I want you to think long and hard about the time you last made a commercial decision. It could be a big decision, like the time you made an offer on your first house, or it could be a small decision, like last week, when you were deciding what brand of beer to buy at the bar.  

Chances are that whatever decision you made, you weighed up the pro’s and con’s, considered the financial implications, and acted accordingly, safe in the knowledge that you’d made the right, rational choice.

Except... you probably didn’t...

You see, you’re not nearly as rational as you think you are. That’s not an insult. Neither am I.  

In fact, humanity as a whole is pretty lousy at making considered choices.  So much so that there’s a whole academic discipline, known as Behavioural Economics, dedicated to the subject (for those looking to get a decent grounding I can’t recommend highly enough Prof Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational).  

Riding roughshod over homo-economicus of the nineteenth century, Behavioural Economics introduces the concept of judgemental heuristics; cognitive rules of thumb, that we use for all but the most simplistic of decision making processes.  

These heuristics are invaluable in day to day functioning, enabling decisions to be reached quickly within complex environments such as the stock market, speed dating nights, or driving on the M25 in rush hour, without the need for complex calculations or methodologies.  

Heuristic theory suggests that the rational, considered economic decision maker that underpins traditional economic studies is a myth, replaced by humanity as a more emotive beast; responding to mental shortcuts, guesses, and semantic influence.

Most marketers understand heuristics, if not academically, then at least on an instinctive level.

We use TripAdvisor ratings to trigger social proof heuristics (why make up your own mind when others can do it for you?), create advertising campaigns with stars in white lab coats to trip the authority heuristic, and give away free shampoo samples to activate the reciprocity heuristic (which, incidentally, is why you should never accept flowers from Hare Krishnas in airports).  

But how do heuristics translate into ecommerce?  Surely you can’t use a heuristic to persuade your customers to spend more online?

Turns out you can.

This July I was lucky enough to be able to run an experiment testing the power of the anchoring heuristic.  

The heuristic, originally identified by Professors Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in their 1974 paper, Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases, subconsciously steers human decisions towards a numeric anchor in times of uncertainty, whether the anchor is relevant to their choices or not.  

You may not, for instance, be surprised to learn that exposure to a £20,000 handbag on your way into a flagship Gucci store tends to make customers more receptive to spending £200 on a T shirt once inside (the T shirt, by comparison, comes off as a veritable bargain).  

You might however be surprised to learn that even seemingly irrelevant anchors, such as telephone numbers or social security numbers can have a profound influence on customer spend.

So how does this translate online?

Bateaux London was about to launch a new premium package online.  

This new package (essentially their premium dinner package product, but with some very nice Champagne included) had a significantly higher price point than the next alternative down the price scale; providing me with the perfect opportunity to investigate online anchoring in practice.  

If the theory were to hold true, exposure to this new product (the anchor) should result in an increase in average customer spend per transaction, even once the sales of the new product had been factored out of the results.  

Interestingly, this should not just be the case for other, similar, dinner packages, but also for very different product ranges, like their tea and lunch packages.  

The experiment, kindly built by S-Digital, was run as simple A/B/C test, with web users being presented one of three views.

1. The control - participants were not exposed to the anchor. 
2. The anchor – participants were exposed to the anchor product.
3. The anchor plus – participant’s exposure to the anchor product was increased through the use of gold highlights around the anchor.  

The results were, quite frankly, astounding. Although the anchor product itself did not sell particularly well, there was a marked increase in average spend per transaction across the full product range.

Simply from exposing customers to the anchor product, Bateaux saw an average transaction value increase of 11% in dinner package sales, but even more significantly, a 26% increase in lunch and tea package sales.

Needless to say the new product has become a permanent fixture.

But this example is just the tip of the iceberg of what can be achieved through application of heuristic theory online.  

If I’ve whetted your appetite and you want to learn more about the power of heuristics, you can join me at Econsultancy's Festival of Marketing in October, where I will be speaking at Funnel and presenting my full findings, and a lot more besides, on the Engage stage. 

See you there....

With 2014 right around the corner, Instagram has added one new feature and is rumored to be considering another one. Recently, Instagram gained support from Soldsie that allows businesses to sell products via the popular photo and video sharing social network. In addition, sources report that Instagram has a private messaging feature in the works, rumored to come out with the app’s next update sometime before 2014. With these new features in play, experts believe that Instagram could raise competition with Snapchat, the 10-second photo sharing service that is widely popular amongst kids and teens.

Soldsie Support

In a past post, I discussed how the launch of ads on Instagram was met with criticism from businesses because they could not be monetized with affiliate links. Now, businesses have a new way to monetize on Instagram – direct sales through Soldsie. Soldsie, which has allowed businesses to sell on Facebook for some time, has now added Instagram support that enables users to simply purchase through comments. A company posts a photo of an item for sale, and when a user comments “sold” and adds their email address, they can instantly purchase the item. An invoice will automatically be sent to the buyer through email, and another option directs users to a form that is hosted by Soldsie.

 

While selling on Instagram was made possible in the past by Soldsie competitor Chipify, Soldsie’s service was designed for small to mid-sized businesses that are hosting daily and weekly sales. This means that Soldsie support is a huge benefit for small businesses looking for a simple e-commerce solution. In beta testing, one company received 72 orders during the first day, and another business saw an average of $1,000 in sales each day. While the beta tests were small in scale, they show that sales on Instagram have serious potential for businesses. To learn how to use Soldsie on Instagram, visit the guide on Soldsie’s support center.

Private Messaging?

Another new feature that may be in Instagram’s future is private messaging. First reported by GigaOm, sources report that private messaging may be available in the next Instagram update, which is expected before 2014. Group messaging will also be a possible feature. Instagram has not made a comment on this rumor, but Mashable suspects that this feature may allow users to share photos with specific friends without having to post them publicly.

Raising the Competition

Experts are noting that the addition of this private messaging feature could help Instagram pull ahead in competition with Snapchat. GigaOm adds that the timing for implementing this new feature would be perfect with the holidays coming up. Many people will receive new mobile devices for the holidays, and private messaging could draw them to Instagram versus Snapchat or even Vine, another major competitor. However, with the trend in social media shifting more toward single-service apps, could the addition of this new messaging feature backfire? I predict that so long as Instagram continues to focus on photo and video sharing, adding private messaging will not detract from the appeal of this social network.
 

Will your brand take advantage of Soldsie support for Instagram?


Elizabeth K is a valued contributor to Business 2 Community
 

Famed for their always-on approach to social media, mobile technology and obsession with celebrity culture, our study of 2,000 17- to 31-year-olds exposes a different picture, says Bite's Justin Pearse.

Marketers have a reductive habit of labelling each new generation with easy-to-digest labels and generalisations. There are of course some sweeping generalisations that are both useful and based on some large grains of truth.

As a member of Generation X, indelibly associated with Douglas Copeland in my mind, I certainly displayed many of the common clichés.

Generation Y, more commonly known as the Millennial generation, seem however laden with far more broad-brush labels and commonly held projected beliefs than I ever was. In fact a now slightly infamous Time front cover feature this year branded them the "Me Me Me Generation", who lived their lives through screens – mobile, tablet or PC – and felt entitled to success.

Another recent report labelled Generation Y managers as "entitled", scoring significantly low as hard-working team players.

There's no doubt the digital revolution is the root cause of much of the clichéd beliefs around Millennials. This is the first generation of people who have grown up with the internet. For Millennials, born after 1981 and before 2004, technologies such as mobile phones, games consoles and the full gamut of connected devices, have always been part of their lives.

For non digital natives looking on in wonder, it is even easier to think of Millennials as a homogenous group. It's a truism that Millennials spend their lives on social media, are obsessed with fame and celebrity, and far more interested in their mobile phone than picking up a book.

A large new piece of research however, The Millennial Index, carried out by Bite and Redshift Research, exploded a lot of the myth surrounding this generation, providing a refreshingly different view of their behaviour, motivations and values.

The research was based on interviews with 2,000 Millennials in the US and UK in August, on their use of digital media, with 144 detailed questions. No research is perfect, but this was a robust study that unearthed some surprising findings.

It's obvious Millennials are big social media users. However, it's far from true they spend all their lives on the likes of Facebook and Twitter. The Millennial Index report in fact found only 41% spend more than three hours a week on Facebook and 29% spend more than three hours on YouTube.

There is no denying Facebook's hugely powerful position in people's lives today. However, these results show that any brand happy to pour its entire marketing budget into social media – and there have been many of those in recent years – is in danger of missing a trick.

Maybe they're all on Twitter instead? Actually, 43% aren't even on Twitter at all. It turned out that this "social media-mad" generation spends more time on work or study related forums and user groups than on services such as Tumblr, Instagram or Pinterest.

Social media is clearly an incredibly important part of this generation’s daily life. But it's only one part. Again, it's so important not to be blindsided by the dizzying explosion of digital media in this generation's lives to believe it is all consuming.

It certainly doesn’t seem to be replacing the more traditional forms of entertainment many bemoan have been eclipsed by the digital alternatives. Games and other forms of digital entertainment naturally scored high among the interests of Millennials. Refreshingly, certainly for me, books remained important. While 26% of female Millennials chose games as one of their most important hobbies, almost three times as many, 61%, said they spent more time reading books.

When they do put down that book to play games or other type of digital fun, we assume their favourite, indeed increasingly only way to do this is via mobile. Not entirely true, it turned out. It is impossible to argue against the dramatic rise of the mobile internet. We know mobile is globally becoming a prime means of accessing the internet. The mobile-first strategy announcements that have become a flood from brands across the board do have their genesis in fact.

However, once again, it’s dangerous to believe an entire generation has already made this momentous shift. The Millennial Index report found that 65% still spend more time accessing the internet via a laptop or PC rather than via their smartphone or tablet.

There is no doubt this fascinating generation will continue to be the focus of studies and surveys attempting to understand how the incredible technological advances we have experienced in digital media are both causing and enabling behaviour change.

The Millennial Index, the findings of which I've only touched on here, will itself be a long-term study into this generation. What is clear though, is the danger of simply throwing this entire generation into one simplistic digital bucket.

Justin Pearse is head of marketing at Bite Communications

If there’s one message that gets drummed into the heads of every participant on every sales training course, it’s “make sure you’re talking to the decision-maker”. At face value, this seems like sound advice. But the reality is often rather more complex.

To start with, the very idea that there is a likely to be a single decision-maker in any high value complex B2B buying process is flawed. Sure, it can still occasionally happen in exceptional circumstances where one powerful individual can impose their will over others (assuming they want to).

The drive for consensus

However, all the evidence points to increasingly complex B2B buying decision processes. More stakeholders are actively involved than in years gone by and organisations are inclined to drive for consensus and to take an increasingly risk-averse approach to decision-making

There may, in fact, be no one individual that has the power to say “yes” on their own, but there are likely to a significant number of powerful players that have the ability to say “no” or “not now”. This makes a decision to stick with the status quo and do nothing a very common outcome.

The danger of confusing championship with influence

Traditional sales training methodologies suggest that you need to find a Champion or Coach within your prospect that is prepared to provide you with privileged information and help you build your case. But it’s far too easy (and very dangerous) to confuse championship with influence.

It’s critical that you connect with contacts that are willing and able to influence their colleagues on the decision making team, and who are expert at the politics of making change happen within their organisation. You need to find the people who can walk the walk as well as talking the talk.

You need to identify - and identify with - the people who are capable of leading their colleagues on the difficult journey that may be required to make the right decision, to make the decision stick, and to implement the chosen solution despite potential pitfalls.

Mobilising the decision-shapers

This calls for a particular breed of person. Their power does not just come from their position on an organisation chart - their power comes from the respect they have earned from their colleagues as being a “safe pair of hands”. They are the people their colleagues turn to for advice.

As the authors of The Challenger Sale pointed out in a recent Harvard Business Review article, these people are mobilisers - and in an uncertain and complex world, if your putative champion isn’t a mobiliser, you had better think again about forecasting that deal with any sort of confidence.

Spotting the mobilisers

So how can you spot these mobilisers? They often reveal themselves in their response to some carefully targeted questions. These questions are, by the way, all predicated on the assumption that you have identified an issue that appears to be important. You might, for example, ask your contact:

• • What impact is this issue having on the rest of the organisation?
  • How has the organisation tried to address the issue before?
  • Why is now the right time to deal with the issue?
  • What other projects might compete for the same resources?
  • What would happen if nothing is done about the issue?
  • Who else within the organisation is affected?
  • How is the issue affecting them?
  • How are decisions like this usually made?
  • What was the most recent example? What was the outcome?
  • What role did you play in the decision? Who else played a key part? Who did you have to convince?
  • What usually makes the difference as to whether projects like this go ahead?

I’ve found that questions like this fairly quickly flush out whether your contact is in command of their brief, whether they understand the impact of the issue, whether they appear to really understand how decisions are made in their organisation, and whether they come across as a true mobiliser.

Mastering the politics

If they can’t - for example - tell you who else is affected and why, and won’t help you gain access to them, or if they appear vague about how decision-making politics get played out in their organisation, you can probably safely assume that you are not talking to a mobiliser (or a decision-maker).

In today’s complex B2B buying environment, narrowly focusing on the decision-maker is a losing strategy. Instead, you need to identify all the decision-shapers across the organisation and understand what’s in it for them. And, rather than a champion, you need to find a mobiliser that can help you reach them all.

Final thought: I recommend you reflect on all your current forecast opportunities. Have you identified and reached all the decision-shapers? And have you got a champion who is acting like a proven mobiliser? If not, I suggest you prepare your excuses for the boss.

Post by: Bob Apollo of Inflexion-Point | @bobapollo | LinkedIn

"All corporations, organizations, CEOs and boards I know are struggling to define their optimal presence on social media," says Davia Temin, CEO of Temin and Company. "The field is changing so rapidly, and there are so many conflicting ideas of how to best deploy resources that very few know the best way to go. And people are making mistakes. We created this series of deep-dive articles on corporate use of social media to explore not only best practices, but worst practices – not only the 'do's' but the 'don'ts' – in this emerging field."

"The trillion dollar question is 'How do organizations think about communicating to the public now that the public communicates back?'" says Ms. Temin and her co-author,Ian Anderson, Social Media Strategist at Temin and Company. Each article in the series answers this question from a different focus. Most popular to date have been #1: Don't Ignore Your Best Co-Branding Opportunity – Your Employees, trending on the Harvard Business Review LinkedIn group, and the most recent article, #5: Don't Waste Money – Make Your Social Media Advertising Smarter, More Original, More Effective, a new look at advertising creativity on social media – what works, what doesn't, and what the future holds.

"A whole new advertising art form is arising, and that is where the future really lies,"the authors say in Don't #5. "The public does seem to accept with open arms ads on social media that demonstrate real creative quality, and the ability to amuse, entertain, or add value to our lives. These ads do not need to be 'native ads' that pretend they are not advertising. Instead they can harness 'native creativity' that is available because of the medium, but they can do so openly."

Ms. Temin is a contributor to Forbes.com, with a column on "Reputation Matters." Two years ago, she and Mr. Anderson introduced a popular series of articles called, "10 Don'ts of Corporate Social Media" in her column. "So much has changed since then that we decided to create a whole new series, '10 MORE Don'ts of Corporate Social Media,' to capture the latest developments, and help organizations fend off the worst ideas out there, as well as embrace the best," she states.

A list of articles to date follows:

• Introducing "10 MORE Don'ts of Corporate Social Media": "Boards are putting social media on their agendas, as a reputational risk and opportunity. CEOs are puzzling over how to lead and evaluate their companies' efforts, as well as debating what their own social media profile should be. Executive Committees are reviewing metrics and messaging, and still wondering which are meaningful..." 
• #1: Don't Ignore Your Best Co-Branding Opportunity – Your Employees: "We all know employees can be both brand ambassadors and brand detractors. But what we haven't wrapped our heads around is that they are also our most important co-branding opportunity..."
• #2: Don't Confuse 'Thought Leadership' with 'Branded Content' or 'Native Advertising':"Thought leadership, branded content, content marketing, and native advertising are all stops along the continuum of how ideas are expressed, and products are marketed, over the Internet..."
• #3: Don't Waste Your Time(line) – Maximizing Your Own Viral Potential for Thought Leadership: "Thought leadership – the purest form of content – is a valuable currency on social media. Done innovatively, strategically, and well, it can build brand loyalty for organizations and individuals, and help to attract new clients. Done poorly or carelessly, it can do the exact opposite, and turn off these same customers..."  
• #4: Don't Think You're Anonymous – Unless You're Really Anonymous: "These days we seem to be ambivalent – or to want it all: privacy when it suits us; transparency, when it feels right; anonymity when we can choose it; but accountability when others are posting anonymously about us, or those things we care about..."
• #5: Don't Waste Money – Make Your Social Media Advertising Smarter, More Original, More Effective: "On social media, originality in advertising actually has found a new canvas, a new playground to explore. And the profession itself is being redesigned in real time..."

The series of "Don'ts" will continue throughout the month, capped off by the authors' most important "Do" of corporate social media, and an infographic that will capture the entire series, at the very beginning of January.

"Our goal is to step away from the usual analysis, and provide corporate and organizational leaders and their teams with some new thinking, new advice, and new possibilities, as they hone their social media strategies for 2014, and beyond," says Ms. Temin.

For more information, please contact Trang Mar or Lily Rossow-Greenberg of Temin and Company at 212-588-8788 or news@temin.co.

About Temin and Company Temin and Company Incorporated (www.teminandcompany.com) creates, enhances, and saves reputations. The firm helps corporations, professional services firms, and other institutions define and strengthen their public image – and their bottom line – through strategic marketing, branding, media relations, thought leadership, social media, speaker and media coaching, financial communications, and crisis management.

Clients include the leaders of some of the world's largest and most well-known corporations, financial institutions, pharma and biotech companies, law firms, consulting firms, colleges and universities, publishing houses, venture capital funds, authors, and politicians.

SOURCE Temin and Company, Incorporated