Scientifically Proven Advice to Avoid Crap Marketing with Phill Agnew

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Marketing Made Simple. Today, we'll be breaking down scientifically proven advice to avoid crap marketing. To drop these value bombs, I brought Phil Agnew into EO Fire Studios. Phil is the host of Nudge, the UK's number one marketing podcast. On Nudge, he shares practical marketing insights based only on science. No fluff, no opinions, no BS. and today, Foundation, we'll figure out why most marketing sucks.

0:37We'll talk about how behavioral science can improve marketing. We'll talk about becoming irresistible or at least creating an irresistible offer and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Phil and our sponsors. The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by my good friend, Jenna Kuchar, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger Podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. A must-listen episode is one of Jenna's recents on everything you need to know about affiliate marketing.

1:14Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought of giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world, and four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Phil, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, listeners. Hi, John. Thanks so much for having me on. What do I think about becoming successful?

1:53Well, there's a perception within business that customers and consumers are rational people. If you offer a bigger discount, they'll go for that option. If you put a store closer to a consumer, they'll be more likely to go to that store. And what I've learned through studying the psychology behind how people make decisions and behind how people act is that actually people can be very irrational. And I think if you want to be successful in business, you've got to understand that sometimes irrational things can succeed. So I'll give you a really quick example that I was thinking about because I was creating an episode on this for Nudge at the moment, which is imagine you're doing a promotion for your business and you have the choice of either doing a promotion around a special day that you've created, say a national picnic day sale, so a national day for picnic day sales, or you're just doing an annual sale.

2:49What these researchers, a guy called Danny Zane, has found by studying this is that if you create a national special day, people are far more likely to go for that promotion. They're 25.1 % more likely to buy that promotion than just a standard annual one-day sale. And that's kind of an irrational thing, right? Like, why should people do that? Why should people behave any differently if the promotion is the same across both? Well, it's because people aren't rational. They're irrational and they're drawn towards things like National Picnic Day sales or Star Wars Day or all these wonderful days that gets us all excited.

3:22It's why we spent 25 billion during Valentine's Day as well. So yeah, that's one thing that I like to hold dear. Fire Nation, I think you can tell you're going to be getting inundated with value bombs today because that's what Phil does. He does it on his podcast, Nudge. And today we're talking about scientifically proven advice to avoid absolute crap marketing. And I just want to be honest with Fire Nation, Phil, because that's just what I like to do with my audience. Most marketing sucks. Tell us why. I think most of my marketing sucked, John. When I first started as a marketer, I was awful.

3:59And which is funny because I'd spent 50 ,000 pounds in the UK on a marketing degree. So I'd spent four years of my life studying marketing. And yet I went into my first marketing job and I was hopeless. I couldn't create things that genuinely turned the needle. I couldn't write an email subject line that got more people to open. I couldn't write a blog post that got more people to read to the bottom and click the CTA. And I don't think I'm alone there. 80 % of new products fail, according to HBR. There's other studies which show that a quarter of all marketing budget is just totally wasted. So there seems to be this issue in marketing that a lot of it is just not working.

4:33It's not succeeding. And I think that's maybe because we rely quite a lot in marketing on our gut instincts or, you know, what do we feel will work? And I think there are some lessons, some laws we can follow to dramatically improve our marketing. Fire Nation, there's going to be some value bombs you're going to take to the bank today. You're going to take to your business today because behavioral science can help improve marketing. And Phil, you're going to give us a few examples of that right now. So take it away. Yeah. So behavioral science is this idea that it's this field of study, actually.

5:07So we've been studying the psychology behind how people make decisions for over 100 years. and we've uncovered or researchers I should say have uncovered all these biases people have when they make decisions and these biases if you as marketers can can understand them can be applied to help you whatever you want to do sell more products get people to click your emails whatever it is so one of these biases as an example is probably one the listeners have heard of social proof now social proof is the idea that we follow the actions of others this is an evolutionary trait So if you saw hundreds of people or dozens of cavemen running out of a cave, you won't go in that cave.

5:42You'll probably run away with them. In the same way that if you go on holiday and you see dozens of people queuing outside a restaurant, you'll probably want to queue there as well. We like to follow the actions of others. And marketers can leverage this really easy. There's a wonderful study by Richard Shotton who went into a London pub in the east end of London and asked the team at the pub, what's your best selling beer? they said oh it's the London Pride the ale that we have on tap and he said all I want you to do for the next week is just put a little sign on that beer and say it's the best-selling beer just reveal to customers that it's best-selling they did and they compared the sales from the pub and the week before having that sign up and the week during having that sign up and they found that simply having a sign saying this is our best-selling beer increased the sales of that beer by 2.5 times and didn't decrease the sales of the other beers as well so just showing that that beer is popular showing that other people buy it makes others more likely to buy.

6:38I don't even like beer, and I just really want to try that beer right now. I don't know why. That's good, John. London Pride. Go and try it. So check it out, Fire Nation. I know a lot of you want to stand out. In some way, shape, or form, you want to stand out. And there's actually a science behind standing out. Phil, tell us more. Yeah, so this is ancient research, really. This is research from 1933 when there was a researcher called Hedgwing von Restoroff, who I think had a name that stood out. So it's not surprising that she did research in this area. She showed participants in her study long lists of letters to try and remember.

7:16Letters like W, R, I, Z, A, you know, random letters. They wouldn't make words. And she would say you have to remember these groups of letters, so five letters at a time. And it's really difficult to remember. but within this list of letters that people had to remember she also asked them to remember on occasion the odd combination of numbers so seven two one one for example and she found that the numbers were 10 times more memorable than the letters and then she thought well maybe this is because the numbers are simply more memorable but she flipped it so the numbers were well a common thing and there was loads of numbers to remember in this study but just one group of letters and then she found that the letters were 10 times more memorable so what van roan restroff's theory was was that when things stand out, they are far more memorable.

8:00And Richard Shotton, who I introduced you to earlier, another researcher and behavioral scientist, he repeated this experiment in 2018, but this time with brands. He showed people 10 brands from the same category. So 10 car brands, Ford, Chevron, so on. But then they showed them one fast food brand, Burger King, for example. And they found, again, that the unique brand in that category, Burger King, was four times more memorable. And the result was the same when you flipped it as well. so the finding here is that standing out in relation to your competitors so that's important because you have to be distinct within your competitor set standing out there makes you far more likely to be memorable makes you far more likely to be spotted and there's some really applicable examples of this so in in australia the the tax collectors there were really struggling to get aussies to pay their tax on time and they thought well how can we improve this well they realized that they're competing with other letters the issue is when they're sending letters to people to try and get them to pay their tax there's a lot of letters people get through the door, they don't open everything.

8:57So they did the most simple, distinctive thing they could do and added a red post-it note to each of the letters saying urgent, and that encouraged more people to open it and ultimately saved Aussies$4 million in overpaid tax fees. That's the power of being distinct. Fire Nation, I want you to start thinking of some examples in your life where you might be able to apply some of these principles, some of these behaviors to what you're doing in your business. And if you think we're even close to being done with this, you have another thing coming. Because as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors, we are diving right in.

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11:21Visit thought-leader.com slash fire. Join Taylor for his free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart, and out into the world where it belongs. That's thought-leader.com slash fire. So we're back, and I just want to keep up the heat. I want to keep up the pressure here because a lot of times it can be really difficult to change someone's opinion. And oftentimes when you try, you're actually just getting them to dig in even deeper into whatever it is that they believe in in the first place or what they think they believe in. But you actually have a way that we can change someone's decision with something called anchoring.

11:59What the heck is that? So anchoring is essentially the idea that the initial piece of information you receive when you're learning about something outweighs or has a big impact on the the way you perceive the rest of the information that you collect so if you go to a restaurant and there's mold on the front door or you know a bit of a bit of dirt on the carpet as you walk in you'll probably have a much worse experience than if those two things weren't there and the food was then identical that initial bit of experience that anchor changes your perception and there's some fascinating studies on how this this works and studies I think your listeners can apply there's some researchers Joseph Marks and Steve Martin they went into real estate agents in the UK so these are these are estate agents who are selling homes and they listened to how the receptionist would talk on the phone to the people who are calling up the real estate agent so this is the first bit of information you'll hear from the real estate agent you call them up the receptionist picks up the phone and says hey how are you doing asks what they want and then hands them over to an estate agent and they ask the receptionist to make a slight change.

13:05They said rather than just handing the call over to the estate agent once the customer has made the request, can you just add a little anchor? Can you hand them over to the estate agent, say Peter, for example, and then say Peter has 20 years experience in the field, he'll be perfect for you. So just add a bit more description about why this call will be much better when you hand it over. They did that for all of the estate agents. They didn't lie. They told the truth. They always said the actual amount of experience that each of the estate agents had and then they measured the before and after so what happened when people were just handed over and what happened when people were told peter's 20 years experience they found that ultimately sales were 20 up when that initial anchor was set with that positive anchor and i'll give you one final example of this and how it really works the person who loved this the most was steve jobs when steve jobs introduced the ipad um he there were lots of people saying it would be overpriced this big piece of technology it's surely going to cost far too much money and so he tackled this with an anchor when he started talking about the price in his keynote and you can go and watch this if you like he puts a big uh price behind him on the screen and the big price says 999 dollars and that looks very expensive he's saying you know this is the cost it should be it should be 999 dollars it should cost us much there's so much technology in here but we've managed to get it down and then literally on the screen the 999 smashes into a million pieces and the real price of$499 is revealed.

14:33And that anchor made that price of $499 suddenly seem fantastic. You know, people were clapping, they were chilling, saying, brilliant, I can't believe it's only$499. That's still a lot of money. But the anchor made it seem far more reasonable. Fire Nation, again, how can you be utilizing and implementing this type of behavior, this type of attitude, this type of anchoring into your business? Now, irresistible means unable to resist. At least that's one definition of it. We all want an irresistible offer because if we have an irresistible offer, Fire Nation, it makes sense that people will not be able to resist it.

15:11That will be a good thing for conversions, right? Yeah, so let's talk about irresistible offers because few people know how to create one, but you do, Phil. Take it away. Yeah, I think one of the secrets behind a really irresistible offer is scarcity. So scarcity is something we've all experienced. We all are desperate to grab the last ticket to the concert or the last table at the fancy restaurant. And if you can create a bit of scarcity with your offer, it'll be much more appealing. There was a wonderful study done in the, I think, University of Ohio, where they went into supermarkets and they changed.

15:47They had an advertisement in the supermarket or grocery store which said, buy soup. And what they found when they put these big ads up saying buy soup is that people brought on average, they bought on average three cans of soup per person. Fantastic, right? Pat yourself on the back. Advertising works. People buy soup when you put a banner up saying buy soup. But then the researchers added a bit of scarcity. They said buy soup and then there was an asterisk and it was said limited to 12 cans per person. Now, nobody was buying soup to that level before. Nobody was buying 12 cans of soup before. But just adding that little bit of scarcity, saying you're only able to buy 12 cans of soup, made that offer more irresistible.

16:28irresistible. And suddenly, instead of buying three cans of soup per person, the average amount of sales went up to 4.5 cans of soup per person. People were far more likely to buy soup simply when they limited the amount that people could buy. Fire Nation, again, think about it. Sometimes when you just plant a little seed into people's mind, they take action on that thing. I would be thinking, well, why only 12? What's the reason for that? Are they that in demand that this is the only chance I'm going to have to get this number. Man, there's some really cool stuff here. So again, Fire Nation, today we've been talking about scientifically proven advice to avoid marketing that's just plain and simply crapola, a big pile of crap, a big pie that's full of crap.

17:11And Phil, I want you to take it away here. What is the one thing out of everything we've talked about here today that you want Fire Nation to know that you want them to walk away with? I think the one thing I'd like people to walk away with is this reminder that creating a better offer or better marketing or a better blog post or a better email subject line doesn't always have to be down to some rational improvement. You don't always have to offer a much cheaper product. You don't have to create much higher quality. These things are good, but the decision people make won't just come down to those tangible, rational facts.

17:46Irrationality, whether that's limiting cans of soups to 12 cans per person or saying Peter has 12, 20 years experience, I'm going to hand you over to him. Those irrational things can have just as much an effect. So as our job as marketers is to lean into that, to understand the biases that people use when they make decisions and to leverage them to make better offers ourselves. If Fire Nation wanted to learn more of these genius tactics, tips, tools, strategies, give us a call to action. How do we learn more from you? What do you have Fire Nation to do today, call to action wise? Well, after you have listened to this podcast and you've made sure you've subscribed to Entrepreneurs on Fire, then you can load up your podcast player and search for Nudge.

18:30That's N-U-D-G-E. You will find an orange logo with my name, Phil Agnew, under it. And that is my podcast. If you click there, subscribe to that. We do an episode every single Monday, and it's all absolutely packed with tips on how you can improve your marketing, your business, and how you can improve your life with insights from the world of behavioral science. Fire Nation, I hope all this value has given you the nudge to subscribe to Nudge and get some more great value bombs because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with PA and JLD today, so keep up that heat.

19:04for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Phil, that's with two L's, in the search bar, the show notes page will pop right up. And Phil, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks so much, John. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Phil for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days, and we're talking step-by-step, visit thefreedomjournal.com.

19:39I'll catch you there or on the flip side. The Goal Digger Podcast, hosted by my good friend, Jenna Kuchar, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Goal Digger Podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. A must-listen episode is one of Jenna's recents on everything you need to know about affiliate marketing. Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought of giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world and four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there.

20:18Visit thought-leader.com to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.