Here’s a tale about a young marketer who learned a valuable lesson.
This young man was part of a study abroad program. His group was tasked with presenting on the topic of biodiesel to the CEO of the largest food products company in Malta, the island nation off the coast of Sicily.
The idea was to collect used cooking oil from Malta households and turn it into biodiesel, which could then power Malta’s buses and cars in a more environmentally friendly way. The group prepared a PowerPoint presentation to convince the CEO that this was a smart plan to get behind and closed with a slogan for marketing purposes:
Made in Malta.
When they finished, the CEO said, “I love everything you said. Right up until that last slide.”
The executive explained that while he understood why they chose Made in Malta, he reminded the students that this wasn’t the United States. That slogan wouldn’t connect with the Maltese people.
“While that idea doesn’t carry much meaning with our citizens, there are many things we do care about,” the CEO explained. “Malta has beautiful beaches, stunning views, and 7,000 years of history. Why don’t we focus the marketing on preserving Malta’s beauty? That message will resonate.”
Today, that young man is a marketing professional named Billy Broas. And he credits that moment with teaching him the primary rule of Marketing 101:
Know Thy Prospect.
More specifically, Billy realized that crafting messages from your personal point of view can backfire spectacularly if you’re not aligned with your intended audience’s identity, worldview, values, and attitudes.
Otherwise, you have no idea what to say and how to say it.
The Psychological Power of Unity
As digital marketers and entrepreneurs, we communicate with prospects in groups, or audiences. This is primarily based on common interests or problems, but as the example above demonstrates, this is only a starting point.
The Maltese people may well have been highly interested in recycling their cooking oil to produce biodiesel, given their national pride in their environment. And yet the messaging completely missed the value-based frame that would have worked, instead reflecting a U.S. bias that immediately betrayed the messenger as an outsider.
When communicating with prospects collectively – whether citizens of an island nation or prospects for the Macintosh computer – you have to understand their attitudes toward your offer and the realm it operates in.
And those attitudes stem from shared identities, which include worldviews and values.
If you understand the values and attitudes of the group, you’ve set yourself up for success. That’s because the first test your messages must pass with the group is:
Is this person one of us?
This is the power of Unity, the 7th principle of persuasion validated by the research of social psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini.
Cialdini’s classic book Influence explained the first six principles, but it wasn’t until his 2016 book Pre-Suasion that he declared that the element of Unity was the most powerful principle of all.
Unity involves the shared identity that the influencer has in common with the people they’re trying to influence. In other words, are you part of the tribe or an outsider?
One of the key consequences of a shared identity is that it leads to people trusting each other. And trust is why people choose to do business with you, which is what we’re after.
On the other hand, if you’re relying on your credentials and “informational” content to establish trust, you’ll likely lose out to someone who makes an identity connection.
Research shows that people are likely to follow those who are “prototypic,” or appearing to be one of them. In other words, a leader who is a living, breathing encapsulation of the group’s social identity – which in turn creates the trust to lead people to new ideas and solutions.
Unity is also a form of meta-principle, in that its presence determines how effective the other principles of persuasion are with the intended audience.
Here’s a quick review of the initial six principles:
- Reciprocity: The internal pull to repay what another person has provided us.
- Authority: We are likelier to say “yes” to others who are authorities, and who carry greater knowledge, experience, or expertise.
- Liking: We tend to agree with people we like and, just as importantly, others tend to agree with us if we like them.
- Social Proof: When unsure about what to do or think, we look to others to provide us with the correct actions to take.
- Consistency: Once we make a choice or take a stand, we generally behave consistently with that commitment to justify our decisions.
- Scarcity: We desire more of what is less available or dwindling in availability.
Let’s take a closer look at a few of these to reveal how unity impacts a persuasive element’s effectiveness.
Authority
We tend to trust experts in situations where we lack a similar degree of subject matter expertise. And yet, it matters whether or not the expert is “on the same team” as the person seeking guidance.
One of the most striking examples of this in recent years is the case of Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. COVID-19 deniers, anti-lockdown protesters, and even his boss, Donald Trump, repeatedly called into question his qualifications because his advice contradicted their own identity and beliefs.
Liking
We tend to do business with people we like, which is why “Know, Like, and Trust” are three important objectives for any marketer or entrepreneur when it comes to customers and clients. But what prompts the liking in the first place?
We tend to superficially like people who are attractive and people who compliment us. Other than that, the primary catalyst for liking is people who are similar to us. In many ways, the unity principle is “liking” on steroids. Group identity transcends simple similarities and says, “I am of you.”
Social Proof
When deciding on the merits of something or someone, we look for indications of quality or value from others, but who those others are and what group they belong to matters. Whether politics, sports, or religion, what people think about something is irrelevant if they are an “other” instead of one of them.
For example, Ben Shapiro may get plenty of likes and reposts on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, but that offers zero indication of quality to progressives on the platform. Likewise, touting your appearance as a pundit on MSNBC won’t win you points with the MAGA crowd.
You get the idea.
Group dynamics and shared identities are the most powerful principles when it comes to persuasion. And to be a market leader, you must first demonstrate that you’re part of the group and share an aspect of identity with them in order to gain the crucial ingredient of trust.
That’s why, from a mindset perspective, thinking in terms of movements is way more powerful than marketing. And that’s been the secret sauce in each of the profitable seven and eight-figure companies I’ve started.
Movements Give You a Seat at the Table
The primary difference between thinking in terms of audiences and movements is action. And action in the form of a purchase is ultimately what we want.
While “audience” suggests passiveness, a movement is defined as “a group of people working together to advance their shared ideas and identity.” This can be related to politics, art, or business, but they all have one thing in common – they deviate from the status quo.
This is an important point. People try to break into a niche or industry by parroting the status quo and fail. They mimic their favorite guru or thought leader and get absolutely nowhere.
Why? Because the status quo doesn’t need you.
The power structure is already set for the way things are, so it’s only people who bring new ideas to the table that are able to break through. That’s what I did in 2006 with Copyblogger and that’s what people who become leaders in movements do.
More than that, it took me years to consciously realize that every successful business I’ve started since 2002 has been part of a business movement.
The blogging movement, the content marketing movement, the WordPress movement, and now the longevity economy and “unretirement” movement. Even my earlier real estate brokerage was part of the exclusive buyer agent movement.
This is what made the validation of the Unity Principle in 2016 so telling, even though the power of shared identity goes back thousands of years. I saw firsthand how something much more powerful was happening when I brought people together within a movement. It transcends “liking” plus “authority” (what we called “the likable expert” at Copyblogger).
Your sense of purpose meets with their problem in a way that seems bigger than mere marketing, because it is. And the important thing is that you don’t have to start the movement to be a leader in the movement.
You just need to understand the conversation going on in your prospects’ heads that differs from the way things are and how they wish it could be. Then you can lead them where they want to go in a unique way, and further transcend a mere audience with true community.
We hear that people hate change, but in reality, our brains crave novelty. And people will flock to the “new” opportunity if it connects correctly, especially when the status quo has failed to solve their problem, or downright ignored them.
The key is to be the trusted person who delivers that new message. We’ll dive into that next time.
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