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- 🍪 This motivates people
🍪 This motivates people
“I don’t know what to do, I can’t pay the office rent this week,” I said looking at Annie with my eyes watering.
Interesting words to come out of the mouth of a nine year old.
But it was the annual Simu Town — a 2 week long event where every 4th grader has to start a business and have a storefront on their desk. The 5th and 3rd graders are then given a set amount of fake money to come and shop in “Simu Town.”
Many kids sold bracelets, pet rocks, had fun arcade games you could pay to play (and win prizes), and much more creative ideas.
I, on the other hand, decided to sell popsicle stick picture frames with uncooked macaroni, I stole from my parents’ kitchen, loosely glued on the corners to give the picture frames an added flair ✨.
As the week went on, I saw my friend Annie sell her bracelets, I saw lines form for the kids who had arcade games, and I saw a decent amount of foot traffic around some other stores. But for me, crickets. Some looks, but no sales.
And to make things worse, our teacher would take an $8 per week rent from each student — so we had to sell in order to pass this project.
Being an anxiety-ridden kid growing up, I panicked.
Then, it hit me.
I had collected over a hundred Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards so I could fit in with the popular kids that played with them during lunch. But in reality, I had no idea what was going on with that game and I didn’t see any value in the cards I had collected. However, I knew some of the 5th and 3rd graders were obsessed.
My new plan: Buy two picture frames, get two free Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.
When the kids I recognized who played the game walked by my storefront, I pointed at them to come to my store because I had a great deal for them. I told them the deal and it was an instant hit — I got my first $4! Half way to pay my rent, baby!
I looked at Annie with a grin on my face and she rolled her eyes. “You know they’re just going to throw those picture frames in the trash when they get home?” she said. “I know, but at least they’re happy and I can pay the rent,” I replied back.
I had completely wiped this core childhood memory from my brain for years. It wasn’t until I started to fall in love with marketing in my early 20s when I remembered this story. And I realized that the core principle of what I did as a nine year old still applies to my life today.
From creating business plans, writing ad copy, creating landing pages, helping companies create an affiliate program, navigating my way through corporate politics, etc. — almost anything as it pertains to my professional career.
There’s one word for this principle: incentives.
According to Google, an incentive is “a thing that motivates or encourages someone to do something.”
When I sit down to think of a marketing plan, the first question I always ask myself is “what is someone’s incentive to use this product or service?”
Is it to solve a very specific pain in their life? Is it to look good in front of their boss so they can get a raise? Is it to make more money? To get a bonus? To hit a quota?
Whatever it is, I go through a series of questions that boils down to: “why are they doing this?”, “why do they behave like this?”, or, “why would they want this?”
And then I ask the same question again and again, until I can break down their true motivations into first principles.
I could write a whole book on this topic alone. But I’ll spare it for more digestible, real world examples in future editions of this newsletter. (Just take a look at the ‘Ad from the past section‘ towards the bottom of this email and think about the incentive involved.)
For now, I challenge you to think deeply about incentives. What incentivizes your customer to use your product? What incentivizes your manager? Your managers manager? Someone selling you something? If you look around you, you’ll notice that people are motivated by incentives.
And if you can effectively figure out what it is they truly desire, you’ll win.
Note: This can be very dangerous if used for evil. This is not about manipulation. This is about truly understanding what someone (actually) wants, giving it to them, and making them happy that they did business with you.
With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):
Marketing news from the past week
Increasing conversion rate by 971%
A psychological game to play with your audience
What is PageRank and CheiRank in SEO?
A template for marketing metrics that matter
Ad from the past
Website of the week
Cool marketing jobs
And much more
🗞 In the news
🚀 All things growth & product
Increasing pricing page conversion rates, getting out of the ARPU-CAC danger zone, why some growth teams fail, and the issue with market categories.
💭 Guess the riddle
How can you drop a raw egg from a height onto a concrete floor without cracking it?
Answer is at the bottom of this email
✍️ Copywriting, emails, & psychology
10 proven copywriting frameworks, email pre-headers for better open rates, and a psychological game you can play with your audience.
⚙️ SEO & content marketing
What are PageRank and CheiRank in SEO, does canonicalising product pages help with SEO, and why AI content is not a long-term strategy.
🛍️ Paid ads, analytics, & AI
10 ecommerce Meta ad examples, marketing metrics that matter, and how to prepare for Google SGE.
🦖 Interesting stuff
10 creative ads I've collected this week:
1. BIC pens
— The Ad Professor (@The_AdProfessor)
1:55 PM • Feb 12, 2024
📣 Ad from the past
Apple ad from 1983
💻 Website of the week
🏝 Cool marketing jobs
Okay, that's it for now ❤️. See you next Tuesday!
What did you think of this newsletter? |
“The fact that you can love something that you've lost is all the incentive you need to love again, as opposed to becoming comfortably numb.” — CeeLo Green
Riddle answer: Concrete floors are very hard to crack.