NOTA BENE: This is a Nairaland Original. This has not been published elsewhere.

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There's no doubt about it, psychology is the missing tool in your business growth arsenal.

Did you know that a psychology research has proven that if you read or listen to a message repeated for a long time, you will start believing it to be true.

That's why Coca cola places ads everywhere - billboards, umbrellas, shop signpost, football pitch, television and even on your phone while surfing the internet.

The message is the same "Open happiness" with an image of a smiling model.

Since the adverts are ubiquitous, it makes it to register on your subconscious mind which makes you more likely to buy it when you happen to need it. Other big companies do this, and it is called the ubiquitous principle of advertising.

But that's not the magic wand I wanted to talk about today. I quipped on this to expose the power of using psychology in marketing.

Why my fingers dance furiously on the keyboard this golden afternoon is to discuss another psychology principle which works gangbusters - the principle of reciprocity.

It's an immutable law of nature that when you give something to someone, the person will try to lift the burden of gratitude by doing something for you in return. If they can't, they will feel indebted to you.

To incorporate this psychological principle of reciprocity into the business arena, some people began to offer to offer freebies of their products to their customers. "Buy one, get one free" and "taste and see" are some of the examples.

But there is something wrong with this approach.

No. Not at all.

I am not saying that their method doesn't work.

Far from it, it does work.
Think about all the product giveaways on social media by companies, it must be working. That's why they do it.

But it has a very big flaw.

The flaw is so bad that it is the reason most companies lose millions of naira during the so called product giveaways.

And what is it? It cannot be scaled!

Product giveaways cannot be scaled because it leads to "PRESENTLY" satisfied customers.

That is, the customers already have what they need. And they are happy. And they are planning to BUY from that company again to show their gratitude for the freebie.

But they may end up not doing that.

The reasons for this abound but the chief among them is forgetfulness. Think about it, its not uncommon for people to forget the favours you did for them.

So, you see that the company doing product giveaways will lose a lot of money if they want to scale this because of customers who forgot or even those who found a better alternative product.

But this wouldn't be the case if they weren't SATISFIED in the first place. This wouldn't be the case if you didn't give them the actual product.

To accomplish this, you need to make use of gift cards.

Yes, gift cards!

You've heard of it before. All the top shots use it - Amazon, Google, Target ....

That's because it fuvking works.

With gift cards, you are not losing money because the product is not being given away but a worthless piece of paper with a monetary value (N1000 up to N5000) written on it.

And since that gift card must only be spent in your shop, you're giving them only one choice. With this, you increase sales dramatically.

If you think that money is still being lost, you are right.

But this is where the strategy lies.

What is it? Increase the price of all your products with the same amount which you wrote on the gift cards.

That way, you will not be losing any single dime while making a shit ton of sales.

Let me use an example to illustrate this.

- Mrs Anita is the owner of fashion shop which sells women clothes and shoes called HerWorld.

- Mrs Anita reads about this magic wand on Nairaland and decides to implement it.

- Mrs Anita designs a N1000 gift card bearing HerWorld business logo.

- Mrs Anita shares her gift card to women organizations in towns and cities near her as a measure of support for them.

- She distributed up to 1000 copies of her gift card. (Side note: It costs just 8000 to produce 1000 copies of gift cards. This means just N8 per card).

- She applies the strategy from this post by increasing the price of the clothes and shoes by N1000 (Did you also know that people think higher priced products are better than cheaper products? Another psychological trick, right?)

- Therefore a shoe which she sells for 4,500 is now 5,500.

-30% of the recipients i.e 300 people of that 1000 people finally visit her store to buy. (Note that it should be more than that, according to the research done by Shopatron (please Google it), 49% percent of people who received a gift card from a NEW store, bought from that store)

- She makes 5500 * 300 which will be 1.65 million naira.


That's the power of gift cards.

You're a great human, keep on soaring!


NOTA BENE:
I wrote this after I found what @Nichesiteseo was doing on Nairaland. He is simply making this place beautiful with valuable contents. If you have any web design project, please I beg you to contact him.




P.S: Please kind people of Nairaland, I have eaten today but I can't take my programming lessons today because I don't have data. If you can send 1000 to 3099105115. (First Bank), you will meet a good karma today and I promise to do the favour for someone else whenever I can. I am writing this with Freebasics.