{"id":35309,"date":"2023-12-27T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2023-12-27T14:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.afcpe.org\/?p=35309"},"modified":"2023-12-21T16:22:56","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T21:22:56","slug":"3-behavioral-marketing-hacks-to-get-more-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.afcpe.org\/news-and-publications\/blog\/3-behavioral-marketing-hacks-to-get-more-customers\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Behavioral Marketing Hacks to Get More Customers"},"content":{"rendered":"

XY Planning Network<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0exhibited at the 2023 AFCPE Symposium.<\/span> Learn more about exhibiting \u2192<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

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When I was a kid, I had a friend named John. John and I were as close as could be\u2014and what unified our friendship was the love of strategy-based video games. We played them all\u2014particularly the 90\u2019s fad at the time, Pokemon. The only problem our friendship endured was that when we faced off in those games, he beat me EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. It wasn\u2019t enough that I couldn\u2019t win\u2014I didn\u2019t know how he did it. Time after time, he\u2019d vanquish me in our battles, and I began to feel inferior.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You see, I didn\u2019t know this at the time because we were just kids, but John was a certifiable genius. One of the smartest people I\u2019ll likely ever meet. I\u2019m nowhere near that level of intelligence, but in my angst, I found a way to level the playing field. I began to start winning\u2026 with the use of cheat codes and glitches built into the game. Eventually, being overwhelmed with a mixture of guilt and satisfaction, I showed John my secrets to success. There were no hard feelings, but it certainly made the competition more intense. This is when I first remember learning the value of hacks, which in digital marketing, can make or break careers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Games are hardwired with tiny glitches and cheat codes, the same way humans are hardwired with instinctive responses. These behavioral \u201ccheat codes\u201d come from a variety of different evolutionary backgrounds, but they are ever-present in us today. In this article, I want to outline 3 behavioral science principles (hacks) that can help you market your firm – not to cheat folks into signing up with you, but rather to help them better understand your value and importance. When used correctly (and honestly), they can help you break through the noise and create lasting client relationships.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

The reciprocity principle<\/b><\/h2>\n

I use the term \u2018hack\u2019 above to bridge the gap between how to cheat a video game and how to hack the human brain, but essentially these are hardwired human behaviors. You can tap into these to help convey a message better, frame a question better, or genuinely drive customer action. All of these hacks have the same goal, which is to drive your prospective clients to take action and meet with you. Behavioral scientists refer to these \u201chacks\u201d as principles (they actually despise the term \u2018hack\u2019), and the first one that stood out to me that might be useful for financial advisors was the <\/span>reciprocity principle.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The reciprocity principle, at its core, is the fact that when you do something for someone, they\u2019re hard-wired to want to pay you back. For instance, my wife and I have 6 chickens in a nice coop in our backyard. Naturally, we are drowning in rich, farm-fresh eggs, so we take cartons over to our neighbors. Two of my neighbors insist on bringing us homemade bread now when we do this. They appreciate the gift of our fresh eggs with no strings attached, so they are compelled to reciprocate. That\u2019s a pretty basic example.<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, chickens and bread are one thing, but let’s have more of a <\/span>business<\/span><\/i> example. One of my favorite behavioral marketers, <\/span>Nancy Harhut<\/span><\/a>, has an entire chapter on reciprocity in her award-winning book titled: <\/span>Using Behavioral Science in Marketing<\/span><\/i><\/a>. One example Nancy shared is when she worked at a marketing agency that was employed by a financial services company. The goal was to win back financial advisors who had stopped selling their products. Winning back customers who\u2019ve parted ways with you can be extremely difficult, so they employed the reciprocity principle in their campaign. But instead of sending these financial advisors a coffee mug, pen, or T-shirt, they sent something more personal. The team sent each advisor a framed New Yorker Magazine cartoon, loosely pertaining to selling retirement products, with the advisor\u2019s name in it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis gift was different, it was relevant, and it was personal. Can\u2019t you just imagine the financial advisors clearing a spot on their office wall in order to display it?\u201d (Harhut, 2022)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

This campaign went on to help generate millions in sales that wouldn\u2019t have otherwise happened. But you don\u2019t have to spend gratuitous amounts of money on custom swag to activate reciprocity in prospective clients for your firm. Some examples of this used in marketing campaigns could be:<\/span><\/p>\n