Top Niche Ideas

Do you remember the stupid beer commercial a few years back
with the tagline “Why Ask Why?” Well, completely unknown to
the ad agency — they had almost stumbled onto a
breakthrough marketing concept.

Telling people the reason why you are doing something is
one of the most powerful influencers of human behavior.

Robert Cialdini, Ph.D. in his book “Influence: The
Psychology of Persuasion” talks about an experiment by
Harvard social psychologist, Ellen Langer, that concluded
people like to have a reason for what they do.

Her experiment consisted of people waiting in line to use a
library copy machine and then having experimenters ask to
get ahead in line.

The first excuse used was “Excuse me, I have five pages.
May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?” This
request coupled with a reason was successful 94% of the
time. However when the experimenter made a request only:
“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox
machine?” this request was only granted 60% of the time. A
significant drop.

Okay now for the shocker.

It may seem like the difference between those two requests
was the additional information of “because I’m in a rush”,
but that’s just not the case.

Because in a third experimenter, the experimenter asks
“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine
because I have to make some copies?” There’s no reason
mentioned or new information presented, just the words
“because”.

This time a full 93% of the people said yes simply due to
the word ‘BECAUSE’! And it didn’t even matter that there
was no reason given. Just the word because triggered a
magic response.

Using this psychological ‘trigger’ can massively increase
your Marketing success.

Here’s an example: John E. Powers, one of the top
copywriters in the 1900’s, wrote this ad for a Pittsburgh
department store in severe financial trouble:

“We are bankrupt. We owe $125,000 more than we can pay, and
this announcement will bring our creditors down on our
necks. But if you come and *buy* tomorrow, we shall have
the money to meet them. If not, we shall go to the wall.”

Instead of yelling ‘SALE’ like so many other stores would,
there’s a legitimate reason given why people should spend
their money at this store. And this ad was said to be
responsible for saving the store.

Another ad written by Powers, for a different merchant,
proclaimed “We have a lot of rotten raincoats we want to
get rid of.” This sold out the entire inventory of
raincoats by the next morning.

Max Sackheim, famous for the long-running ad “Do You Make
These Mistakes In English” and originator of the book-of-
the-month concept, says this: “Whenever you make a claim or
special offer in your advertising, come up with an honest
reason why, and then state it sincerely. You’ll sell many
more products this way.”

And this powerful strategy works just as well today.

Using this secret weapon for a medical equipment company, I
helped them produce a massive 1,073% return on investment
simply using “reason-why” copy.

The premise was how can we sell a product for the
incredibly low price of only $477? (Regularly this product
sells for about $695 – $895.) Then the ad went on to
explain that the reason why the price was so low was
because the manufacturer wanted to gain market share and
get nurses and doctors accustomed to using their product.
It was a huge winner and a big money-maker for the client.

So how can you apply all of this to your business? Easy.
Let’s say you have a slow time of year and you want to
increase your business during this period. Well, write a
simple letter to your customers making a special offer,
only good during your slow period.

Maybe you’ll throw in an extra free bonus, an extra
service, or a special discount simply because it is your
“slow time” and you need to pay your staff anyway.

Let people in “behind the scenes” at your company…

* Are you overstocked on merchandise because for some
reason customers only want the deluxe widget – but you
ordered tons of the basic one?

* Did you have a flood and you need to liquidate (pardon
the pun) your inventory?

* Do you need to raise cash so you can pay for your
nosejob?

Whatever the reason. Tell them the truth.

For some reason everyone wants to be mysterious about their
business. If you’re lowering the price nobody thinks you’re
doing it just because you’re “such a nice guy”. So let
people in the reason why.

I know this probably goes against every grain of business
sense, but I promise if you give people a good, believable
reason why they’ll respond with open wallets.

(c) Surefire Marketing, Inc.

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Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on
creating automatic, moneymaking websites…and he still
doesn’t know how to put up a website.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-
selling products. Plus his newest resource to cover 21
Psychological Hot Buttons is http://www.MindMotivators.com
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