The Liking Authority on  Webinars, Brownies, Cialdini’s Influence & Reciprocity

I like a story with a happy ending.  I like a story that demonstrates the simplest of human behaviors – liking.  I like a story that turns liking into reciprocity via smart marketing.  I like a story that shows when you appreciate your customers it pays off. 

Sean Marlarkey knows that when you show some appreciation it can save your sale,  helps eliminate refunds, and becomes a great story.

Cialdini’s Influence book starts with Reciprocity.  An unexpected gift like a brownie or cookie many make a reluctant customer less likely to ask for a refund. 

You can leverage reciprocity by providing tremendous value and teaching your prospective customer something useful in your webinar.  When conducting a webinar, add value to your webinar participant’s life or business needs long before you even start to sell anything.  In addition to giving away free bonuses for all participants during your webinar, a sweet surprise in the mail creates greater feelings of connection with your customer.

Using webinars, social media, and live events to maximize your sales can be achieved through:

• Visibility, because webinars create a place to get to know you and social media is perfect advertising beforehand and afterwards connect to new customers.
• Reputation, because what starts with an online conversation and continues in social forums, groups and builds in the live event.
• Proximity, because webinars give the feeling of participation with potential customers to shorten the sale. This is solidified in a live in-person event.
• Context, because the people who like specific subject matter through targeted ads, pages, and social conversation on product/service oriented webinars are engaging the subject matter you are all interested in. Polls, questions, hands up on webinars create participation and a feeling of being part of the social group related to a specific subject.
• Recommendation, because there are numerous opportunities to see other people’s testimonials on webinars and at live events to help you choose your next purchase.
• Customer care, because that’s where people ask for help or complain about their  experiences. It’s the best place to demonstrate your love for your clients. You’ll find that customers and raving fans who are not even paying customers will tweet, comment and even write blog posts about stories they like.

In the end, your reputation is about how you make people feel.  That extra step of sending a sweet gift is memorable.  That’s where the real transactions take place, the “transactional reciprocity”, in the Relationship Riches™ that you create with your customers so that in the case of Sean’s customer, after 60 days of not taking action, he decided not to ask for a refund all because his taste buds still remembered the sweet, unexpected gift of brownies that came with his purchase. 

Brownies are definitely one way to go.  But homemade chocolate chip cookies are better, says, Bart Smith. 

Marketer Bart Smith regularly sent his homemade chocolate chip cookies to clients, vendors and gave them out at his speaking events.  Everyone remembered Bart and his cookies.   The demand for his cookies became so great that has a side business selling his delicious cookies.

When you capitalize on human nature and you give without the expectation of something in return, in the long run it pays off.  It has been said that paradoxically, it is in helping others without expecting reciprocity in return that we invoke the power of reciprocity. The path to reciprocity is indirect: reciprocity ensues from the social capital built by making contributions to others… Relationship Riches!

Reciprocity is always there just waiting for an opportunity to show up in the form of a testimonial, fan mail, repeat business, recommendation, positive comment on social media, and maybe even your videos go viral!

#LikesUP for brownies, cookies, and surprise gifts

#LikesUP for the rule of reciprocity