Use Reciprocity to Make Your Marketing More Effective

Think about how you feel when somebody does something nice for you. Even if it’s a little tiny thing, I bet your natural inclination is you want to return the favor or at least look at that person in a more favorable light. Now that’s called reciprocity. Reciprocity is that natural give and take that every relationship needs to be sustainable. When somebody does something for you, you just feel obligated to return the favor.

Now great salespeople have known this since the beginning of time, basically. They go out of their way to deliver value before they ever ask for the sale. Once they do deliver the sale, they continue to basically add value to get that customer to come back and keep doing business with them.

Now today because of the internet we as marketers can use reciprocity at an enormous scale. If you’ve got information that your customers can use, such as an article or tips that will make their life better, might even be a webinar to help them solve a problem related to your products and services, when you do that, you start a relationship with them, they’re going to remember who solved that problem and they’re going to come back and want more of it.

Marketing today is really about building relationships at scale with your best prospective customers. There’s no better way to start a relationship than by doing something for the other person. Understand reciprocity and think about how you can deliver it in your marketing. There’s a great book by Gary Vaynerchuk called Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Gary is the pro at using reciprocity. He uses the analogy that a boxer has to basically jab until the right opportunity opens up where he can land a right hook. That’s what you want your marketing to be. The jabs are you giving value and adding value to your customers life. Basically you can only ask for the business once you’ve landed enough jabs. That’s your right hook in this case.

Think about what value your customers want, what information they need that you have. Design your marketing to get that in front of them. Start a relationship and warm them over time by giving them more and more value on day one, on day 30, and even on day 300. That’s how you can use reciprocity to make your marketing more effective.

If you’re interested in the idea of building relationships with prospects at scale, check out our Marketing Automation Agency service.