Welcome to My Blog

Let’s say your friend recently told you about a new Netflix show.

After you heard about the show from her, you began seeing and hearing about it everywhere — on Facebook, at dinner with your parents, on your favorite radio station.

Kind of creepy, right? It might feel a bit like a conspiracy theory, like the whole world’s suddenly playing a prank on you — but it’s not. It’s known as the Bader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

There are a few ways the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon might influence your customer’s decision-making process, and understanding the psychology behind it is key to taking your marketing strategies to the next level. Let’s take a look at three ways in particular now.

Three Ways the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon Secretly Influences Your Customer’s Decisions

1. The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and Repetitive Marketing

To incorporate the effects of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon into your marketing strategy, you need to put your brand messaging out there as much as possible.

Remember, the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon can only happen if someone initially notices or learns about your product. You’ll want to start with strong ad copy, an attention-grabbing headline, and memorable images to attract your audience and introduce them to your company.

Now that their brains are selectively paying attention, you’ll want to spread your messaging to various platforms, including social media, radio stations, TV, billboards. You’ll want to choose platforms that align with your brand and customer base — the point is, you want to repeatedly appear on these platforms so your customers can notice you.

Paid online advertisements and retargeting are two effective strategies for ensuring your frequency-illusioned customers start seeing you everywhere.

Ideally, this will become a self sustaining long-term strategy. Even if your customer isn’t in the market for your product now, they’ve seen your company everywhere. Next time their friend is looking for a product like yours, your potential customer will mention you first.

2. The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and Social Proof Theory

The Social Proof Theory, first coined by psychologist Robert Cialdini, states that someone who doesn’t know how to act or think will imitate other people, or turn to peers for guidance.

In marketing, social proof is an extremely effective method for persuading customers to buy a product. Customer reviews, testimonials, and statements like “four out of five parents recommend” are critical for convincing hestitant buyers to choose one product over another.

What does this have to do with the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? Well, think about it: the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon maintains that you’ll see or hear something more if you’ve recently learned about it.

For example, let’s say you’ve recently learned about the new FitBit Charge 2.

Suddenly, you hear your coworkers talking about it. Then, you see a post on Instagram, with one of your favorite celebrities endorsing the product.

It’s likely people were talking about the FitBit Charge 2 before you heard about it, but once you did, your brain paid more attention to it. You took note of all those people raving about the product, and meanwhile, your brain chose not to pick up on that other conversation about the new Samsung Galaxy Gear Fit.

In other words, you selectively listened to people discussing the FitBit product because you’d recently learned about it, and then social proof led you to believe it was the best, and perhaps only, fitness tracker option.

As you can see, these two psychological phenomenons work together to convince someone to buy one product in particular.

To get the most out of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, you’ll want to use it hand-in-hand with The Social Proof Theory. Include reviews and testimonials on your website, as well as third-party sites like Yelp, so once your customer learns about your product, she will be subsequently convinced through social proof to buy it.

3. The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and Confirmation Bias

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon works for two reasons — selective attention, and confirmation bias.

Let’s consider the second reason for a minute. Confirmation bias is actually a phenomenal tactic to convince customers to buy from your company over your competitors. Essentially, confirmation bias means someone looks for evidence to confirm what they already believe, even when that evidence is largely neutral.

For instance, let’s say you read that right-handed people are better at math. You believe it, and whenever you meet someone who’s right-handed and good at math, you file that information away as evidence you’re correct. You’re insistent on maintaining your prior beliefs. You look for evidences that supports it, and you ignore evidence that contradicts it — like your left-handed friend who is incredible at math.

What does this have to do with marketing? A lot.

Once your customers believe something to be true about your product, they’ll look for evidence to support it and ignore evidence to the contrary. If you can convince them your product offers something unique nothing else on the market can offer, they’ll believe it, and then they’ll seek out evidence to support it.

Easier said than done though, right?

To learn how to use confirmation bias to your marketing advantage, let’s take a look at an example from the 1990’s, when Schlitz, a failing beer company, hired Claude Hopkins, a legendary man in advertising at the time.

Hopkins asked Schlitz to give him a tour of their brewery. On the tour, he saw plate-glass rooms with beer dripping over pipes, expensive wood filters that took out impurities in the beer, and rooms filled with filtered air. The pumps and pipes were cleaned twice a day to avoid contamination.

Seeing the impressive process in action, Hopkins asked Schlitz why they didn’t advertise it to people to prove their beer was better.

The Schlitz people told him, “All companies brew beer the same way.”

“Yes,” Hopkins replied, “But the first one to tell the public about this process will gain a big advantage.”

Within six months of Hopkins’ advertising campaign for Schlitz, Schlitz beer became the number one selling beer in America. Why? Because people were given evidence to believe Schlitz was purer. Once they were embedded with a confirmation bias for Schlitz, they probably tasted the beer and thought, “Yes, this is more pure.” They also avoided other beer companies’ advertisements to the contrary.

By figuring out what makes your product unique and telling potential customers, you’re creating a confirmation bias that your product is exceptional. As people seek out evidence to support their belief, the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon asserts they’ll begin seeing your product everywhere.

It’s not easy, but if you can create a compelling campaign to capture an audience’s attention and show them why your product is better than others, the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and confirmation bias can do the rest.

Tips That Agents Should Embrace

1. Promote the town, not just the house.

Home buyers want to know the good, bad, and ugly of each town to which they’re considering a move. Yet most real estate blogs simply give buyers basic demographic statistics and perhaps some flowery language about the area. Use your social media channels to give potential clients a far richer understanding of the markets you serve, letting them know the pros and cons of each neighborhood.

Many cities have a “@CityOf …” Twitter handle, which you can mention directly in your own tweets. Use these handles to promote properties you have listed in that city. City accounts on Twitter tend to be receptive to these shout-outs, and might retweet you — increasing your post’s reach to their followers.

Instagram Business accounts are also prime real estate (no pun intended) for you to post beautiful photos of the town in which your properties are listed.

2. Be yourself.

I’ve heard of many realtors who pay a ghost writer to write their marketing copy, yet this approach has its shortcomings. The copy simply doesn’t ring true; it fails to give clients a sense of who you really are. Studies show that consumers want to make a personal connection with those whom they do business with, and there’s no shortcut to writing your own authentic social media content that resembles who you are as a real estate agency.

Let your personality shine through across each social network you’re on. It’s a great way to open a dialogue with a client before they ever pick up the phone.

3. Educate your buyers.

Some of the most trying days as a real estate agent prove to be great lessons we can share with our clients. Talking about common real estate pitfalls makes your buyers smarter, giving them a smoother browsing experience and qualifying them to work with you.

Social media is the perfect outlet for this. If you have a blog, consider writing articles about home-buying tips, and use social media to promote them. Perhaps you can tweet a “Real Estate Fact of the Day,” hashtagging #realestate while you’re at it.

4. Chat with your followers.

Home buyers today expect instant responses to their questions, but where they ask those questions has changed.

Home buyers are calling real estate agents much less than they used to with questions about a property or neighborhood. They’re going online, using Facebook’s Recommendations feature, and tweeting at real estate offices on Twitter. Be ready for this outreach, answer them, and use these questions as an opportunity to start dialogue with followers who might be in the early stages of the buying process.

5. Respond to comments, good and bad.

Respond promptly and courteously to engage readers who post comments on your social media sites. One caveat: Don’t feel compelled to respond to those who post abusive comments. Social media does lure its share of online bullies, and not every remark aimed at your is worth your breath.

Resist the temptation to get into battle with your harshest critics, and acknowledge those who praise your service. A lot of people who reach out to you are simply looking for more information about a listing — or a listing they might’ve thought was still available, but has been sold or rented. Absorb their frustration and use their comment as an opportunity to pivot their interest to other properties.

Practices That Agents Should Avoid

6. Shouting about your home listings

It’s fine to let people know about the homes you’re marketing, but don’t make the house itself the primary topic of your conversation. Think about common questions home buyers and sellers ask you, and turn these into posts. Provide valuable content and you’ll keep people coming back.

7. Forgetting video

Today, 45% of people watch more than an hour’s worth of Facebook or YouTube videos a week.

It’s tempting to skip the expense of shooting and editing a video, but online video is an important element of home marketing. Think about it: Home buyers are visual buyers, and if done well, a video creates an emotional connection with them that they might not have from just a photo-based listing.

YouTube videos also improve your website’s ranking in search engines like Google — a common place where home buyers and renters start their search for a new home.

8. Assuming you’re only connecting with first-time buyers

According to a recent PDF by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 36% of home buyers in America are 37 years old or younger. About 66% of them are first-time buyers. Now here’s an even more intriguing statistic: More than 80 million Facebook users today are 45 or older.

If you think you think you’re just talking to first-time home buyers on social media, think again.

Social networks like Facebook are great places to engage “fans” and learn what they’re looking for from their agent, but keep in mind they’re not all new to the buying process. Have content suited for all levels of home-buying experience ready to serve up to your fans and followers — you never know whom you’ll be connecting with.

9. Talking to yourself

A post, link, photo, or tweet on your profile might look nice to you, but it means very little if it doesn’t resonate with the people who are following your page.

Social media is more about listening than about talking. Pay attention to what people are saying about you and your brand. Solicit and gather feedback through informal polls or via free survey services like Survey Monkey or Google Forms. This will ensure each and every piece of content you share on social media reflects the interests of your customers.

10. Ignoring your existing clients

Invite your previous buyers and sellers to join you on social media. That way, your sites becomes richer communities of shared experiences and objective advice from those who recently completed the home buying/selling journey.

At the end of the day, your followers might prove themselves to be your strongest property advocates.

 

As marketers, we’re tasked with making a living out of making a connection — but not just any connection. To scale growth and keep acquisition costs down, your time and resources need to be spent positioning your business in front of the right people, at the right time.

That’s where buyer personas come in. Well-researched buyer personas align departments — marketing, sales, and services — around actionable audience insights, creating a clear picture of exactly who you are trying to attract and serve.

But before you can begin refining your strategy to match your ideal customers’ preferences, you need to document your persona in a way that’s both visible and actionable.

Introducing Make My Persona, an interactive web tool that generates buyer personas for you after answering a series of questions about your ideal customers.

The free tool guides you through strategic questions designed to help you organize and better understand your buyer persona research. Upon completion, you’re presented with a fully customizable, shareable persona document highlighting important details about your target audience.

No more unmanageable documents filled with disconnected persona research notes. No more stressing about the format and design.

How to Use the Make My Persona Generator

1. Go to hubspot.com/make-my-persona and select your path.

We understand that buyer persona creation has several phases. That’s why we designed two unique paths for you to choose from based on what information you need.

If you’ve already done your persona research:

You can head straight to the tool to start organizing your persona data into a meaningful, customizable buyer profile.

If you haven’t done your persona research yet:

We’ve got you covered with an educational guide designed to help you learn what a buyer persona is, how to conduct research, surveys, and interviews, and how to ultimately use this data to build your own persona. Once you complete your research, you can revisit the tool to continue generating your persona.

2. Fill in details about your persona via the guided walkthrough.

Make My Persona will walk you through a seven-step persona creation flow. Each stage of the flow focuses on a different aspect of your buyer persona — from their age and education to their goals and challenges.

Note: If you’re not prepared to answer one of the questions in the walkthrough, don’t panic. You can skip ahead at any time and revisit and edit your responses later.

3. Customize your document.

Once you complete the walkthrough, you’ll enter the persona document editor. At this stage, you can customize the look, feel, and format of your persona document to align with your unique business needs and branding.

As you can see below, Make My Persona maps your buyer persona across a number of tiles — each one carrying a set of characteristics your business would need to properly engage with this person in real life. These characteristics include:

• Age
• Level of education
• Social networks used
• Industry
• Job responsibilities
• Goals or objectives
• Biggest challenges
• Whom they report to
• How/where they get information
• Tools they need to be successful

Have these questions in mind once you start creating your persona in our Make My Persona generator.

4. Download your buyer persona as a PDF or use your unique share link to collaborate with your colleagues.

Happy with your persona document? Download it as a PDF and share it far and wide across your organization.

Remember: Buyer personas aren’t just useful for marketers — everyone can benefit from having a better understanding of your ideal customer.

Here are some ideas for how to spread the word about your new persona internally:

• Email your fancy new PDF to the entire company, including your superior. In the email, explain what buyer personas are and why they’re important. Then, introduce your buyer persona using the characteristics produced in Make My Persona.
• Present your new persona(s) in your next company meeting, explain why they are important, and how this persona will help your business succeed and grow.
• Think about this persona every time you create a piece of content and ask yourself: Is it helping them achieve their goals or solve their challenges?
• Print out a few copies and put them on the walls around your office. They’ll be friendly reminders of whom you’re doing all this for.

Note: We’ll store your persona info in case you want to go back and make updates. In fact, we encourage you to think of this as a living, breathing document that you should regularly revisit as you learn more about what makes your audience tick.

Not quite ready to ship it? That’s fine, too. We’ll provide you with a collaborative link you can share with your team. This link will generate a copy of your persona which your colleagues can edit as they see fit. When you land on a variation you all agree on, you can save it as a PDF.

5. Share the tool with someone in your network.

Did you find the tool helpful? Pass on the gift of simple and quick buyer persona creation by retweeting the post below:

HubSpot just released a new and improved “Make My Persona” tool to help your team develop your buyer personas. Give it a try here 👉 https://t.co/GD9EgtFvGX pic.twitter.com/7aq4l6gcsH

— HubSpot Academy (@HubSpotAcademy)
August 14, 2018