internet marketing essentials

Would you like to read the most important psychological behavior I know to help increase your sales?

My friend Stephanie and I go to a popular sandwich shop 2 to 3 times a week. I love getting the daily special because it’s only $2.75, some days its turkey, some days its ham. Either way though, I get the $2.75 sandwich with all the veggies.

Stephanie only likes to get the “veggie sub”. How much do you think a veggie sub is? Since a veggie sub is basically any sub on their menu except without the meat, you’d think it would be as cheap as or cheaper than every sub on the menu, including the special. Nope, the veggie costs $5 every time.

But isn’t a veggie sub is just the special without the meat?

Except every time she ordered a veggie she’d go to the cashier tell them she has a veggie, and ask if they would just charge her for the special. They flat out told her they can’t do that, every single time. She’d spend a few minutes arguing her point and getting aggravated, and then she’d pay $5 for her veggie sub.

At one point she considered just ordering the veggie sub and scraping the meat off of it. But she doesn’t want the meat flavor in her sandwich.

Then I read Joe Sugarman’s book, Psychological Triggers, and it taught me this extremely powerful way to influence people. The technique:

“First get your prospect to commit to a single idea, order, or suggestion. Then your prospect is extremely susceptible to slight additional orders or suggestions.”

Stephanie’s problem was that she was ordering a veggie sandwich. She’d commit the people at the store to prepare her veggie sandwich, but then she’d try to convince them that they are really selling her the daily special. It never worked and she paid $5 for her sub every time.

Then Stephanie followed my advice. She went ahead and ordered the daily special. The employee goes ahead and starts preparing the special. The employee is committed to this order. Then Stephanie kindly just asks them to leave the meat off. Guess what? They do it. And all that’s left is her veggie sub. But when the cashier rings it up, they charge her for the special, because that is exactly what she ordered.

She now gets her veggie sub for $2.75. So what’s this have to do with improving your internet marketing?

Get your prospect to commit to becoming a customer. Concentrate on making them a customer, don’t flood them with offers and suggestions. Get them to buy one thing from you, and as soon as they commit to buying your product, it’s much much easier to suggest that they purchase something else.

This is the psychology that internet marketing experts use when they attempt to up sell or cross sell their customers. As soon as a customer commits to purchasing their product (read: They just clicked on the “Buy Now” button, you now can offer the suggestion that they upgrade to the “Gold” package with more whistles or that the shirt in your cart looks great with this pair of jeans.

Amazon, brilliant at internet marketing, understands this psychology perfectly. Every time a customer adds something to their cart they are greeted with a “Customer who bought this, also bought XYZ”.

If you don’t have an up sell or cross sell for your customers, you are leaving plenty of money on the table. Develop some offer that you can place in between your product or sales page and the actual order form. Another option is to place the up sell or cross sell on your thank you page after they’ve completed the purchase.

Your customer is even more committed to you and your suggestions if they’ve already given you their payment information! At this point, you could even suggest someone else’s product you enjoy and make an affiliate commission.

So go out and try this internet marketing technique. Feel free to use it at a famous sandwich shop too.