By GrowthFoundation.in

Hi,

Congratulations on completing Module 1. I hope you’ve completed your assignment and the quiz for revision of the main ideas.

In this module, our focus shifts from building a database of prospects to communicate with, to the ways in which you could establish this communication and build trust, loyalty, and brand advocacy from your prospects.

I have also shared psychological triggers which can be used in various situations in life. They’re very powerful sales techniques. Do use them carefully, and not with an intention to manipulate people.

Best Regards,Neeraj

Module 2: RelationshipWith Your List

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Unit 1: Understanding your prospects

While list-building is an ongoing process, another ongoing process isestablishing and maintaining a relationship with that list. Themajor factor for how well a marketer does this is the degree towhich he/she understands the market.

The better you understand your prospects the higher your chancesof success in online marketing. Understanding your prospects isabout understanding their needs and aspirations as well as theirfears and concerns.

A useful exercise conducted by various companies is to create anavatar of your average prospect. Personapp.io is a good place tostart this kind of process.

As always, for the sake of this exercise assume you’re running abusiness or the online marketing for a business.

Think of your dream company/ industry and answer the followingquestions:

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Who is your prospect? Write down a real description of an average sample in your prospects. Pretend they are sitting across from you. Describe the average person, even if the range is wide. Age, Sex, Income, Interests, etc. You can give him/her a name.________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What are his/her biggest pain points?_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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What are his/her biggest fears and frustrations? What gets him/her worried?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What does he or she want? What outcome is he/she really looking for? Is there a difference between what he/she really wants and what he/she thinks he/she wants? ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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What does your product do or give your prospect that he or she is not aware of? What are the hidden benefits of the product, specifically considering the aspirations and fears of your prospect?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Any other information about your prospect that you feel is worth noting?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Unit 2: Boomerang Principle

The ‘boomerang’principle is the idea of reciprocity – people have anatural urge to give you something if they have receivedsomething from you. It could be an obligation or it could be ageneral positive feeling.

Traditionally companies used to send out long and formal salesletters or emails to their prospect, with the selling link right atthe bottom. In recent times, with diminishing attention spansand excessive stimulation bombarded on almost every onlineuser; the sales letter has been broken down into shortercommunications over a longer period of time, building up astory.

The Boomerang principle is used very commonly in email marketing,where three to four emails of valuable content- each linked toone another as well as to the final product- are sent toprospects. This helps in multiple ways:

(a) Builds trust about the brand (assuming the quality of freecontent is good)

(b) Allows a longer-term engagement with the prospects withoutany talk about sales

(c) Builds a story around the launch of the product whichgenerates anticipation

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Since human beings converse most commonly using ‘stories’, it isgreat if you can build a story around your product/launch. We willcover themes of such stories in the unit on psychological triggers.The story will necessarily be based on the prospect description wecovered in the previous unit.

Communic-ation 1:

Free content,

build up to second content

Communic-ation 2:

Free content,

build up to third

content

Communic-ation 3:

Free content,

build up to launch

Communic-ation 4: Launch

Define a problem, solve it, define another connected problem.

Solve the problem defined in previous communic-ation, leading to a new problem

Solve the problem defined in previous communic-ation, leading to a new, larger problem

Give the solution of the problem as your product/service.

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What could be the elements of the build-up for your product/service? If it is a regular eCommerce store, how could you build up anticipation for a new sale/offer that is soon to come up?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What will be the elements of that communication?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Unit 3: Designing the Offer

The ‘offer’ is critical to online sales. It has to be compelling enough totake the see-saw we discussed earlier to a sale.

Sale

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What are you giving to your customers/clients? What’s included in the product service? What other resources can you pack in for them without much extra cost?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How are you going to deliver it?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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What are some of the additional bonuses you can give them to ensure ‘under-promise, over-deliver’?

________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________

What are the extra bonuses they get if they buy early?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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What happens if they don’t buy during launch (or sale)? Does the price go up, or the bonus goes away, or the product itself is no longer available?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What is your guarantee? What is the risk-reversal?___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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What do you plan to charge? Is it a one-time payment? Does it have a subscription component?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What is the reason-to-believe? Do you have testimonials or any statistics to support your claims? How can you build trust?_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Unit 4: The importance of positioning

Like in any business, it is important to have a strong positioning inthe minds of the customers and stick to that positioning.

If it is an independent coaching business, this part would includeelements like positioning yourself as an expert in your line, or asan authority figure.. If you were to run such a business, you canuse elements around your life experiences to build on thistheme (you don’t have to fake it!)

For larger companies, positioning is about mind-space alone. It isuseful to understand the idea of 2nd Degree of Association toestablish positioning.

Product -> Benefit -> Benefit of BenefitExample: Soap -> Hygiene -> Health

Based on the 2nd Degree of Association idea, it is better and moresustainable to build a brand on the consumer’s second degree ofmental association with that product. In the above scase,Lifebouy has successfully used this positioning (“Tandurusti kiraksha karta hai lifebouy” i.e. “Lifebouy protects your health”),targeting the second degree association with soaps in the mindsof the target group.

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In the online world, positioning can help you charge higher prices.

Some examples of positioning:Snapdeal -> Buy products at good prices -> Get the best deals

(People have a strong pleasure association with finding the bestdeals, which is why Snapdeal is positioned in that way.)

Since most eCommerce companies in India have a deal-basedpositioning (giving the best rates for products), it has beenchallenging to find more profitability. Only niche segmentswhere people buy online for convenience, and not for deals,have been profitable. (example: online lingerie stores. Sincepeople feel embarrassed or awkward in buying lingerie fromphysical stores, these stores are solving a different need and notbased on just deals.)

What can be your unique strategic positioning in the market?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Unit 5: Psychological Triggers (part 1)

Anticipation (Tension & Release) (Using stories): Using build-ups inthe form of stories, you increase the tension which is releasedon the date of launch or sale. We discuss this in greater detail inthe next module.

Scarcity: This basically means anything which is scarcely available isperceived more valuable. Scarcity can be built in various waysinto your launch.

Urgency: It is closely associated with scarcity and creates an urgencyto take the decision, because without that urgency people arelikely to postpone their buying decisions.

Community: People like to belong to exclusive clubs/ communitiesand feel part of a community of like-minded individuals. If yourproduct/service or even your campaign can build a communityspirit, it can lead to far more influence in your market.

Social Proof: the idea that, if everyone else is doing something thenyou’re going to want to do it as well. We look for cues frompeople around us to determine how we should act. So buildingproof of people who have already bought the sale, or creatingthe tone of everyone buying it, can be a trigger to buy it.

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Authority: As covered earlier, people believe in authority figures.This is why we are likely to listen to someone in a uniform-because a uniform creates authority.

Common Enemy: An enemy of an enemy is a friend. To raiseconcerns about the same issues/companies that your prospectshave a concern with can lead to them associating to yourstore/website/service.

Controversy: Sometimes it is easier to catch eye-balls by somecontroversy. This trigger is most exploited by the movie industry.

Consistency: It is important to deliver a similar message consistentlyfor building trust. It is not wise to change the tone or content ofyour message drastically.

Conversation: Web 2.0 is about conversation- where companies nolonger have a one sided conversation with the customers.

Surprise/Shock: This can be used occasionally to trigger very highclicks. For example, an email with subject “RAJ: are you sure?”can break the pattern of the receiver Raj and lead to moreopens. However it must be used carefully and not over-used.

Reciprocity: People like to (or feel obligated to) give you somethingback if they’ve received something from you. This is whygenerous companies tend to do better over long term.

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Likeability: Coming across as genuine and talking in a normallanguage, not a very corporate language. Being OK with exposingvulnerabilities etc lead to more people associating with you.

Simplicity: Minimalism is a trend in the last decade. People have toomuch to do and appreciate a short/crisp message over someonebeating around the bush.

Specificity: This means saying “2937 people have bought thisproduct” is better than saying “3000 people have brought thisproduct” because people will trust the specific number more.

Event: Turning your campaign for a launch or sale into an event willlead to more interest and involvement.

List whatever examples you come across of companies using theabove tactics (both online and offline)________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Unit 6: Psychological Triggers (part 2)

Story

Basically, the story is the overall, “Why are you doing thislaunch? Why now? What’s the big idea, the big story behind it?” And if you’re doing a launch for the first time, you really don’t generally have to work too hard on the story because you have a new product. By virtue of it being new, you have a story.

If it’s a re-launch then you’re looking for some type of a story around it that people can remember. Stories are what get word of mouth. For example, I could use the story of how frustrated I was with my corporate life and how I finally embarked on an entrepreneurial career. .. And if I’m a good story-teller, this will have far more impact for selling a course on entrepreneurship than numbers or benefits of taking the course.

Stories are also spun into campaigns of bigger products. For example, Virgin thrive on the stories and tales of its founder, Richard Branson. A lot of his personality traits get rubbed off on to the brand. Similar stories exist and become part of folklore for various other brands. However, in the context of this unit, stories are limited to new launches or re-launches of young startups.

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Some of the common themes for stories that can be used for launching a new product in a startup:

-The Reluctant Hero: People love reluctant heroes. They love heroes and when they are reluctant heroes it means that they didn’t really set out to be heroes. It’s not like they’ve got some huge ego.

When someone is reluctant to do something, it triggers people to want it more. We want to know more about them, what are the reasons why they’re doing it. And they’re more likeable than a hero who is not reluctant.

In this story, you build on how you had all the reasons to not do the launch or make the sale, but circumstances or pressure from your audience has compelled you to.

-Loss and Redemption: This is a classic story where you have something or you’ve achieved something, then you lose it, and then you get it back again. That is a very, very compelling story that we have seen over and over again in movies.

The elements of a story would usually involve:-I’m a lot like you-I had a common frustration-I somehow found the solution-I’ve (reluctantly) decided to share it with you

-The Underdog: How you or your product beat all the odds or competed with stalwarts but came out the winner.

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Let’s say you’re trying to sell a program on weight-loss, or gym membership. The story revolving around your communication (via emails/ facebook etc) could be:

1) I’m a lot like you:(I have similar aspirations and dreams, I also hate exercising, I cannot resist good food…etc)

2) Common frustration(I was trying to lose weight (or gain muscle), but every diettried failed, and it would always come back on. Nothingseemed to work and I thought I would be stuck in a body Ido not like forever.)

3) How I found the solution(Then I finally stumbled on xyz program on the internet, andit has transformed my lifestyle. I enjoy exercising usingthis new system, and it is easy to not cheat on theprescribed diet because of how flexible it is!)

4) And you decided to share it (reluctantly)(Now I’m no guru, but one person asked about how I had lostso much weight, and then another, and another. Eventually itgot to the point that there was no way I could really reach out to everyone who was asking these questions, so we are launching this academy/gym/program….)

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As you can see, understanding your prospects deepest fears and aspirations is critical in designing a good story.

A note here: it is easy to come up with unreal stories but it is usually detected sooner or later, and this is just an integrity issue. The purpose of using the story-telling method is to get more eye-balls, not to fake reality.

Most life situations and businesses can come up with interesting stories around them, without having to manipulate facts.

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Unit 7: Email Marketing: Subject line tips

If you post a link on your social media page or email it to yoursubscribers (or any other medium), it is important to learn howto extract as many clicks out of the engagement as possible. Thiscan be especially true for emails.

Since it is hard to get people to open your email, there is a lot ofresearch behind open-rates for different subject lines. Based onall this research, here are some tips for better subject lines:

1) PersonalizePersonalizing your subject line is possible in email as long asyour list (database) has names apart from just email addresses.Use the subscriber’s first name or last name in the subject, itleads to a significant increase in open rates.

2) Try Different Lines/ PostsYou can do an A/B split testing by sending some of your

subscribers one email, and some others another, and seewhich one leads to more engagement. The one whichworks better can then be sent to the remaining subscribersin your list.

3) Keep it ShortResearch suggests that subject lines with 3 or 4 words have

better open rates than those with longer subjects

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4) Tone down promotional emailAvoid using words like ‘free’, ‘discount’ etc because (a) they

trigger spam filters and (b) they lead to less opens even if they don’t end up in the spam box.

5) Use controversy/ shockOccasionally it may work to use controversial headlines to yourpost or subjects to your email.

Examples: -> Your Marketing Sucks: YOU Need to Think Bigger;-> DUDE! (important!)

Word of caution: if you have a small business and a small email list, you could use controversy or shock to good advantage. However it isn’t viable for larger corporations.

It is also unviable for smaller corporations except those which thrive on an irreverent image.

6) Numbers and ListsClick through rates are higher if you have a list, for example:-> 3 ways to increase your productivity-> 4 discounts you should notice-> 50% off!

7) Question marksExamples:-> Interested in a better career?-> Final hours! Will you save 30%?

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8) UrgencyExamples:-> 4-Hours only! 50% off across all products!-> Mega-sale ends today! Hurry, this is your last chance!-> [Deadline] Sale closing tonight