By Imrana Khan
Recently, I got hold of Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness, a bestselling book written by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. While reading the book, I realized that modern marketeers can draw many important messages from it. Before we dive into the key learning, let’s first understand the key terminologies that form its foundation.
a) Nudge: An ‘influence’, which is offered when it is “most likely to help and least likely to conflict harm” according the authors.
b) Choice architects: People who organize “the context in which people make decisions.”
c) Libertarian Paternalism: The method through which ‘choice architects’ “try to influence people’s behaviour in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better.”
Please note that the authors encourage good nudges. Assuming that we all are offering and promoting the best solutions to our customers’ key problems, here is the list of top 3 learning for B2B marketeers:
1) Beat competition with a nudge: Imagine your competitors and you are competing for a deal. All of a sudden you nudge it in your favor with contextualized assets. For instance, rather than using a boring presentation to explain the buy-side people about your global presence during client visit, you can leverage new-age technologies such as VR to bring your key locations to the customers. At the same time, you run a display campaign promoting a customer interview and testimonial on LinkedIn to target key employees of the customer. Content marketing seems to be the best way of nudging the decisions of your buyers. Similarly, there are various other ways you can nudge buyers if you have the best solution to offer to the buyer dealing with a problem.
2) Increase newsletter subscribers with a nudge: In the book, the authors have explained how a default option can nudge the desired results. Marketeers can act as ‘choice architects’ i.e. people who design the way people choose something and can leverage or not leverage default buttons as a nudge. If you wish to increase the number of newsletter subscribers,you need to think whether or not you should make it a default selection for every person who registers on your website. Also, you need to be considerate about the fact that if you keep the newsletter default subscription on, then you may see sudden increase in the number of subscribers but it will go down with time. To deal with such a scenario, you need to think of another nudge that will help the newsletter subscribers continue with the subscription. Do not forget to give your subscribers their easy-to-handle opt-out rights.
3) Handle objections with a nudge: Being a marketeer, you have to handle many stakeholders at a time. Not always, all stakeholders will agree with your project(s) or views. How would you handle such a situation then? You will nudge. For instance, leverage your supporters who may be able to nudge the thoughts of your contrarians. Your contrarians may listen to your supporters differently and eventually may get convinced with your point as long as it is beneficial for you, your company, and people around you.
These are just a few ways to use the nudge theory to succeed as a marketeer. I would strongly recommend this book Nudge to every marketeer. It’s a must read.
Photo by Atlas Green on Unsplash
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