want to do that, that's a huge ask, I'm not going to do that. And then what they did is they went out a third time, but they paired them. They paired the two requests.

Speaker 3:

So they went out and they said to people would you be willing to volunteer two hours a week for the next two years counseling juvenile delinquents? And, as you might imagine, neil, people were like no, no, I can't. And they said well, how about this? Would you be willing to take one Saturday afternoon and go to the zoo with them? And here people said yes. Like you know, they got this huge increase, you know, whereas when the question had been asked by itself, would you go to the zoo with them? Nobody wanted to. But when the question followed on the heels of, you know, spending two hours a week for the next two years, people were like no, like well, how about a day at the zoo? It's like sure, I'll do that, you know. I think they got like a 30% uptick.

Speaker 3:

So it's just this about replacing. You know I sell computers. Let's replace all of the computers in your company with the ones that I'm selling, you know. And somebody might be like, ah, that's kind of a big ask. I don't know if I can get that through. So then maybe I say, well, all right, why don't we choose one department as a pilot right? Should it be HR or should it be marketing right? Want to do is we want to have our first request not necessarily be the one we want people to say yes to, but have that second request be the one that we were really hoping to get the yes to, you know. So it's an interesting technique.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm wondering, you know, if that plays out something like and I love to just like dumb this down for marketing, but like an abandoned cart email, like they wanted to buy the whole thing for whatever reason. They didn't, but by just offering a little nudge like, hey, here's 10% off, free shipping, whatever it is, and how that's so successful for so many companies. Is that sort of tied into that? And then also the concept of the follow-up. And obviously in sales you know you reach out the first time, you don't get a response, reach out the second time.

Speaker 1:

I now, nancy, you must get pitched a lot as well, but I get pitched like hey, can I be on your blog, your podcast? And I recently get these emails that say re colon, as if they had originally written me an email that I didn't respond to when they didn't because I went through my history. I never received anything, but you sort of feel bad that you didn't respond the first time. And I tell brands that work with influencers always the values and the follow up right. A lot of influencers may not even look at the first request, but when you send that second one you'll often get a response. I'm wondering if all of this sort of plays in this concept, or is this mirroring or borderline another concept?

Speaker 3:

So well, no, I mean, I think it's interesting the idea of I didn't say yes the first time, I didn't answer your email the first time, so now I'm kind of resending it like re my first request, and I think there is something to that. I mean, I guess there's two things there. One is I do think it ties into this idea of you know, if we said no the first time, we're much more likely to say yes with a follow up request. Separate from that is the inauthenticity of sending the re when there was never a first one to begin with.

Speaker 1:

You know, it's like I don't respond yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3:

Right, it's a separate conversation. You're like wait a minute. First you feel bad like I didn't respond, then you're like wait a minute, you never sent me the first one.

Speaker 1:

Nice, try yeah.

Speaker 3:

So that's kind of like. It's like yes, you can maybe win the battle but lose the war on that one. You get them to open it, but then there's a little bit of bad taste there. But the idea, if somebody didn't respond the first time and you do have to follow up and the truth is people are busy and you know, sometimes things get by them or sometimes they mean to respond and they just don't get to it. And the next thing, you know that second you know this has happened to me I'll get an email. I got to get back to that person and I'll even flag it or star it. So I remember I've got to get back to it, you know.

Speaker 3:

And then a week passes and I haven't, and the follow-up comes, and you know, and they say, oh, I just wanted to see. And what happens, neil, I immediately respond. At that point. You know, I had always meant to. I just got really, really busy. But when that second one comes, I literally stop what I'm doing and respond right away. You know which is what I didn't do with the first one, for whatever reason, I was too busy, you know. But I make the time on the second one. Because one? Because, yeah, I think that's what's going on.

Speaker 1:

It's like we feel bad and like, oh all right, I've got to fix this. And I will say I don't have the data, but I did a lot of outreach for digital threads and even if I didn't get a response a second time, I ended up getting. It might've passed the deadline, but I ended up getting one a week, two weeks, a month, two months later the other said, oh, I'm really sorry, I had a baby, I brought a baby into the world. People have stuff going on so. But yeah, the follow-up is so key so I wanted to go a little bit further here.

Speaker 1:

Before the interview, you were saying that there are some proven brain, science-backed tactics to increase the engagement and response to your marketing message. So I'm thinking everyone out there that is doing like a Facebook ad, where it's an image and a very, very short caption, or the call to action in that promotional email or that social media post. What are we missing out on? And I think you've already given us some clues, but sticking with this sort of counterintuitive marketing theme, what else can we be doing that is backed by science, yet we may not have even thought about doing?

Speaker 3:

Well, you know, there's an interesting one called the Pratt-Fall effect, and this was identified by a Harvard professor named Elliot Aronson and he did some research. So essentially, the Pratt-Fall effect is we kind of, as brands, identify one of our shortcomings, like we don't try to hide it, we actually highlight it, which is kind of again, kind of a counterintuitive, surprising thing. Like you know, with all the good stuff I have to say about my brand, why would I also bring up something that's not so great? You know, why don't I just focus on the good stuff? I'm not saying that this not so great thing doesn't exist, but why should I mention it? Right? But Aronson ran this experiment and he has this guy who's going to audition for this quiz show, but he feeds the guy all of the answers ahead of time and then he tapes the guy going through the audition and surprise, surprise, he answers virtually every question correctly, right, and then at the end of the interview you hear him. You don't see him, but you can hear him. You hear him stand up. He apparently knocks his cup of coffee on himself and he says, oh my gosh, I just spilled coffee all over my suit. So now Aronson has this tape, this audio tape and he plays it two ways he plays the whole thing and then he cuts it off just before the guy goes oh my God, I just spilled coffee all over my suit or he plays it with the full, full audio. And he asked people to, you know, give their impressions of the guy. And in both cases everyone thought the guy was smart. I mean, he answered all the questions. But in the second case, when they heard him spill the coffee, they felt that he was, I don't know, just a nicer guy, a more likable guy. They identified with him more. And so what Aronson did is he identified something called the Pratt-Fall effect, where it's this idea that people actually kind of like us better if we cop to you know something that's not so great about our product or service. Now, obviously, if you're a car manufacturer and your car crashes all the time, that would not be something you'd want to be talking about, you know. But think about, like VW, where they come out with this car that's very, very small. It was a fine car, but it was smaller than you know, than most of the cars around at the time. So, you know, they had, you know, really tall basketball players trying to get in the car. That was one of their ads. They had a car you know that picture of it with the headline lemon.

Speaker 3:

You know more currently we think about Heinz ketchup. It's hard to get it out of the bottle, it takes time, so they celebrate that. I mean it doesn't doesn't mean that their ketchup doesn't taste good. It's like I think it's the number one selling ketchup in the world. But it's a little bit harder to get it out of the bottle. So they do things with it. They, you know, did an ad where they had anticipation as the background music. They did another ad where they actually put a label on the bottle and in order for the label to be upright, the bottle had to be at the precise right angle to get the ketchup coming out of the bottle, you know. So they played with it, they did something with it. So it's this idea that you know, if you have something that's not so great, it's okay to mention it. In fact, lean into it, embrace it, because people actually could end up preferring your brand more because of it.

Speaker 1:

That's really fascinating and I think that speaks to a lot of human nature, almost that we're sort of programmed to expect that whenever we see an advertisement it's only going to show the good, the perfect, the ideal, and in reality we also know that that's probably not the case. So maybe seeing a dose of that reality raises that trust factor. And, like I said, I'm not a scientist by any means, but I can see that and it's funny. I grew up watching that Heinz commercial, the anticipation it's making, and I never thought about that Right, but it's true, you do have to wait for it to get and you got to put your knife in and you know when you're at the Denny's and anyway.

Speaker 1:

But what's really fascinating and I'm really curious, before we get to you know some final questions when you work with companies, because for every sort of marketing angle that I'm throwing out to you, you have like a data back experiment or a story that really illustrates what should be done. So when clients come to you and I'm curious, you know some of the enterprises and other businesses listening to this when they come to you, are you doing like a behavioral science audit or do you start with? You know what is one channel or one campaign? I mean, how do you because there's such a big scale of how brands communicate with people where do you even start this process when companies come to you? Or are they coming to you saying, hey, we have a new campaign, we want to see if we work with you, if we can get better results from this campaign than our benchmark KPIs? What is sort of the process? Just out of curiosity.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, I mean, it's a great question actually. And you're right, there's. You know, there are so many behavioral science principles out there. It's like how do you figure this out? So largely it depends on what the clients come to us with. Sometimes, a client will come to us and they'll have a very specific ask. They'll say listen, we have a need to have an email campaign done, or we have a need to do an integrated campaign with email, direct mail, landing page and social. And our goal is to I don't know increase the number of people who buy life insurance or increase the number of people who enroll in their company's 401k plan, whatever it is. And we want you to, you know, give us a behaviorally science-driven approach. You know we want you to create the copy and the art direction that's going to trigger some of these prompts or nudges.

Speaker 3:

Other times, clients will come to us and say you know what? Here's all the work we've been doing. It's been doing okay, but we think it probably could do better if you could show us where to infuse some behavioral signs. And what we'll do is we'll do an audit and we'll identify missed opportunities. We'll identify places where it looks like something's really strong. We'll talk about maybe some places.

Speaker 3:

You know you're saying it, but you're not quite saying it the right way. If you replace this word or phrase with this word or phrase, you know, you'd probably do better. You know, and other times, companies will come to us and say you know, teach us, teach us how to do this, come in and do a training you know program with us so that we can, as you know, as routinely as possible, add these kinds of things in when we're doing our own work. So, and other times, clients will come to us and say this is our best performing piece, go up against it and see if you can beat it. So it really depends. You know, it's kind of been all over the board, from creating brand new campaigns to doing audits, to helping them, you know, figure out how to do it themselves.

Speaker 1:

Do you see any trends in brands that reach out to you, more consumer focused, more B2B? Or you know more brands, more agencies, or is it really just all over the map?

Speaker 3:

It's funny. I think the thread is brands, where the marketers want some kind of a competitive advantage and understand that knowing how people behave is going to be critical. So not long after writing the book, we picked up some business from a really large pharmaceutical company, like, okay, that was kind of the first time we were up some business from a really large pharmaceutical company. Like okay, that was kind of the first time we were in pharmaceuticals. We do a lot of work in financial services and a lot of work in insurance and I think that's largely as we look at it at the agency. As we look at it, it's because we started with one company. People then moved to other companies. They took us with them, then they moved and it's that kind of a thing. So it's like you could trace it back to that one engagement, that one client that moved on.

Speaker 3:

We do kind of a mix of B2B and B2C and you know we did some work recently from an airport which was a first for me I'd never done any work for an airport, but it was actually Manchester, new Hampshire airport and they were like listen, you know people keep going down to Logan but they live closer to us Like we need to do something about this. So, you know, we did some research, we found out, you know, what people were thinking, what was driving their decisions. We identified, kind of the, the kind of the barriers to using the airport that was closer, and then we created a campaign based on proven behavioral science techniques that was designed to get people to reconsider that airport. So there's a variety of industries that we work for B2C, b2b, even some non-for-profit.

Speaker 1:

That's really fascinating, but obviously it's how do we get people to act right? And that's just a core, the human condition right, which ties into psychology and everything else you're doing. So I wanted to end with another question, and before the interview you were talking about how there's a lot of things that marketers think are bad moves but they actually make you money and I think you know, just instinctively I think of like pop-ups, like pop-up windows, hate them, but I know they're effective. Cold outreach emails is another one where ethically I really do not like them, but I know that people that do them really well end up like doing really well with them. So I don't know if that's the direction you're going to go, but love some advice for the marketers and businesses, listening on some things they may be avoiding but maybe they shouldn't be.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, listening on some things they may be avoiding, but maybe they shouldn't be. Yeah, so here's one. One of the things that we're taught is to quality control. Proofread our marketing messages before we go out with them, right Before we run the ad, before we send out the email, before we post on social and if anyone's ever heard me speak at a conference, it's very possible that you've heard me say this is important. And it's important not because people don't make mistakes, not because your audience won't forgive you if you have a typo. They themselves have probably made a typo. We get it. It's important because people think, hmm, if they didn't catch that, what else did they not catch? Right?

Speaker 3:

It comes back to the quality control thing, and so I've always said, like, be very, very careful, because you know that little misspelled word or misused word can open the door to people thinking I don't know, maybe the quality is not as good, maybe the service isn't going to be as good. So it's going to come as a surprise to you, neil, when I say that one of the things that I now recommend people do is to strategically misspell or misuse a word, and the reason for this is it surprises people, right, it captures their attention. They're like reading something and it's like, oh, wait, a minute, they used the wrong word or, ooh, they have a misspelling here. But if you quickly pay it off so people understand why you've gotten this incredible bump in interest. Researchers at University of Glasgow found that when people are surprised, it increases their emotions by about 400%. And the reason that's important to us as marketers is when we're in this excited state, this elevated emotional state, we pay more attention to the thing that surprised us and we're more likely to remember it. And what do we as marketers want? We want people to pay attention. We want them to remember our marketing message.

Speaker 3:

So not that long ago I received a email from a retailer and the subject line said it's been a long winter, l-a-w-n. It's been a long winter. And I immediately thought that's weird. They wanted to say it's been a long winter, right, it's been a long winter. And I wonder if they were using like voice dictation or something and somebody's accent or what.

Speaker 3:

But then I took another, you know, I took a closer look and it was from the patio department which sells lawn furniture at Sears. So I right away got it. But it stopped me and you know, and that's the other thing, you know, people love to be kind of in on the joke, we love to figure things out, we love to, you know, just get involved and participate right, participate in the message. And it's like, oh, I get it, you know. So it caught my attention because I thought it was the wrong word and then I immediately said, oh, wait a minute, it's coming from the patio department, I get it. So I think that was a great example.

Speaker 3:

And I don't, you know, I don't know if they had read my book or, you know, they just happened upon this, but I thought it was a great example of, you know, deliberately and strategically, you know, misspelling or misusing a word in order to get that. You know that pop of attention, that surprise and the you know, the associated focus and recall that comes with it. So again, I don't recommend not proofreading. I you know, if you're going to use this technique, you want to do it strategically, but it's kind of a counterintuitive, kind of a surprising thing to be recommending to clients, but upon occasion I do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's funny, I've actually heard that advice. Some Facebook marketing experts and this is like several years ago like, like, misspell a word in your captions, you're just going to get a ton of engagement. Like, hey, you misspelled that word. It was not done as strategically as you're talking about. But it's that human emotion of like hey, you know, maybe they didn't realize this, maybe they forgot, and just pointing that out will, and with the way that algorithms work, obviously when you get a comment, the algorithm doesn't care whether it was misspelled or not. So I can see how that can be used very strategically. But you have to be strategic because if people take it the wrong way then, as you said, it can absolutely go against you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and to your point too. It's like we all like to be the one who's right, so we love to say you rushed to. Oh, Nancy, did you know you had a misspelling? But I think, like you said, if you do it strategically, before they rush to say you misspelled something, they get it.

Speaker 1:

They're like part of it and it's like, oh, kind of cool. You know, yeah, and I think people also like to know, and you can correct me on this but that you know people aren't perfect and they expect businesses are going to be perfect and when they're not, obviously you don't want a quality control issue with your core product or service, but in a message it's sort of I don't know, maybe it makes people feel better that, oh, I'm not the only one who's not perfect. Yeah. I don't know.

Speaker 3:

I guess there's so many different ways we can take this, but it almost circles back to the pratfall effect where again you know you're not perfect and that's okay, because maybe you're a little bit more likable when you're not perfect.

Speaker 1:

Right, so you know counterintuitive marketing. I feel, nancy, talking to you, we can go on for hours and you're just like like pulling these case studies and examples from your bag of tricks with little time needed and little effort, but any other key sort of counterintuitive marketing topics or ideas or tips that you can offer the audience before we close out today.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think that the overarching thing we want people to remember is the overarching thing we want marketers to remember is that people don't make decisions the way we think they do. We, you know, we often think if we just give them the right information and it gets them at the right time, they'll make the right decision. And the truth of the matter is very often people are cruising along on autopilot. They're you know, they're not really thinking things through, they're just responding automatically, instinctively, reflexively. And so as marketers, we want to use that and we want to infuse our messages with these little triggers or prompts or nudges that will make it more likely that people will do what we want them to do.

Speaker 3:

So one more counterintuitive example is the idea of limiting what we'll sell people. So obviously we're in business to make sales, that's how we make money. So why would I say to you well, you know what limit, the amount somebody can buy? Clearly, you know you want to sell it all. You know it's like I got, I've got inventory, I'd love to sell it out. The faster I sell it off, better it is for me Right. So why would I say we'll put a good price, you know, and on average, people bought about three cans of it, but then they put up a sign that said limit 12. And on average, people bought 7.3 cans of it, right, Wow.

Speaker 3:

It was because of the limit, you know. Suddenly people saw oh okay, maybe you know, maybe people really buy a lot of soup, maybe I don't usually buy as much as I should. I should get more. Or gosh, maybe I better get this now, before it's gone, you know, they might run out. It's just funny. But by putting that anchor in there, that idea of limit of 12, it suddenly got people to buy more. The price didn't change, the product didn't change, but purchase behavior did.

Speaker 3:

So it's just the you know, it's this kind of appreciation of the fact that people don't always make the most well-thought-out, well-considered decisions. When they bought the three cans, if you asked them why they would have said I need three cans of soup. Then, when they ended up seeing the limit of 12, they bought more. If you ask them why they may not have said well, I could only buy 12, so I'm buying seven. They'd somehow rationalize it. They'd probably say, oh well, I needed seven. Or you know, I need a few right now, but I figured I'd put a few in the cupboard for later. They'd come up with some rational reason for why they did what they did. But the truth is because the experiment proved it. The truth is, what made them buy more was just the fact that they could only buy up to 12. So we just have to, as marketers, appreciate that not everyone's as rational and thoughtful as we like to think they are.

Speaker 1:

Great example and I think you know. To summarize what you were saying, what you began that last statement about is that people are sort of running on autopilot and sometimes marketers, unfortunately, run on autopilot. They want to get this clean, automated system and sometimes it's best if we go off autopilot and, as you said, take advantage of the fact that most people are still on autopilot and what we can do to not disrupt it but to leverage that for our own good. So tons of ideas. Obviously, if you want more ideas, make sure you pick up Nancy Harha, using Behavioral Science and Marketing, published on Kogan Page. You can buy this wherever fine books are sold. It's still a relatively. I want to say. This was published in 2022, was it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, august of 2022. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so still really new really. I mean, it's based on these core principles that do not aid. So you're not too late to the game. Make sure you pick it up. Connect with Nancy on LinkedIn. Reach out to her company. We'll put all the links in the show notes. But, nancy, thank you so much. This has been awesome. Any closing thoughts for our listeners? Well, thank you so much, this has been awesome. Any closing thoughts for our listeners?

Speaker 3:

Well, thank you so much. I've totally enjoyed this. Thank you for letting me spend some time with your listeners and with you, and I think you know the closing thought is just remember that people don't think the way they think they think, and so, as a result, you know we can get out ahead of that as marketers, and it's easy enough to do and it's effective to use these behavioral science principles and it's ethical to do them because you know you're going to use them. That information, and if we serve it up the right way, with the right words and phrases, we're much more likely to get that engagement and response we're looking for.

Speaker 1:

All right, well, you heard it right there. Hopefully, this allows you to fine tune your game and take advantage of behavioral science in your marketing. Nancy, thank you so much, and everybody, we will see you again on our next edition of the live stream of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. Hey, if you want to see us communicate in person, not just over audio like a podcast, but in video, make sure you go to youtubecom, slash neilschafer, where you can find this interview and all of the interviews over the last year or two at least, from this podcast, including episodes that have yet to be released. And if you want to keep in better touch, please go to newsletterneilschafercom, where you can sign up and get updates from me on a weekly basis on all things Neil Schafer, but, more importantly, all things digital marketing.

Speaker 1:

And if you haven't already hit that subscribe button and or reviewed this podcast, well, do one or the other. There's no counterintuitive marketing there. But, hey, a lot of great interviews lined up, make sure you at least subscribe. And obviously, all reviews are welcome. If you do end up putting a review somewhere, make sure you send me a screenshot of that. All righty Well, that's it for another exciting episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, neal Schaefer, signing off.

Speaker 2:

You've been listening to your Digital Marketing Coach Questions, comments, requests, links. Go to podcastnealschafercom. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilschafercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.