Using ego to engage
Ego might be a dirty word, but it’s also a mighty strong sales technique.
Here’s how I fell for it.
Academia, a website housing academic papers across a broad range of fields and journals, sent me this tantalising email.
Game on! Let’s see who’s talking about me!
To access my mentions, I needed to subscribe to their Premium service, which I could do by joining a $1 trial.
So far, so good. I’m one click away from seeing who thinks I’m clever.
But no.
Because trying to search my mentions was absolutely impossible. 40 minutes later, I gave up trying to find any mention of Bri Williams by someone interested in Strategic Management.
Having such a frustrating and disappointing experience poisoned me against Academia and thwarted any chance they’d get me to stick around after the trial expired.
They inadvertently demonstrated how poor their search function was, undermining any confidence I had in being able to find a research paper in their archives.
Two lessons from Academia’s approach:
- Their strategy to encourage upgrade from free to premium was exactly right. There’s nothing more interesting than ourselves (hello, personalised Coke can), and giving people personalised insights, access or products is a compelling proposition.
- Product functionality has to deliver on your promise. Customers will only chase the dangled carrot for so long before they give up and resent their time being wasted.
If you want to avoid mistakes like this and improve conversion, I show you how in my Small Business Program, Just Do This.
