At face value Einstein’s definition makes sense. If you are doing the same thing over and over why would you expect a different result?

But dig deeper and you realise that his reasoning is flawed. Take the case of the famous explorer Christopher Columbus, for example.

Columbus’s Radical Idea

In early 1480’s Columbus became convinced that China was 400 miles closer to Europe than was the accepted wisdom at the time. If this was true then it should have been possible to sail west to reach the great land and claim the riches that await there.

Desperately wanting to test his idea, he set out for Spain seeking funding from the Spanish Crown to lead an expedition to China.

An Audience with the Spanish King and Queen

Caption: Columbus at the Spanish Court

After a year of campaigning the royal court finally allowed Columbus to pitch his idea. While captivated by Columbus’s charisma, the Spanish king and queen did not endorse his proposal. Spain was too busy fighting off Moorish rule to take a gamble on Columbus’s idea.

And that would have been the end of Columbus’s story had it not been for his persistent nature. He kept pestering the court to fund him. He followed them around like a beggar. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months and months to years but Columbus kept pursuing his idea.

Now, by Einstein’s definition, Columbus was as insane as they came. He kept doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. As Columbus himself admitted, “I plough on no matter how the winds might shake me.”

But it was because of his insanity, which lasted 7 years, that Columbus finally landed the deal in 1492. In doing so he changed the course of history, setting into action the series of events that culminated into modern America.

The Fault in Einstein’s Reasoning

Einstein’s error results from one dangerous assumption – that the world is static. The world is anything but. Countless forces push and pull the world in a million different directions everyday creating opportunities for those in a position to capture them.

So it was for Columbus. Spain’s war with the Moores had finished, allowing valuable resources to be freed up. More importantly, Spain was falling behind its rival, Portugal. The Portuguese had discovered many lands over the years from which they brought back gold, slaves and other riches.

Columbus’s proposal provided an opportunity for Spain to catch up. He promised riches, glory and fame for Spain. That is why after repeating his message for 7 years, by doing the same thing over and over again; he was able to secure funding.

Being persistent and repeating his message over time allowed him to capture this lucky moment when Spain was most open to his suggestion.

What This Means For Your Sales and Marketing Efforts

The Columbus story shows that your customers live in a changing environment. Their needs, desires, problems and priorities are constantly changing. They are continually moving in and out of buying states for different types of products and services.

A burglar breaks into someone’s house and they are suddenly more open to buying a home security system. Someone hears of floods in a neighboring state and natural disaster insurance doesn’t sound like a bad idea. A friend buys a new car and suddenly your old car is looking ripe for trade in. You find out your cousin is getting married in two months and you are suddenly in the market for a weight loss program, a new suit, and, if you are a woman, make-up, shoes and many other products and services.

Putting Persistence on Auto-Pilot

The trick though is to find a cheap way to repeat your message. Advertising for this reason is out of question because it is too expensive. A more powerful method is to use content to engage your customers over a period of time.

Use a list, whether it is a physical mailing list, email list, Twitter followers list or a Facebook Friends list to send out content and offers over a period of time.

Repeating your message also has the benefit of making it more attractive and more important (The Mere Exposure Effect in Marketing).

Contrary to what Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results in not insanity but the most powerful way to capture lucky moments.

Image source: FotoLibra

“I was blind but now I see,” he speaks of the experience. “Information from the odd museum show, a half read article, some PBS documentary, it’s all bubbling up in my frontal lobes.”

It is not just that he can recall everything he has ever seen, read or heard that makes the experience remarkable, but also that he can connect the dots between the disparate bits of data. As he puts it, the data is “Mixing itself together up into a sparkling cocktail of useful information.”

This ability to organise information gives him clarity on the situation. It makes him lucid. It makes him see what he needs to do next.

“I’m not high. I’m not wired. Just clear. I know what I need to do and how to do it.”

This clarity for him is the difference between procrastination and success. Given clarity, he springs into action and achieves the unachievable.

Lesson 1 – If You Want People To Take Action

The movie may be science fiction but the lesson it contains is not. Give someone clarity and they will act. Organise bits of information into an actionable plan and they will achieve the unachievable (See, Levanthal’s fear experiments on the power clarity and specific steps).

So if you want people to do something, organise the information on your blog. Connect the dots for them. Create a course out of your articles. Or set up a new page that organises your various posts into a step by step guide.

Lesson 2 – How To Give Away All Your Information And Still Get People To Buy Your Ebooks

This is the more important lesson, only because it is a problem so widely shared amongst bloggers and newbie content marketers.

If you have been holding back on content because you are scared that people will not buy your ebook or course, then stop holding back. You can give away just about all your content, including some of your best stuff, and people will still pay for an ebook.

Why? Because the value of an ebook or a course is not in the content it provides, but in its organisation. It is in its ability to bring together relevant pieces of information in one place and connect the dots between them. It is to turn otherwise isolated and disconnected bits of data into an actionable plan.

It doesn’t seem like it should be that way, But it is

“A lot of people get very jealous about the information they have,” says direct marketing expert, John Carlton. “They’re like, I’m not going to tell you that, you have to pay for it.”

But as Carlton points out, by giving everything away, by not holding back, you will not only continue selling your paid services and products but that you will sell even more.

“Even if what you sell is a replication of what you are giving away for free, you will still sell.”

Why? As many of his customers have told him, ‘I could go through your blog, free newsletters, videos and your interviews, or I could just buy your course where it’s all laid out very very simply. That way I don’t have to guess.’

“It doesn’t seem like it should be that way, but in most markets, especially information markets, it is.”

Even If Some People Do Not Buy Your EBook

Even if some people do not end up buying your paid products because they have the time and motivation to read all your content and put it all together, the increases in readers, publicity and trust that will result from giving out good content will lead to so many more sales of your paid products that it will far outweigh any losses in sales.

For example, if you lose 2-3 sales by giving out much of your content in your blog posts but gain another 10 as a result of giving out that content, then the net result is still an extra 7 sales that you would not have otherwise made.

Not to forget, some people will buy your paid product just because they are a fan and they will buy anything you release. But how did they become a fan in the first place? Because you gave them awesome content.

So do not hold back on quality content. People will still pay the money to buy your ebook, seminar, and / or services.

Image source: Vview.co.za

As he wrote in his diary, “Europe is a mould hill, everything wears out. My glory has already passed and this tiny Europe does not offer enough of it. We must go to the east. All great glory has always been gained there.”

He summoned his troops and set out for the city of Cairo. After surviving the turmoil of the seas and the harshness of the North African Desert, they finally arrived at the gates of Cairo.

There Napoleon stood ready to fight. His forces spread in battle formations. And fight he did. Napoeloen’s forces quickly did away with the Maradukes, the incumbent rulers of Cairo. Napoleon dubbed the battle the battle of the pyramids.

The telling thing about the battle of the pyramids

Why the battle matters to you as a blogger is not because of what happened but where it happened. Despite the grand title, the battle of the pyramids was not fought at the footsteps of some majestic pyramids. It was fought at Embabeh, in a melon patch. The pyramids were miles away, merely a faint image on the horizon.

Why did Napoleon name it the battle of the pyramids?

Napoleon understood something about the art of storytelling that most people do not. He knew that a great title was one of the most important parts of a story. He knew that a killer headline was a sure-fire way to get people to pay attention to his story.

Imagine if he had called it the battle of Embabeh? Not so catchy is it?

What about, Battle of the melon patch? That is worse.

Battle of the pyramids? Now that is catchy. Especially to the 18th century French public mesmerised by the ancient Egyptian culture, Battle of the Pyramids had a ring to it.

Take a lesson out of Napoleon’s book and learn to write captivating headlines. 

If you would like to learn about how to write killer headlines, see The Art of Writing a Captivating Title
 

What is the capital of Australia?

- Sydney
- Melbourne
- Brisbane
- Canberra

What is the capital of Canada?

- Toronto
- Vancouver
- Ottawa
- Calgary

What is the capital of USA?

- New York
- Boston
- Washington DC
- Los Angeles

What is the capital of New Zealand?

- Auckland
- Christchurch
- Wellington
- Hamilton

If you answered Sydney, Toronto, New York and Auckland, you are wrong. The correct answers are Canberra, Ottawa, Washington DC and Wellington, respectively.

If you got it wrong, do not beat yourself. Most people get the answer wrong. After all, it is only logical that a big, commercially and culturally important city would be the political hub of nation.

So why is this not the case? Why are these cities not the capitals?

Why These Cities Are Not Capitals

Through bitter experience, the designers of modern democracies have learnt an important lesson – the bigger the city the more political power it can exercise. That is, the needs of the city can place undue pressure on the political system and take precedence over the needs of people from smaller towns and cities.

As the economist, Alan Beattie, puts it, “When it comes to exerting political power, those within rioting distance of the royal palace have a better means of having their grievances known than do equally disgruntled peasantry muttering into their gruel as they go about their miserable rural lives hundreds of miles from the capital.

“So Washington was deliberately created,” Beattie continues, “to be a small and deracinated capital in a ‘federal district’, not a state. This became a familiar tactic in the modern world, as the dullness and remoteness of Canberra, Wellington and Ottawa testify.”

Out of Sight, Out of Mind – The Marketing Lesson Behind The Story

What the story above shows is that we place greater importance on problems and ideas that are on top of our minds over other equally important ideas and problems. Those messages that are fresh in mind, those voices that get heard exert undue influence on our thoughts and decision making. It is for good reason that they say out of sight, out of mind.

As a marketer your job is to keep your idea, product, or service on top of your customer’s mind. The more you get your message in front of your prospects and get your story heard, the more likely your prospects will choose your products and services over equally deserving problems to solve or excitements to be sought.

The Traditional Method for Staying on Top of Mind

There are many ways of doing this. The traditional method is to repeat your message over and over using advertising. The problem is, for small businesses, this is an expensive exercise. It may cost you more to repeat your message than the extra business it brings you.

You need a more cost-effective method, a method where you do not have to constantly reach out to your prospects. Instead they come to you on a regular basis.

How can you achieve this?

Enter Content Marketing

Content marketing in the form of ‘how-to’ articles, podcasts and videos is a powerful and cost effective way to keep your customers coming back for more. That way your customers benefit from quality information that helps explore their problems and interests, while allowing you to keep your brand and solution on top of their minds.

If you have not yet started a blog then its time to think hard about setting one up.

But many a time, sticking to your niche or sub-niche gets a bit hard. You may suddenly develop a desire to write on a different topic. You may want to venture off to different world to give yourself a break. What can you do in such a situation? Can you keep your blog focused without dampening your creative spurts?

My blog, for example, is focused on consumer psychology and there is no doubt that I love to blog about it. But often I feel an urge to blog on other topics like personal success, management, innovation etc. Yet I do not want to jeopardize the focus of my blog by veering off topic. This is my dilemma, and no doubt a dilemma shared by many writers.

One Solution, Multiple Benefits

There is a solution to this issue. There is a way to write off topic posts while keeping the focus on your blog.

The answer is to submit the off topic posts to other blogs. Just because an article on innovation is not right for my consumer psychology blog, for example, does not mean it is not right for a tech blog like Technorati. Similarly, an article on management may not be right for my blog but it will be perfect for business blog like Business Insider.

Using this method I can achieve a number of objectives:

- I can blog on any topic I want;
- My primary blog stays focused;
- Guest posts on other blogs bring in traffic and back links, which enhance my blog’s SEO profile; &
- Blogging is more fun because of the freedom to write on any topic that I wish to write about.

The only criterion is to find other blogs relevant to your topic. I still try to write for blogs that are relevant to marketing. These include blogs on blogging, internet marketing and management. That way the traffic and the back-links from those sites are meaningful and relevant to my niche.

How to Adopt This Approach to Your Benefit

You too can adopt this approach to improve the quality of traffic received by your blog. But I would like to add two guidelines:

1. Do not neglect your blog and focus too much on writing off topic guest posts. Try to maintain a good balance between your blog and guest blogs.

2. Make sure that the guest blogs are of high quality and provide value to the reader. Otherwise nobody will bother to click on them and there is a chance of losing out on a wonderful opportunity that would have brought in commendable amounts of traffic to your blog.

Why it matters to your management efforts is because humans too perform higher when working in groups than they do when working individually. But not in all situations and not always in the same way. As managers, understanding when groups enhance performance and when groups reduce performance, can help you design a better work environment.

The Fishing Reel Experiment: When Working In Groups Increases Performance

In 1898, Norman Triplett noticed that cyclists reported faster race times when riding with another rider than they did when riding alone. To test his theory that competition enhanced performance he devised an experiment.

Triplett asked 40 children to wind a fishing reel. The only difference was that some children were asked to reel it alone, while others were asked to reel it in direct competition against another child. 

He found that those participants reeling in competition reeled faster than those who had reeled alone.

Triplett concluded that working in teams improves performance. Whether it is the competition, the audience factor or the fear of looking lazy, when people are made to work in groups they perform better.

But the case was far from closed.

The Dark Side of Social Facilitation Effect: When Working in Groups Hampers Performance

Then in the 1920s, social psychologist Gordon Allport conducted his own experiments to test the power of groups in performance enhancement.

He invited participants to undertake a series of activities involving multiplication, vowel cancellation and generating counter-arguments to ancient philosophers’ theories.

Like Triplett, Allport too found that groups enhanced performance. But it was not on all tasks. When it came to generating counter-arguments, for example, he found that while participants generated more arguments when working in a group environment, the quality of the arguments was low compared to that of those who were working alone.

How do you reconcile the two findings? Enter Robert Zajonc.

Zajonc’s Drive Theory

Zajonc theorised that these results were not contradictory; they were just missing a key qualifier – the complexity of the task.

When the task was simple or well learned, say reeling a fishing reel or a professional rider riding a bike, the increased arousal from working in a group (competition, being watched, the fear of appearing inadequate etc.) lead to superior performance.

When the task was complex or unfamiliar, however, the increased arousal decreased performance.

To test his theory, he devised an experiment involving cockroaches running a maze. He constructed a simple maze where the cockroaches would either the run the maze alone or in the presence of other cockroaches (figure 1).

He also constructed a complex maze which the roaches either ran alone or in the presence of other roaches (figure 2).

Consistent with his theory Zajonc found that having an audience improved performance in the simple maze whereas having an audience decreased performance in the complex maze.

Management Implications: How to Maximize Performance in Your Team

From management perspective, these experiments lead to two findings:

If the task is simple or well learned, working in a team environment will improve performance. So if you have an expert performer who has not been working to their level, put them in front of a crowd. Even if they are not in direct competition with the crowd the audience factor will improve performance.

If the task is complex or unfamiliar to people, working in a team would hamper performance. So if you want people to learn a new task or come up with new ideas, get them to work alone. This will ensure that the arousal of working in a team will not hamper their learning and creativity.

In his autobiography, Darwin recalled how he came up with the idea of natural selection. It was a classic light-bulb moment. He was sitting there reading Malthus on Population and suddenly it struck him that in the struggle for existence, favourable variations of animals would be preserved and passed on to the next generation, eventually accumulating into new species.

“In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.

“Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work; but I was so anxious to avoid prejudice, that I determined not for some time to write even the briefest sketch of it. In June 1842 I first allowed myself the satisfaction of writing a very brief abstract of my theory in pencil in 35 pages; and this was enlarged during the summer of 1844 into one of 230 pages, which I had fairly copied out and still possess.” – Charles Darwin.

The Telling Thing About Darwin’s Epiphany

This is important because according to Darwin this is the first time he has got the idea. It is the first time the basic algorithm of natural selection has popped into his mind.

Yet when you look closely at his diaries leading up to the epiphany, in which he recorded all his thoughts, ideas and intuitions, you see that is not the case. As the cognitive psychology scholar, Howard Gruber, discovered a few decades ago, Darwin had the theory of natural selection months before his eureka moment. He just did not know that he had it.

What Darwin’s Story Teaches Us about Persuasion and Mind Change

That is the thing about mind change. It appears to come from nowhere. One minute you are sitting there reading a book and the next a full-fledged theory pops in your mind. But as Darwin’s story shows mind change is seldom sudden. Often the big eureka moment is preceded by subtle psychological change that goes unnoticed by even the owner of the mind. The eureka moment is where it all comes together and to the surface, where the previously isolated bits come together into a theory.

This gradual process applies equally to persuasion. Changing people’s attitudes towards brands, products or isms is a slow process. It happens slowly over a period of time. While the prospect’s decision may ultimately be triggered by a sudden event but her decision to buy has been building up for much earlier.

For a great example of this phenomenon and how you can use it to boost your sales, see What the Famous Revolutionary, Che Guevara, Can Teach You About Persuasion and Mind Change.

The Mistake Many Marketers Make

Why this matters to your marketing efforts is because too often new comers to a market simply try to imitate the existing brands. They try to emulate the leader. This is ineffective because the leader already has a head start and is better resourced to compete in their position.

The Newcomer’s Opportunity

The competitor’s opportunity lies in targeting the customers the leader is ignoring or not fully satisfying. They are better off targeting those who do not want to buy from the leader.

So if you are about enter a market and you are providing the same product or pitching the same angle as the leader then re-think your strategy. It might be easier and more profitable to position yourself as the alternative.



The experiment went like this:

First, the infants were shown a display containing a doll. A screen then rotated up to cover the doll.



The infants then saw a hand move into the display and add another doll.



Finally, the screen dropped and, depending on the experimental condition, revealed either one doll or two dolls.



What Wynn wanted to know was whether the infants would react differently to the unexpected result (only one doll). Sure enough, she found that the infants looked longer at the impossible outcome (one doll) than the possible outcome (two dolls).

The experiment showed that we are wired to pay more attention to unexpected events than expected ones.

How to Write Better Titles Using the Power of the Unexpected

How does this help you write better headlines and post titles?

If people pay more attention to unexpected events then it stands to reason that by using an unexpected element in your title, you can increase the chances of the title being noticed and clicked. That is, if you want your post title to be noticed give it an unexpected title.

The Jason Towne Story: How You Can Use the Unexpected To Magnetize Your Articles or Content

Not so long ago, Jason Towne decided he wanted to launch a website. He did not have any experience in blogging or website promotion, nor did he have a big budget for advertising. As far as his classroom training on the subject went, it consisted of a handful of blogging success articles that he had read over the months leading up to his decision.

In fact, all he had was an untested theory that he had developed from the small amount of research that he had conducted online. He found that articles with unexpected headings drew more attention than articles without provocative or edgy headings. As he put it, “titles that make people say WTF? are winners.”

On 26 January, 2011 he put his theory to the test when he launched his website, TopThreeDaily.com. It opened with an article titled, 6 Bible Thumping Tips that Will Save Your Butt!

The response was amazing. “The day after my site went live,” recalled Towne, “I had nearly 2,000 pageviews and 500 unique visitors. Within the next 24 hours those numbers doubled and then I soon passed 8,000 unique visitors and 20,000 pageviews. In the week that we’ve been up, the site rose over 2.4 million spots on Alexa.”

The Towne Formula

The trick, according to Towne, is to think of something that is usually considered a negative and combine it with a positive. “For instance, diseases are bad and money is good. So how about an article titled, 5 Diseases I Would Pay Money To Get. Then do research and find some rare, cool disease that has positive benefits. I would click on that.”

But it does not just have to be a positive paired with a negative. Pairing any two entities that are not usually connected will do the job. Take for example Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s international bestsellers, Freakanomics and Superfreakanomics. They used unexpected connections in their chapter titles to attract attention to their books.

Here are some of the chapter titles from their books:

What Do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?

How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?

How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?

What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common?

The titles work because you do not normally associate teachers with sumo wrestlers, or prostitutes with department store Santas.

So next time you need a catchy title, think of something unexpected and back it up with a compelling story.

Have you used any unexpected titles to catch your readers attention?

The question is, does the technique work or is it just a left-over marketing convention from a time when 1 cent was a valuable amount?

The Two Pens Experiment on Pricing Psychology

To find out Vikki Morrison, a professor of marketing at NYU Stern, invited people to rate how expensive or cheap they thought a particular pen felt. Each participant was presented the same pen, the same advertisement and the same decision. The only difference was that some participants received an advert pricing the pen at $2.99, while others received an advert pricing the pen at $3.

How much of a difference would 1 cent make?

The participants rated the $2.99 pen as better value than the $3 pen, even though it was the same pen and only 1 cent cheaper.

Other studies have confirmed Morrison’s finding, showing that reducing the price by one cent can signal better value.

How the Left Digit Effect Works

The reason lowering the price by 1 cent works is that it changes the perception of the price by changing the left most digit. As the diagram below shows customers perceive $2.99 closer to $2 even though it is only 1 cent less. That is, $2.99 feels and registers as close to being $2 and thus makes the product appear cheaper and better value than a similar product priced at $3.   



Morrison’s findings and their implications for marketers are summed below.

When a 1 Cent Difference Does and Does Not Influence Buyer Behaviour

1. One cent does not make a difference in and of itself.

For two competing products priced at $4.00 and $4.01, the one cent will not make a difference in consumer behaviour in and of itself. It is only when the left most digit gets changed that it makes a difference.

2. One cent makes a difference when it changes the left most digit.

For two competing products priced at $4 and $3.99, the one cent will lead consumers to buy the $3.99 product over $4.00 because it changes the left most digit.

3. One cent makes a difference when prices are similar

For competing products that are in the closer price range ($4 and $6) a one cent difference will be greater than for products that are in a different price range ($4 and $10). That is, if two competing products are priced $3.99 and $5, the one cent drop will lead more people to buy the $3.99 product. Whereas, if the competing products are priced $3.99 and $10, the one cent difference will have little or no impact on consumer choice.

 4. One cent does not make a difference when consumers buy gifts

When people buy gifts, the left digit effect disappears as people are more concerned with buying the better present than saving a dollar.

If that is all a bit confusing and if you just want a simple answer for pricing your goods and services, then the answer is to reduce the price of your product(s) or service(s) by 1 cent or dollar so that the left digit is reduced.

If you sell a $4 item, price it at $3.99.

If you sell a $50 item, price it at $49.99.

If you sell a $6,000 item, price it at $5,999.