Is Behavioral Economics a Manipulation Game to Retain and Expand Customers with Bri Williams

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Understand the behavioral economics of consumers in order to overcome barriers to their buying decisions  How to overcome barriers of apathy, anxiety, and paralysis to get more people on board and encourage retention  How to structure your offer in a way that it will be easy for customers to make buying decisions    Bri Williams is the Behavioral Explainer, Managing Director and Behavioural Specialist of People Patterns Pty Ltd. She works with clients to maximize each and every interaction using behavioral economics. That might include your proposals and presentations, letters and emails, websites and apps, product and brand development, sales and customer service scripts, stakeholder meetings and staff performance.    In this episode, Bri talks about the importance of behavioral economics in influencing people’s decision-making to buy.     “You cannot ‘not’ influence people. Anything you do in any direction, you are influencing people.”   - Bri Williams      Increase Your Pricing Knowledge: Become a Champions of Value INSIDER!    To sign up go to insider.championsofvalue.com. Use the promo code 'INSIDERNOW'  to take advantage of our special $5 offer for the first month.      Topics Covered:    01:07 - Bri's response to  Mark’s Blog titled says, ’Why Behavioral Economics Doesn't Work with Subscriptions.’    02:31 - Behavioral techniques companies used for retention or expansion    04:21 - Why she calls herself a behavioral explainer    06:21 - The dichotomy of rational and irrational decision-making    09:19 - Three barriers businesses need to think through and overcome to onboard and retain customers     12:49 - Apathy as being the status quo    15:05 - Decision paralysis as a speech paradox of choice    17:06 - Anxiety being the third barrier to getting people to buy and the proven ways to overcome it    21:13 - Is behavioral economics a manipulation game? Is it good or bad?    25:11 - What's the idea behind behavioral economics    Key Takeaways:    “I agree the good, better, best is a really appropriate sort of structure to work on the cues. Like this is the bestseller or this is what most other people buy. The use of social proofing and social norms to perhaps suggest to people what the preferred option should be. When in doubt, people tend to do what other people do. So signal that to them.” - Bri Williams     “And this is what happens throughout our decision-making. We're playing tennis all the time. When there's nothing at stake to lose, we're going to be more aggressive. We're going to be more open to risk. But as soon as those stakes have changed, then we're going to withdraw a little. So as a business, we want people to feel very confident that if they take the desired action, it's going to be okay.” - Bri Williams     “We're endeavoring any way to try and get people to do things. Unfortunately, people's lack of understanding of behavioral science or behavioral economics means that they're doing it based on this assumption that people do make decisions rationally when in fact we don't.” - Bri Williams     “Always think of price in context. So oftentimes we think of price as a number when in actual fact the person receiving that price, it's going to be receiving it in a whole range of contexts. And so it's your opportunity and in fact, your responsibility as a business to set that context.” - Bri Williams     People / Resources Mentioned:  Daniel Kahneman  Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman  Behavioral Economics for Business by Bri Williams  The Little Book of Pricing and Payment by Bri Williams    Connect With Bri Williams:  BriWilliams.com.au  LinkedIn    Connect with Mark Stiving:   Email: [email protected]    LinkedIn    Twitter