Newsletter #9: Three mini-marketing lessons
This week, we take a look at psychology, growing an audience, and how to use interlinking in your blog.
Hey!
In this week’s newsletter, you’ll find answers to these three questions:
When shouldn’t I use internal linking in my content?
How do I build an audience?
Why do marketing influencers keep talking about ‘psychology’?
If you’ve got any questions, please feel free to drop a comment below.
Enjoy,
Ben
P.s. If you think I deserve it, you can ‘buy me a beer’ right here (i.e. donate some $£€)
When internal links hurt conversion rates
When you link from one blog post to another, it fulfils two main purposes:
Improves reader experience, “If you like what this sentence said, here is more on the topic.” (Use: keep readers engaged, happy, and browsing.)
It signals importance to search engines, “If a page is linked to by multiple pages within the same website, it must be an important page.” (Use: get a page ranked higher by weaving in links to it in your blog posts)
I would typically suggest going wild with your internal links.
The transferring of ‘signals of importance’ around your entire website does wonders for your search rankings.
However, you should be strategic with them.
If you have a bottom of funnel (BOFU) piece of content—i.e. one designed to convert the reader to a demo or sign up—it’s probably not wise to interlink too much.
Link to it, sure. But, not from it.
Within the BOFU content, linking out to a fun blog you wrote about memes is only going to add a layer of distraction that will hurt conversion rates.
How to grow something worth following
Often lots of people are aware of your content but don't choose to follow.
Awareness x conversion = your followers
It seems obvious.
If you want to build an audience (i.e. convert viewers to subscribers) you need to create content that converts.
It needs to be compelling enough that people want to follow.
Still, I know I’ve sat there many times and thought, “why is no one subscribing to my…” blog, social media, podcast.
Creating something worth following isn’t easy.
So, how do you do it?
Why people follow
Often lots of people are aware of your content but don't choose to follow.
Awareness x conversion = your followers
It seems obvious.
If you want to build an audience (i.e. convert viewers to subscribers) you need to create content that converts.
It needs to be compelling enough that people want to follow.
Still, I know I’ve sat there many times and thought, “why is no one subscribing to my…” blog, social media, podcast.
Creating something worth following isn’t easy.
So, how do you do it?
The decision to follow = Receives value + (promise of more like this x desire for more)
Giving value is the first nut to crack. It comes from knowing your audience and having expertise.
The promise of more like this is harder. It comes from consistently creating good content and suggesting more is to come.
Then there's the 'desire' for more content.
How do you create the 'urge' for more?
One way I keep coming back to is serial content.
Why do you binge a Netflix series?
For two reasons really:
You enjoyed the experience, and want to enjoy more of it.
You’re left incomplete: the story starts and you want to know how it ends.
To get the full realisation of value, you need to come back for episode 2, 3, 4.
Almost no one does #2 well in the B2B world.
So, for your next piece of content, why not tap into it?
Always promise more—e.g. “subscribe to get more like this.”
And double down on it by making it a three-part series—e.g.“hit subscribe to get the answer to the problem I just described.”
Marketing and psychology
I don’t know if you’ve noticed. But, marketing influencers seem to enjoy repeating that ‘marketing is all about psychology’.
The link is obvious: marketers want to influence behaviour and psychology is the science of behaviour.
Most influencers leave it at the first statement and do very little to explain themselves. I kinda find that annoying.
So, here’s some psychology examples to think about when marketing (use responsibly):
Framing
In economics, we’re taught to assume people make rational decisions. In reality, that’s almost never true.
Framing is a classic example of that.
Let’s say that I’m going to sell you a yoghurt. Which of these choices do you prefer?
Option A: “this yoghurt is 10% fat”
Option B: "this yoghurt is 90% fat-free”
What would you choose?
Mathematically, these choices are of course the same. The rational choice is that it doesn’t matter which you choose. But option B is chosen significantly more in studies.
That’s because it frames the fact positively, highlighting the ‘feature’ in its best light.
This is used SO much. And it doesn’t matter that it’s blatant AF.
The Economist
The Economist magazine’s pricing options have been used in social science research in the past. So let’s check out what they’re currently doing.
This is top of the page:
So it’s obvious what they want you to purchase: an annual digital subscription.
This is a smart move from the Economist. Digital is scalable at a fixed price—an additional reader doesn’t cost more in the digital world, but it does when you have to ship them a physical magazine.
Let’s see what psychological tricks they’re using.
We’re presented with two options, digital or digital + print. This highlights their use of psychology well because they’ve only applied psychological tricks to the decision they want you to make: purchase digital, not print.
The print deal is made laughably bad in comparison to the digital-only deal.
They’ve pulled out all the stops: framing and anchoring with colour, language, and price. But ONLY on the digital, not on the print.
They’re even telling us that digital is a great price compared to print, but let’s not forget they made up the price themselves.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter! Next week, I’ve got a cracking podcast with the CMO of Hopin. The week after, another newsletter like this one. Ben x
P.s. Did you get some value from this newsletter? If you think I deserve it, you can ‘buy me a beer’ right here (i.e. donate some $).