I enjoy hiking with other business geeks. On one of these hikes, my friend John shared a marketing test he had run on social media. He wanted to see what people responded to. So he posted a bunch of ads for his agency sharing a variety of information:
- Case study style posts
- Thought leadership insight
- Interesting data
- A post where he bragged about fake vanity metrics
The last one was just for fun, but that was the one that had the highest engagement.
From his perspective, it was incredibly stupid. He thought that people would be more interested in his insight than his invented success. He figured anyone with half a brain would realize that the metrics didn’t matter.
One of my other friends, Jake, laughed and said, “People are not like you and me. They don’t think like us. When you realize this, it’s a huge mind shift. The good news is that it suddenly becomes much easier to market to them.”
Many hikes later, John shared another story about running tests on his Tinder account. He said that what got him the most dates was to start his profile by listing his annual income.
The women who responded weren’t gold diggers. They were no different than before, there were just a lot more of them. Women wanted to know that he wasn’t living on his mom’s couch before they said, “yes,” to a date.
Something to consider is whether things are simpler than they appear? Are you adding complexity to a situation that is basic?
Feaured image of Eros By Marie-Lan Nguyen – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1224971