Consumer Psychology with Nathan Yeung – Tech Product Marketing Consumers Can`t Resist

Welcome back to Mastering Test Growth, where we interview industry experts to bring you actionable insights and inspiring stories. I'm your host, Mike, and today we're talking about consumer psychology. Did you ever bought something in a day 2 days, maybe a week later, you go, why did I buy this? Joining us today is Nathan Young. He's a seasoned fractional CMO with a keen interest on how consumer psychology can drive marketing success in the tech industry. Nathan has led many teams, many campaigns, utilizing his deep understanding of consumer behavior to enhance engagement and drive growth across various sectors. Before we jump in though, to our listeners, if you find value in the show, please subscribe, leave us a comment, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, or wherever you're tuning in from. Okay, let's get started. Nathan, it's great to have you on the show.

Thank you. Mike, thanks for accommodating. I know that's been a little bit of a scheduling error for us.

It was a little bit, but I really wanted to have a chat about consumer psychology and You being the expert, absolutely fine. So Nathan, if I say mastering tech growth, what comes to your mind?

I think when it comes to mastering tech growth is, is just recognize that people are not— you're in technology, and that means if you're building your company, you're a subject matter expertise expert, right? And that really means that you know more about solving, hopefully solving their problem through tech than they do. And ultimately you have to recognize that your consumer, your potential customer, your, your buying consortium, they're inherently lazy. And they're lazy not because they choose to be lazy, they're lazy for multiple reasons. They're in, you know, innately lazy just because that's how we're, you know, kind of built. We were built to conserve energy. The second thing is, is that most likely your B2B buyer doesn't have a ton of time to understand the level of tech that you know. They just want to have trust that you can solve their problem better than they can. And so when I think about mastering tech growth, you have to recognize that your customers are lazy and you have to do everything you can to help solve and educate how you solve that problem in various different forms of marketing.

Okay. So If I would rephrase this and I would go like this, you can choose only one factor which has the most influence in any tech venture growth. Would that be marketing then, or would it be something else?

That's a great question. And I suppose I'm trying to think of any other department could drive network effects, and I suppose sales could. So that's why I don't want to just say marketing. But, you know, if you were to ask me what's the number one thing you want to do to drive growth. It's, it's, it's to build a network effect. And if you could find a way, whether what that could be through sales and being hyper, hyper-specific, but likely, more likely through marketing, that, that I think is the key to success in literally every single business I've ever worked with that is successful. Having network effects and network effects takes hyper-specificity, lots of focus. And when you do that, you do very well. Okay.

So let's take our show. Let's take Mastering Tech Growth as an example and wrap it in the consumer psychology. And you give us, you know, advice of how do we reach a network effect, you know, how do we go to the market. So maybe to kick us off, that would be my first question is you have an extensive and deep experience in B2B. SaaS platforms, right? So imagine any of your maybe use cases where you had a good success by applying the understanding of consumer psychology to drive marketing. Like, can you give us a, like, a use case, a story where, where that really shined?

I can give you a use case actually of a subsidiary of a company that essentially we work for. There. We work for a large manufacturing SaaS company, so they deal with operational excellence software. And their subsidiary a long time ago started a strategy, which is a strategy that is, I'm going to say, a tough pill to swallow, right? A lot of, a lot of companies want your short-term growth, and, and that, you know, means spending money on digital ads, spending money on things like— they sponsored school programs.

Okay.

And what was beautiful about sponsoring school programs was you're getting a captive audience because us marketers, as I just said, we're being forced into trying to drive short-term results. So we're not even talking to students, right? We're not talking to anyone that's a student because they're not a decision maker. Now, what has ended up happening was they have basically created this incredible mid to long-term strategy where they have a constant stream of engineers coming out of these schools fully educated on their system. That's a network effect. That's where you're getting people in a, in a confined area, AKA that class, that all know your software by name. Okay. And they're going out into the market and they're working at these companies. They inherently get a ton of inbound from that, and that's because when you have 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 people saying, hey, we use X and— I'm sorry, I can't name the company because I don't want to give away trade secrets. But if they come out and they name that company, they're going to get the sale. It's almost impossible not to get the sale. And so that's like a beautiful example of a network effect. Now I can give another example where someone's going to market And we have a client that's going to market in Italy and they had a $200,000 budget and they said, well, we're gonna go to go-to-market in all of Italy. And I said, why are you doing that? And, uh, they said, well, you know, we have this budget, we, we want to get growth and blah, blah, blah. And I said to them, I was like, no, this is what you're gonna do. You're gonna go sit down with your 3 founders. You're gonna identify the highest concentration of people in a single category that's amongst your first and primary network, your, your arm's length network. You're going to identify which network you have the most of. Then you're going to identify regionally where you have the most of, and you're going to get them to become customers first. And then we're going to take your digital ad spend and we're going to focus it within that city. Because again, what I'm trying to do is— it's great to have a customer from the north side of Italy and the south side of Italy, but at the end of the day, if those two customers don't know each other, you're not getting actually any additional impact from them. I'd much prefer you get 4 customers paying half the price in the same city than you getting 2 customers on completely opposite sides of the earth paying full price. Because at the end of the day, they as customers don't necessarily help you. You can argue that there's referral programs and all that, but what you're trying to get is a community to bring up your name. Um, and so one of the things that I always talk about in general marketing is if you can drive conversation, you win. And so a network effect is essentially what you're trying to get in order for you to compoundly get more conversation started about you. And if you can do that, you naturally get sales. So I think that to me is like the number one thing that absolutely crushes sales. And you see that in a lot of Gen Z brands where community-led growth is literally what's building them. And that's all network effect.

Mm-hmm. So I love these, those two examples, Nathan. So what I picked from one, and I don't think it's applicable to everybody, you know, probably not all the businesses can, you know, go to schools and and make relationships. But one thing which I picked from this is a mid-to-long strategy. So when we're building these network effect strategies or marketing strategies, should we actually concentrate on the mid-to-long successes? Because you mentioned like a short-term strategies, and you know, it was a little bit of like a salty element over there, like, hmm, I don't like it. Like mid-to-long is a better approach. Is that your personal belief, or is this, um, sort of like a proven element.

Oh, it's— I think it's a proven element. Um, but I also recognize the challenges of just reality, right? The reality is, is that there are 3 main constraints. There's human capital constraints, there's financial constraints, and there's time constraints. And a lot of companies have a lot of time constraint, um, which means they need results tomorrow, not, not in a year from now.

Like yesterday.

Yeah, or yesterday, right? And so I recognize, of course, I think mid to long-term strategies are the way to go because they're the ones that create competitive advantages in my opinion, right? They're the ones that make it much more difficult for competitors to encroach in your market. And when you do short-term, there's a reason it's called short-term. It's because it's easy to execute, or I wouldn't say easy. It doesn't require a lot of human time, financial capital to execute. It takes some sort of those, but it's something that anyone can do. And so essentially that just means it's more competitive. And if it's more competitive, it's likely more expensive and it's more expensive, it likely is going to drive up your cost per acquisition. And so that's why, again, if we think about the whole laziness factor of who we are as people, we as CEOs or founders or or entrepreneurs are going to be lazy because we want that short-term impact, right? We are in a— we are definitely being bred in a lifestyle or nurtured in a lifestyle where we want immediacy. You know, overnight shipping is a thing. It's a requirement, right? We're getting to that point in life where we expect things tomorrow all the time in every aspect of our life. So I can understand why companies are hesitant. But of course, mid to long term, search engine optimization has historically always been one of the cheapest forms of acquisition, but very few companies really invest a lot of it. You know, I'll give you a great example. One of my clients invests, like, I'm gonna say, I'll give a number, let's just call it more than $20,000 a month on SEO. And that's not content building, that's just SEO strategy and backlinking and outbound backlinking. Like, I don't think some companies understand the value of that and how much it compounds as it grows.

It's like, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a green asset, isn't it? Like, once you do that, once you get the respect from Google and search engines and content and probably people finding you, maybe subscribing to your newsletter, you have ability to talk with your customers just like right there through the emails. And it does take time though. And now we're talking about SEO, we're drifting a little bit from consumer psychology, but I will add this as well. So we as a podcast show, you know, we talk with marketing companies as well, and we've been told, you know, the people who make money from podcasts, they play the long game. You know, they effectively invest in the show, in the guests, in putting the show online and actually building content around the show and doing SEO game. So if you look at success, you know, it's going to be a couple of years forward where the ones which are not making money or making a lot less money, they actually play social media games where, you know, it's like video shorts, quick advice, you know, just buying subscribers. That's why I digged into this because From my perspective, and I think what you said as well, is that if you're doing a short-term strategy, you're going to be paying premium for acquisition, isn't it? Like, you're just going to be spending more than you would be building a mid-long-term strategy and just being patient.

Absolutely. And I'll tie it back for consumer psychology, Mike. So, so let's take your podcast, right? Um, you could be impatient, right? And you could be impatient and you could grab I'm gonna call it subpar guests and people who are not necessarily 100% experts in their, in their field. And what's, and what, what, and what's gonna end up happening is your viewers are gonna be upset that they're not getting value, right? They're not getting value, right? If you think about it, all everything we do and anything that we choose to do in a day is, is a fight amongst different activities. Listening to your podcast is a fight amongst another podcast, is a fight against maybe working out, it's a fight against reading a book. Everything that we choose is a choice, and you have to provide enough value for someone to make that choice. So if you rush and you try to do this thing where you're just trying to get all of these people on your show and they're not quality, then you're— and that you're— that, that individual who's listening to you is not going to get the value that they need, and so therefore they'll stop listening. Right? And so that's why I think being hyper-specific is so important because if you're just a podcast about marketing in general, it's too broad. And likely what ends up happening is you're not gonna get enough speakers that are gonna speak specifically to your audience, specifically about their problems for them to care to make you a part of their regular habit. Now, if you decided to be hyper-specific and only talked to people who did B2B specifically 2 to 5 million ARR in Europe, then now we're talking about the nuances of Europe, which has a whole bunch of data compliance issues. Now you're talking to someone who knows how to manage European growth, which is much more complicated in North American growth because North America, we have two captive audiences that speak majority English and require only English, whereas in Europe we have now multiple countries that speak multiple languages and require multiple languages. So Speaking about those problems, they're gonna speak about it differently if you don't hyper— you, you won't be hyper-specific. And so therefore, again, that, that, that listener is, is wanting that value. So therefore it's going to— you're gonna get— they're gonna get more value if you spend more time producing only one podcast a month, but having that one person who fixes that one problem. So soon as they see Mike has posted a podcast, they're gonna rush to watch it. Because they know there's a 90% probability it's gonna help them solve problems, right? And so that's why the longer term strategy is important because you have to make yourself valuable. And what you end up doing is by rushing it, you make yourself a little bit more invaluable, right? Because you have to show consistency in delivering value. And if you're rushing it, the likelihood is you're not probably hitting that 100% of the time.

Hmm. But can, can one start by, Maybe let's call it rushing it. Can someone just, you know, be biased towards action and just go like, you know what, I don't have everything planned out, but I know that doing is better than just, you know, sitting on my ass and drawing strategy. So I'm just going to go and I'm going to try out things, you know, maybe I'll be impatient, maybe, you know, I'll buy some ads, just get some eyes on my show, you know, see if people stick, see what people say and just sort of like iterate until they reach a certain point where they can niched down or, you know, or understand how they actually bring value? Or would you say, Nathan, that it's actually better to plan things out and then execute just purely from, you know, sake of, let's say, you know, saving on cost or just not wasting your time by doing things which don't matter?

Yeah, it's a very fair point. And I think the reality is, you know, I hate to say it, it depends, right? And again, it goes back to that whole What's your human constraint, human capital constraint, your financial and time constraint? If you are a bootstrapped founder and you can't afford to get advice, then yes, go ahead and iterate. But you have to iterate in such a way where you're not sacrificing a part of your business. Maybe that's product development, maybe that's customer service. And I think that's fair, right? And Often when we go into companies, we always say, hey, this is our main strategy. This is our main tactic, which is the one we spend the most time on. And we will do some smaller tactics and iterate through time, but we're not betting the house. So for example, we'll spend 70% on events and then we'll spend 30% split amongst two other channels to nurture and iterate, which means we know that building a marketing funnel is not a guarantee. There are times where you have to go figure out the variables that ultimately make a successful funnel that's repeatable. So when we go in and we say, hey, we're going to do this, most clients and customers want a hedge. And so that's where it's like, okay, well, we'll do these things, these other activities such as, you know, digital media buying or SEO, but they're not going to be our main focus. right? And so similar to what you're saying is, you know, is it okay just to go and do it? Absolutely, because you're gonna need to gather data and you're gonna need to figure out how to operationalize it within your organization. But at the same time, you know, you can't spread yourself too thin. So yes and no, Mike. I know, I know it's a complicated answer, but I think it's okay to start and it's okay to test, but you just have to measure, you just have to balance it against, you know, the other priorities of the business.

I love the analogy of, I can't remember where I heard it, but It was like this. So you can be like an architect, which is, you know, preparing to build a castle, which will, you know, outstand the time for hundreds of years. So you're going to be building blueprints for a couple of years, and then you're actually going to start developing the castle. Or you can be like an archaeologist, where you're just, you know, you're going to dig a little bit there, you're going to dig a little bit there, and just sort of, you know, see where your digging site will sit down. So maybe it's a mindset element. Maybe it's just like as a person, You know, you're gonna gravitate towards a certain action. You're gonna be more like action-oriented, so you're gonna try things out, or you're gonna be more like, you know, planning-oriented, and you will feel a lot more comfortable if you have, you know, much, much stronger plans going to the market. But at the end of the day, if you don't have a product online, whatever that product is, no one's seeing that, you're getting nothing, right? You know, planning and over-planning, at least in my view, can really take a lot of time without really any feedback loop. So I am more like a, you know, action bias, let's say like this. I'll have a little bit, I'll just go out, I'll see what people say and try to iterate. So coming back to your example, Nathan, about the Italy brand, which, you know, they were like, we're having, you know, quarter million, which is going to paint all the walls with our brand. And you were like, no, 'First we're going to look at your network, you know, first connection levels, and, you know, we'll do that thing.' So why is that? Like, why would people should be looking for the clients in their closest sort of like angel level?

I think it's, it's, it's, uh, should be obvious, I would hope. I think the, the first thing is, is, um, you need to get case studies. So going back to consumer psychology principles, the easiest way for you to get a sale is to purposefully— and not maliciously, with good intent— uh, generate signals that are heuristics so that people will believe in you, will build trust. Um, so the, the trust model is built out of 3 points, and I don't This is not my model, this is Harvard's model, which is it's empathy, authenticity, and logic. And heuristics is a consumer psychology thing where we take shortcuts in order to determine an outcome or a feeling or a sense of comfort. And so, you know, we take shortcuts all the time. You take branding, you know, in itself is a heuristic, right? You know, we assume that Louis Vuitton is expensive, blah, blah, blah. Good quality piece of the rhyme. And when you are starting out as a company, you have to recognize you, you are a nobody, right? Um, and the easiest way for you to get trust is through social proofing. Um, and social proofing is when someone in your network can either A, say that they use you, or, or B, has spoken about you, which is why I say the network effect is so important, because the network effect is social proofing in action. And social proofing has high influence, high impact. So that's another term. Every touchpoint you have in marketing has a level of influence on an individual, right? So a great example is a digital ad is meaningless if they have no association with who you are. So if you see a digital ad online and it's a brand and supposedly it solves a problem, it doesn't do much to you. It might make you aware that the brand exists. But it doesn't influence you very much, right? It just kind of tells you, hey, hi, we're here. So the reason why I say go to the network is because the thing that I'm looking for is a proof point. And you want to get that proof point as soon as possible. The earlier you get proof points, the easier it is for you to be able to go to other people and say, hey, other people are using it. This is their outcome. And that is one of the easiest ways for you to get high impact, high influence at a very early stage because you don't have money. To spend on a million-dollar ad campaign, right? You know, one of the reasons why sponsoring a conference at the highest level is such a high impact, high influence is because people who go to the conference inherently think, wow, you must be doing so well that you can afford to sponsor the conference at this level, so therefore I trust you, right? And so we inherently think that we are completely logical all the time, but we are and we aren't. And in terms of trust, I call heuristics a little bit like pseudo logic. It kind of, we think it's logic, but we inherently know that it's not following 100% logic, it's following a shortcut. But at the end of the day, it still builds trust. And so that's why I want people to go to their network and get those social proof points, as early as possible because that's going to lay the foundation for the marketing campaigns going forward. Okay.

I actually love that, which leads me to, to this question. If we understand these, these elements and we effectively game people's perceptions, does that make us bad?

So again, I think that's really intense, right? So here's a great example and I am sure if anyone's listening, you may have felt this. There are hundreds of influencers on Instagram that claim to be coaches. And a lot of these coaches, quote unquote, have testimonials. Now, this is where I'm going to say we are lazy. And we are because we don't, we don't have infinite amount of time every single day, right? We have, we have to pick and choose. So say you land on one of these influencers that is solving a pain point for you. So you're like, okay, check mark, I'm hooked in. So then the second thing is you're like, do I believe him or her? And you go through their profile and then you say, oh wow, they have 15 testimonials all saying that they've done well and they're all filmed on like UGC, user-generated content, kind of oriented their personal phones, their personal recommendations. You don't have the time to double-check whether or not these individuals are paid individuals from Fiverr.

Hmm.

You know, so Mike, you're asking me, knowing these shortcuts, can you, can you be a bad person, you know, per se? I think there are individuals who certainly use these shortcuts as a way to shortcut their business, not necessarily for the right reasons. And I do know that there are a lot of influencers who do use paid testimonials because they inherently know that you and I, I have a child, I work, I work out a lot. I don't have, I'm not going to spend an hour to go figure out or proof point, you know, factually check whether these people are real, right? They seem real. And so we will take that shortcut and we will just make the assumption. So, so absolutely, Mike, I think I think when it comes down to knowing these shortcuts, it is up to your intent to make it good or bad. And I think as a marketer, my professional standpoint, I'm going to say 90% of the time is to make sure it's good. Um, and 10% of the time it's because maybe I haven't tested the product yet, and so I might be touting something that I'm not 100% sure on But I have to build a product launch without necessarily knowing the full product itself, right? So, um, it really— it's a, it's a choice of ethics when it comes to, you know, how you want to operate.

Okay. Um, so I would see this, um, almost like an aggressive strategy, you know, versus a normal strategy. I don't know if that's even a saying, but like, if I'm starting maybe Maybe I want to try things out. You know, maybe I don't even have the courses. By the way, that's a real story. You put the things online and I know coaches who did that and they just want to understand if there would be a demand for it. You know, they create what you're going to learn in the courses, you know, what's going to be the outcome and they try to push it and usually the testimonials are from other courses which come in and they try to do some pre-sales. So for me, that's like, you know, fairly like, you know, aggressive push out. And it has this element of like, I don't know, my ethics, you know, my sort of personality is dodgy, right? But people online, they sort of like everyone does it. So if everyone does it, that makes sort of like, okay. And then it just opens up this old Pandora's box with this, you know, dark strategies or whatever is the name where you, you know, where you hide the opt-in box, or you have something checked and you rephrase the words, or you opt in people to newsletters, or you opt into additional sales and things like that. So is this a space of consumer psychology where we sort of just leveraging the knowledge to just get more, or is that where people take it too far?

I think there's a lot of times where people take it too far, and that happens all the time. I speak to my dad about this all the time. Very easy to make money if you have no ethics or morals. Very easy. Okay. And it's very easy for the very purpose that I've just said. We are lazy people. You know, a great example is my mom just got conned into a 1-year subscription into Instacart. She had no idea how. And that's just because my mom, just like every other, you know, boomer, I suppose, is just not that technologically savvy. She doesn't necessarily notice the fact that a trial turns into an annual subscription immediately. They also make it inherently difficult to find that cancellation. Now, they are supposed to send you a reminder as a part of a policy, and they do, but they might send that right in the middle of the day, or, you know, probably around 9 to 10 o'clock because they know that you might be at work, right? So there are, there are a lot of businesses that I'm sure take these shortcuts for monetary gain all the time. And, um, and you know, just because everyone's doing it doesn't necessarily make it good. I suppose at the end of the day, Mike, it's like whether or not you can sleep at night. Um, I was a part in the affiliate world when it was booming and there was something called rebills. And rebills were just these things where exactly what I've just said, um, but not Instacart. You'd buy a product for $1, but then they would charge you $25 a month after that. And you probably wouldn't even notice. And then they make it impossible for you to cancel because in order for you to cancel, you have to phone in. And so what they do is they only have one person working the phone. So they're not lying. It's just that you can't get through to that one person.

Yeah, I literally got exposed to that. You talking, Nathan, and I'm like, yes, that's the product in my mind. I don't want to say the names because it's just potentially bad publicity. And one thing which I got sucked into, which was very expensive courses, which I bought in with the idea that I'm going to, you know, just sort of opt out if I cannot make it and get a refund. Somewhere in a very, very small print, there was like no refunds. And it was a fairly like premium one. And I, as a, as a consumer, I was like, like you are the first business ever in my full career where where you want to keep me as a client when I don't want to be your client. I just want to leave. And you're just not giving me money and you're forcing me to stay, which means like, what is the value for me? Because I'm already mentally like, I don't want to be with you, which means there's no trust. And now I think they pretty much like scam me, which leads to my question. If you're utilizing these techniques, I mean, how long can you go? I mean, effectively, you're just losing trust with every single customer, which at some point wants you know, to either exit or goes like, why I'm charged that, you know, I never said located this. So you just, you're just building your name up as a dodgy company, isn't it?

I, I hate to admit it, Mike, you know, I, um, there's a term, uh, I don't know if I should say it, but it's called honeydying. I won't say the full word. And It's this thing where it is actually— you know what, I'll use as an example. There's a— there's, um, if you look this up historically, the Eiffel Tower was sold I think twice by the same individual. Pure fraud, obviously. And what he did was he utilized what I call the, the Honey D strategy. Um, and the Honey D strategy is even with the fact that it's very well known that so-and-so owns it, or, you know, so-and-so has committed fraud, or any of these things. If you honey D enough, which means you portray or protrude this impression that you're so well-to-do, people will inherently believe what they want to believe. So going back to these influencers, let's just say an influencer hooks you in with this dream of you don't have to work more than an hour a week, and here's my life, here's my Lamborghini, here's my girlfriend, and we're living in Bali, blah blah blah. And you are just sold on that. And if you go look up, is so-and-so a fraud, and then you find a Reddit thread that talks about how people have been defrauded or they haven't got their refund back or things like that, um, you are already in the seat of believing this individual. And so long as you continue to see positive indicators that supposedly this individual can get you your desired outcome, you will inherently outweigh those positive opinions versus the negative ones, and they will continue to do business. So I think the only reason why an individual who does these uses these consumer psychology tactics for nefarious purposes continues to do well is because they're doing enough of it and at volume enough where people can still get convinced. And I, I hate to use the term, but a sucker is born every day. Um, the reality is, is like, I know someone right now that's doing this and, and continues to do well and receive investor money even though he's very much well known to be in lawsuits for stealing money. So you ask me, how does that work? And I go, well, he, he, he honeydews. He shows up in a Rolls-Royce, he shows up and buys everyone food, and everything goes, oh, this guy must be doing so well. Well, no, he— this is exactly what he did prior to that. So, um, so, so, so unfortunately, Mike, what I've recognized— and I always thought what you're thinking, it'll catch up to you. Um, I think it does. Ponzi schemes are a great example of that. It catches up to you, but it's not as fast as you think. It's not a year, it's not 2 years. It's like them doing this consistently for 10 years before it really burns them. And I think that's enough for some people to do it.

And you probably can just, if you do successful, you could probably just rebrand it and, you know, close the operation and reboot it in just different clothes by exactly same notion and just almost like start again. That's how I feel like when I see things which are like the same, like, you know, multi-level marketing, you know, YouTube ads. And it's just like, I constantly see them, you know, all over the time. It's like the same thing. It's just different face, but, you know, same promises. And, and I'm like, Well, he's probably doing great then, you know, because if you have all the ads, but anyways, so if we leave this Nathan on the side, I want to give you this example and you tell me what was utilized to make it a success. I saw this, it was a test, I think it was a TV program. So two guys, they basically went and bought shoes from a local, just unknown brand, just a retailer, maybe it was used shoes, maybe it was new shoes, but there was no branding whatsoever. It was just shoes. They handpicked the better ones and then they brought it to the London street, very sort of expensive London street. They bought the whole shop, nice windows, and everything looked very posh. We're talking Dolce Gabbana type of level posh, right? And they put those shoes, which is like £10 shoes, on the shelves. And they basically changed the price to be in hundreds, right? From like $600 to $900. And people walked into that shop and they were paying that price for those shoes, which basically proved the element of just packaging a product in a certain way and you can charge whatever you want. Is that, is that, you know, consumer psychology? And what did they do in this exact, you know, example that they managed to actually get that done?

Fundamentally almost all these relate to anchoring, which is the fact that we inherently drive kind of perspectives based on relative, like, contextual relativity. Um, and usually when you hear anchoring, you hear about anchoring in price, right? Um, a good example is that is, is the Hermès um, Apple Watch versus the regular price, uh, regular price Apple Watch. Um, it's an anchoring strategy where they don't actually sell very much of the, the highest one. Um, but they do that so that your Apple Watch actually seems much more affordable, right? And an Apple Watch is not actually that affordable if you really think about it. It's a— it's basically a watch almost the same price as a full phone. Um, and what they're doing is essentially a beautiful execution of anchoring in the sense that when you anchor something in an environment contextually where it's nearly impossible for someone to assume anything else, people will just believe regardless of knowing anything else, right? So if I open up a street, a pop-up, or don't even call it a pop-up, on Fifth Avenue in New York, um, people will inherently think that I must be a legitimate company. When people see me buy a diamond sponsorship at the largest conference in their industry, they inherently think I'm an established company. Um, anchoring is huge, and Vice has, you know, Vice— I know Vice is gone as a publisher, but they have, you know, these hilarious stories where they've created quote-unquote Michelin star restaurants that were selling, you know, instant noodles, and people are coming out feeling like they had a Michelin star meal. And that just shows you the power of anchoring and also the power of us being lazy. We don't have time to make judgment calls all the time. We rely on heuristics far more than we think we do. And if you place yourself in a position where inherently it would be impossible for them to think otherwise, they will just take that as a conclusion, right? So if this individual has taken these shoes and put them in an area where it's all high-end, then inherently any smart person goes, well, they can't be in there unless they can afford the rent. And if they can afford the rent, they must be making a lot of money. And if they're making a lot of money, these must be great products. And they make these assumptions really, really quick, which is just because it's anchored in this area where you see other brands that also have supposedly those values. So you just make those assumptions, um, and that's exactly what it is. It's anchoring. Right. Okay. Um, that's why, you know, if you saw a luxury product, a luxury wine in a low-end grocery store, there's a disconnect, right? When you see a luxury brand like, uh, Ferragamo selling at, at, uh, uh, Winners there's a— which is a large retail brand in here that sells it on discount. It's confusing. It breaks that shortcut and it makes you doubt, right? But then if you put them in the right spot, you make assumptions the other way, right? So we inherently frame everything in our life around many anchors, of which we all have preconceptions of and, and, and, and predisposed beliefs around. And if you position yourself well enough, you automatically get those attributes associated with you, right? Which is why I think, you know, even if you look at your life, like, you are who your friends are. You know, there's always these influencers saying, you know, if you want to level up your life, you should level up your friends. There's a part— there's some truth to that, right? Because if you're a really, really smart individual and you meet someone new, and then you go out with their friend group, and their friend group is, you know, I'm going to use some you know, some, some social class terms here where, you know, maybe blue collar versus white collar, they're going to wonder, okay, are you in— are you at the same level as me if you're hanging out with blue collar and all your only friends are blue collar and that's it? Whereas if you're hanging out with everyone that's white collar, working at— going to Starbucks, you know, got a Finance Bro vest on, they inherently make the assumptions, okay, you must know what you're doing. So anchoring plays such a major role in every part of our life. And if you do it really, really well with a product, you can win. But then of course, in this example, I'm sure it's not also cheap to do that. So there is a level of the fact that you have to have enough money to do this.

Okay, I love that. I wanna apply this to, you know, say our podcast or for our listeners, some type of SaaS product they have, how can they utilize anchoring to get some success? Are we talking about going to high-end conferences and sponsoring the conferences? Are we talking about making a fancy website? Are we talking about going on a major podcast and talking over there? It's like, how could a tech venture founder utilize anchoring to achieve a similar result?

I think, um, I think you see this all the time. Um, you'll see bootstrap founders always make fun of, um, large funded, uh, SaaS companies that have a bunch of PR and then they go bankrupt. Um, and that inherently again is, is a, is a heuristic because when someone is on, you know, BuzzFeed or Wall Street Journal and they're getting publicized, there's this assumption that they're successful, right? And I think when it, when it comes down to SaaS companies, there's a balance towards that, meaning you want to do that so that you get some social proofing, but of course you still need to have a good product, right? Um, and, and you need to have a sustainable practice to get inbound that's repeatable and makes sense economically. So there's a balance, right? So I think if you were asking me what's a realistic thing that every company should do, well, the first thing is, is that you need to have a good website. I can't stress this enough, let alone the SEO value of having a good website. But the fact is, is like the website is they always say you wanna dress one level up for your interviews, or I don't know if that's still saying, but that was a saying back when, and it's the whole fact is, is that there is an expectation when they land on your website. And if you are a great piece of software, but your website feels like it's from 1995, you've already created a friction point for yourself, right? So I think the number one thing that people can do is have a great website, have a website that, and this sounds very creative to me, but creates a feeling or a mood. And the reason why you do that is because then you already stand out, right? If you have a website that doesn't impact your viewer, you're already putting yourself in a bad position. So I think that's the first thing. The second thing is be bold, right? Be bold in how you stand out. Because you have to make a statement. And if you don't do that, you're not going to tap into the fact that we have very little attention span to pay attention to your business, right? So on a, on a heuristic level, you like, you have to be bold because if you give us too much leeway in what you're trying to say, we'll make an assumption that might not be good for you. So being very bold in your statements, being very bold in your features and your, and your outcomes is really important and also delivering it in such a way that's bold is super important because you have to stand out. So going back to consumer psychology, availability bias and accessibility bias are huge things because one, I need to be able to remember you, right? Both of those pertain to memory. If I can't remember you, then you're not making use of consumer psychology. So having a boring website, you're already hurting yourself. Having really bad creative and very bad ad campaigns, you're already hurting yourself. So essentially you're spending money for no good reason. So I think, you know, those are the things where for technology companies you really have to focus on because they're within your control. They're literally within your control. You're probably already doing it, right? Or you're paying someone else to do it. So don't make these mistakes, especially when you're not spending enough money for them to be a mistake, right? So the other thing is, spotlight syndrome, this idea where if we make a mistake, everyone's gonna know. Well, I just told you people commit fraud for up to 5 to 10 years before they even stop, right? So, you know, you're doing a whole lot less problems having a bad ad being shown to 100 people than being bold and creative showing your ad to 100 people. So I just go out there and do it.

How do we define bold, Nathan? Like, can we give two examples what's bold, what's not bold any context you like, you know, maybe companies you worked with or just, uh, things you just came up on the spot.

Sure. Um, bold is, you know, I'll give an SEO example. Um, I can say I help custom— I help companies, you know, I'll give you, I'll give you a bold one actually, just that we did. Um, we increased a customer's Search Console, which is the direct clicks tracked from organic listings from a low of 42 to 942 people a day. And that is a, you know, I think it was some stupid number like 1,152x growth, right? Um, or I can tell you that we brought in, you know, 30 leads. So those are kind of Okay, statements, right? Then I'll go, well, I'm going to guarantee this in 6 months. That's bold, right? Um, and you have to make these bold statements because you have to, because everyone is, everyone hypothetically can deliver the benefit that I am trying to deliver, otherwise they wouldn't be in that business, right? Now, am I going to be bold enough to make a claim? And that claim is, well, Here, I've done this and I'm willing to do this for you as a guarantee in 6 months, which means you get all your money back in 6 months. If I, if I can increase your traffic more than 200 to 300%, I'll give back all your money in 6 months. That's a bold statement, right? Going out there and solving a problem, anyone can do that. It's whether or not you can frame it in such a way that's going to be different, and that's being bold. Right, so, you know, I think, I think there are some companies where— there's a t-shirt company where they claim that, uh, if it doesn't fit you, they will continue refitting your shirt until you're happy with it. That's a bold statement, right? I know they know that you can buy shirts from anyone. They're claiming that they're best fitting shirts, period. And they're willing to refit your shirt until it fits perfectly. That's a bold statement, right? I guess.

Yeah.

So I think when it comes down to being bold, you just have to do something different. Now you have to trust your product, but you have to be— you have to go out there with a strong enough offer that's different, that's going to give a lot of trust. And I think that's bold. Um, creatively and bold are kind of 2 different things in the sense that also on your creative, you shouldn't be bland, right? Have something fun in there, have something eye-catching. Don't have just text. Don't have a tablet with some performance numbers. Do something fun because people need to remember it and you need to stand out on people's feeds.

That's very good advice. When you were talking about the bold examples, what came to my mind is copywriting. I've seen a lot of well-written copies for a website and, you know, the landing pages which actually convert well, and some just, you know, pure garbage basically. And what you just described as bold, you know, in my mind was like a good copy of a landing page and just poor. But I get what you're saying, it's, you want to stand out, you know. If people see that picture many, many times and, you know, you don't jump up in their mind, why would you assume that they will, you know, buy into the product, you know, trial it or, you know, demo it before you actually can prove the value? You need to sort of get them into trying the product. And then, of course, the product itself needs to perform. Okay.

Yeah. And you have to recognize that 80% of your market's not in an active state to buy, right?

Yeah. You need to convince them. And that's the consumer psychology, right? Okay, well, this is a million-dollar question. How will AI impact all of this? Like, are we saying we're gonna be even more played now to buy shit we don't need? Because, you know, AI, generative AI can just take all of that, what's written in the books, have all the access to all the data and come up with even more honeydew, as you put it, strategies and people will suddenly start utilizing or you think you know, things will remain the same or, you know, move somewhere. What's your take, Nathan?

I think AI is going to dilute content a lot, which means companies will have to do a better job of somehow demonstrating that they're authentic. And that is going to be the biggest differentiator going forward, is can, can a company go out there and feel human. And I think that's like the one thing that I always joke about with salespeople is like, you're talking to a human. You're not talking to, you know, a C-suite title. You're talking to a person. And when we do copywriting and I, and I talk about copywriting with my content writers, I always talk about that. It's just like, you're talking to a human, right? You're not talking to this, this just person with a title. So I think Gen AI is going to cause a problem with authenticity, and people will start to generate their own suspicions, and that will become a normal thing. There will be a normal thing where we go, yeah, I don't think this is authentic, and that will become an automatic response now, right? Before, not so much. Now, way more.

When you say dilute, Nathan, what do you mean? As in, you mentioned, you know, the content will get a lot more diluted. What that means is just wishy-washy, like there's no value within the content, it's just, you know, funny words.

I don't think they're funny words. Like, you know, I, I use Gen AI all the time, and I think it's just, is this, is this content really being written by a subject matter expert, or is it just being curated through a database of things, right? And having the comfort that it is coming from an expert, I think, will become more important. Meaning, this is written by Nathan Young, this is not written by Gen AI, you know. I think that's where things are becoming far more important for brands to somehow communicate to their audience.

Can, can authenticity be faked though? Can I just, you know, get LLM shove my brand language into it, you know, my personality.

And yeah, yes, yes. And that, I think that's why people will become inherently more skeptical. I like, you know, there's, there's already news articles about how Gen AI has influenced individuals inadvertently, um, where Gen AI has been able to demonstrate emotions. So absolutely, I think Gen AI is getting to the point where authenticity is going to be hard to validate, which is why people will crave it.

I craving right now. I mean, I go online and I'm like, noise. It's like I have like 3 blogs I read where I know people write them. It's just, uh, it's becoming, you know, to the point of annoying where you just, you know, you see content being given to you and you— because I work with, you know, AI all the time, I'm like not, not real, not real, not real. Yeah, I get what you're saying over there. Um, do you feel like, uh, people utilizing this right now for, you know, content generation, just getting, you know, more pages up, you know, playing SEO game, getting, you know, ads being done by AI, you know, all that notion of automation which AI takes place now, do you think that's leading to that delusion which you mentioned where people will just almost like without training themselves, they will develop this, you know, visibility glasses or something where they're gonna be like, I'm just gonna start ignoring things.

Absolutely right. Like, we're getting to the point in life where, you know, being challenged is not enjoyable, and there are so many solutions to prevent you from being challenged. Um, the CEO of Nvidia said something at an Ivy League graduation ceremony, and he said like, 98% of you people aren't going to be successful. And he's like, because none of you are resilient. You come here, you go to an Ivy League school, you can afford it, probably come from good families. You know, you've lived a life where you're supposedly set So you're not ready for failure, you're not ready for friction. And I think AI is just making it worse, right? And now that all being said, you could use AI to learn a ton of things, but AI is also making it so easy to learn those things, right? You know, when YouTube came out with how-to videos, that was already a massive thing for people. They're, they're taking, they're, they're, you, you have now the world's experts giving lectures, and you could, you could be at home and be 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years old listening to these things and learning, um, things that would not be afforded to someone in the previous generation. And now I now not only can do that, but I can also have my own teacher teach me exactly what I need in real time. So I could watch this YouTube video, say I don't understand this one part of the YouTube video, I don't need to go look for that one. I can then just go to Gen AI and say, help me with this. And it will. There's no friction. And I think that's going to really drive down resiliency. And so I think, yeah, I think, I think people are going to get kind of useless, if I were to be— I think, I think we're already going into, uh, generations where people are like, we're in the generation of drug, drug use for any ailment. We're now going to the point where education is at our fingertips, literally. Um, it's going to get to the point where people just like can't deal with being uncomfortable. And I think that's, that's something that actually is talked about, um, especially for, um, bringing up a child. So I have a young daughter, so, um, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it's gonna handicap people.

I have two kids and that shit's not easy. That's another level. When I give advice to all my friends, I'm like, uh, like, it's just, just another level. It's just not like— you have no ability to compare to anything. It's just a, it's a different ball game once you get kids. You, you like, you have to grow to this new level, which is just— I can't give you any examples. You have to experience that. Okay. I love how we finished that, Nathan. I mean, and you know, you're using NVIDIA's speech. I actually heard that speech and I think that was a bold statement. You know, the guy came out. Yeah. He was like, boom, you all gonna fail. That was a good one. Right. So thanks for coming, Nathan. And if people want to learn more about you know, the marketing services you're providing and just maybe in general get in touch with you, where can they do that?

Sure, you can go to my website, which is www.findyouraudience.online, and then you can find me on LinkedIn. Just look me up, Nathan Young, Y-E-U-N-G, and I don't think there is any other large marketing guys, or you can look me up on the internet because I think I have 45 podcasts now live and you can learn about me. Throughout the various guests, uh, spots that I've been on.

Excellent. We'll have as well all the details in the show notes, so you can just scroll down and you'll see that. Thanks again, Ethan, for joining. And for all our listeners, until the next time, stay safe. See you online.