This post will cover the first of Robert Cialdini’s 6 Weapons of Influence:  Reciprocity.

The basic idea here is that if someone does a favor for you, you’re psychologically “hardwired” to return the favor.  In his book, Cialdini introduces this topic with a re-cap of an experiment a University Professor conducted:

The professor sent Christmas cards to a bunch of random people.  He originally expected get maybe one or two responses, he didn’t fathom he’d get what he did: “holiday cards addressed to him came pouring back from the people who had never met nor heard of him.  The great majority of those who returned a card never inquired into the identity of the unknown professor”.

The card recipients simply followed the “hard wiring” of their brains and returned a favor done unto them.

So let’s see how this psychological law of Reciprocity can be put into effect on a landing page…

eHarmony.com

Check out the screen cap below.  What’s the first thing you notice (besides the obnoxiously happy couple)?

An offer for a “Free” service!

We’re all smart enough to realize that eHarmony isn’t doing this out of the kindness of their match-making hearts.

Oh no no no…this is an attempt to exploit the Reciprocity principle:  Get people in the door with a free offer to meet the man or woman of their dreams, and then hit them up for cash once they think they’ve found that person.

It’s subtle in the sense that they’re not coming right out and saying, “Hey we gave you access for free…do us one in return and fork over your credit card number!”.  But they let you know up front that this is a free way to find your soul mate, that no credit card is necessary, etc.  They’re tearing down your built in defense mechanisms.

This is all part of eHarmony’s carefully designed landing page and sales funnel:  Give away part of their service for free, get someone’s email address, and continuously pitch them to join as a paying member.  It all starts with the free offer and that relies on the Reciprocity principle.

SouthBeachDiet.com

Ok, so maybe love starved consumers are easier to sell.  Maybe it’s not the Reciprocity principle coming into play, maybe it’s a guy or gal that simply needs a date…badly.

So let’s take a look at another site:  SouthBeachDiet.com.

You’d think that on a diet site, the first thing they’d want visitors to see are pictures of super-skinny models or dramatic “Before & After” photos.  That would really get people excited about purchasing some products, right?

Wrong.

The first thing you see in the screen cap below is a big red arrow pointing to a form on the right side of the page.

And that form is a prompt for a  “Free Diet Profile”.  The call-to-action button even has the word “free” in it:  “Free Profile Results”.

Again, a carefully designed marketing funnel that begins with an offer for something free in exchange for an email address (and ultimately a purchase).

WebsiteGrader.com

Ok fine, maybe dating and dieting are such emotional and personal experiences that people can’t help but get sold on offers like these (whether or not they got something for free up front).

What about something less emotional and more along the lines of cold, calculated business decisions?

Would the Reciprocity principle work on a savvy CEO looking for a new marketing vendor?

You might be shaking your head saying “No way!” right now, but check out WebSiteGrader.com and then tell me what you think.

These guys offer you a free SEO analysis of your site.  They even give you a “score”.

Out of the kindness of their hearts?

Hell no!

Website Grader is owned by the marketing company, HubSpot.  And you can bet this is yet another carefully designed funnel that leverages the Reciprocity principle.  Check out the other “Grader” websites they own:



Bottom Line - Reciprocity is a Powerful Weapon

Industry, product, etc., it doesn’t matter — the psychological law of reciprocity can be used in any marketing funnel or landing page design to make it more effective.

However, this doesn’t mean you should start offering free cups of coffee to visitors on your site and expect them to sign up for your paid product.  There are some additional rules of thumb to employ as you think about your “freebie” offer:

1.  Make sure your free offer relates directly to your core product offering.  A free “diet profile” for a diet system is a logical way to upsell someone (e.g. “Oh look, you’re kind of fat, how about you buy our fat burning system today!?”).  Same goes for SEO services — “Oh wow, your website has a SUPER LOW SEO score…we can help with that!”. 

2.  Don’t give away something of greater value than your core product offering.  I doubt many people would make this mistake, but I have seen it happen.  A buddy of mine was offering a free telephone consultation when he was first getting his business off the ground.  And while that worked when he only had 1 - 2 leads trickling in per day, it became cost prohibitive (from an opportunity cost perspective) when he had 50 new leads coming in per day.

3.  Please be sure that whatever you’re giving away actually adds value to the user.  Don’t think that simply because it’s free they’ll find value in it — sometimes things are free because they suck and folks don’t find it to be valuable enough to pay for it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it’s rare that any of Cialdini’s weapons work alone.  As you’ll see, the Reciprocity principle employed by eHarmony also ties in with the next weapon we’ll examine: Commitment and Consistency!