The Power of FREE! and Reciprocity: Implications for Your Marketing Content.

“We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an honoured network of obligation.” (Richard Leakey, Paleoanthropologist)

As social psychologist Robert Cialdini details in his books, Influence and Pre-Suasion, people say yes to those they owe. Those who have provided something to us are entitled to something from us in return. Those who do not give back tend to be assigned disparaging names such as freeloader, user, selfish, taker, ‘Jack’ (Australian military slang) and numerous other obscenities not appropriate for publishing on social media. To avoid such social ridicule, therefore, you can expect reciprocity to work most of the time.

In his books, Cialdini describes, rather entertainingly I might add, a series of simple experiments that speak to the power of reciprocity. For example, in one study, shoppers at a candy store became 42 per cent more likely to make a purchase if they’d received a gift piece of chocolate upon entry. Similarly, results from a study exploring the effect of a waiter/waitress giving a single mint to restaurant patrons at the conclusion of their meal, revealed that this simple gesture increased tips by as much as 23 per cent when compared to a control group where no mint was provided.

What does this mean for your marketing content? To become a HUGE online success, simply give your target audience free stuff! Growing your business is that easy! Actually, not quite. Unsurprisingly, integrity matters, so too do a couple of other specific things. Cialdini illustrates there are specific features of an initial gift or favour that significantly increase the chance it will be returned: Meaningful, Unexpected and Customised.

A fascinating example of the power of these three specific features involved Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard (we’ll call him Big Jimbo) while being questioned in prison in the days after the 9/11 attacks. Attempts to get information out of Big Jimbo initially proved hopeless. However, when interrogators noticed that Big Jimbo never ate the cookies he was served with food and learned that he was diabetic, they did something for him that was meaningful, unexpected and customised. During the next interrogation session, they brought Big Jimbo sugar-free cookies to eat with his tea. Soon thereafter, Big Jimbo provided extensive data on Al Qaeda operations, as well as the names of seven of the 9/11 hijackers.

So, regarding your marketing content, offer gifts that are personalised and valuable to the needs and/or wants of your target market.

Reciprocation on Steroids

Your ability to maximise the power of reciprocity can be enhanced by the irresistible allure of ‘FREE!’ As Dan Ariely (a Duke behavioural economist, previously at MIT) points out wonderfully in his book Predictably Irrational, humans go a little bit kooky when there is a FREE! offering. Why? The technical term is loss aversion, but for most of you you are probably more familiar with the notion ‘fear of missing out’ or, for those really cool kids amongst you, ‘FOMO’.

One interesting example of the power of FREE! in Predictably Irrational comes from Amazon.com. When Amazon launched a ‘free shipping’ promotion with the purchase of a second book, every country except France showed a big jump in sales from the offer. The Amazon marketers investigated this occurrence more deeply, thinking perhaps the French were rational enough not to be swayed into buying a second book. In fact, they found that in France, the program had been changed ever-so-slightly. Instead of ‘free shipping’, Amazon France charged a measly 1-franc (approx. 20 Australian cents) for shipping. From a purely economic standpoint, the two offers are almost indistinguishable. In actual performance, though, the 1-franc shipping offer caused no sales increase whatsoever. When the French offer was changed to include ‘free shipping’, low and behold, sales spiked.

Another interesting experiment exploring the power of FREE! depicted in Predictably Irrational has been labelled the Hershey’s Kiss experiment. In one trial of one study, students were offered a Lindt Truffle for 26 cents and a Hershey’s Kiss for 1 cent: 40 per cent opted for the Lindt Truffle and 40 per cent went with the Hershey’s Kiss (the remaining 20 per cent opted for kale and quinoa salad). When the price of both chocolates was dropped by just 1 cent, 90 per cent suddenly went for the FREE! Hershey’s Kiss, even though the relative price between the two chocolates was the same. In a follow-up study, the experimenters tried seeing what would happen if the price was further reduced by 1 cent; meaning that the Lindt Truffle was now priced at 24 cents and the Hershey’s Kiss was priced at negative 1 cent. The result, no difference in behaviour. FREE! appears, indeed, to be a very powerful force.

What are the implications of all of this psychobabble for your marketing content? Offer something for FREE! (not discounted to three cents, two cents, one cent; offer it for FREE!). This will send your target market a little bit kooky and ignite significant interest that will be hard for them to overlook. If your customers accept your FREE! offering, then, by the power of reciprocity (particularly if your offering is meaningful, unexpected and customised), they will be more likely to feel indebted and obliged to reciprocate in kind, either by doing business with you or by sharing the love with others about how awesome your offering/business is. Cowabunga, dude!