How inspired would you be to spend $100 on something your neighbor told you not to buy?
What if you had to spend $300 on an iPhone just to be able to use that $100 product?
My neighbor Karen is about to do just that after noticing an update my wife posted to her Facebook profile this morning. Here’s what happened…
Sell The Personal Benefit Using a Vague Product Endorsement
A month ago my friend Dan Russell, the guy I rely on for tech news and updates, introduced me to the UP by Jawbone. It’s an amazing little wristband that tracks your daily activity, including number of steps taken, sleep quality and meal nutrition.
Making the UP even more valuable are the analytics provided on the iPhone app. You plug your UP wristband into your iPhone headphone jack (There’s a small cap on one end that houses the plug). By syncing your activities with the app, you can discover when you’ve been in deep REM sleep, lightly sleeping or waking up throughout the night, broken down by minute. It’s fantastic.
But this isn’t a post about a cool new tech toy, it’s about the way my wife started a conversation that led to $700 in new purchases she never intended to deliver.
Here’s Casey’s post as of 9pm (It got 13 comments):
Our neighbor, Karen, was one of the first people to post a reply. She asked Casey what the hell an ‘UP’ was. Like Casey’s other friends, she wanted to know how to learn more about her own sleep quality, which is what my wife highlighted in her short but compelling update.
There are a few dynamics at work here.
First, Casey is the most honest person I know (Yes, I am biased, but ask anyone and they’ll likely confirm this). She doesn’t use Facebook to shamelessly self-promote. So we can assume that Casey has a high level of trust within her community of Facebook friends (I mean, presumably everyone should have a certain level of influence when it comes to a chosen set of connections who have to opt-in to be friends with you).
Second, the message vaguely endorses the product as an afterthought. The primary element of the post is an excited declaration of satisfaction with excellent sleep quality. Most people I know have trouble sleeping sometimes, and sleep quality is a source of interest for many. So by mentioning her excellent sleep quality — desired by many — with the casual insertion of an interestingly named product, Casey set off her friends curiosity.
I should mention that Casey mentioned her UP in a meeting at the office today. Three of her coworkers immediately opened up the Jawbone website and spoke about their purchase intent.
Alright, so back to our neighbor Karen. I sort of hijacked the conversation by adding a link to the UP product page and discussing the functionalities of the wristband:
Karen wrote a comment after my last post that read, “Well I need a new phone anyway…thanks Joe.”
One endorsement by a trusted friend has Karen saying she is ready to drop $400 on two tech products. Damn, that’s a hot statement about the effectiveness of social networks influence on purchases.
To be sure, no one has bought the items yet, but thousands of people have had the opportunity to view product endorsements (Real endorsements, not fake Kardashian style sponsored tweets) in their news feeds. I have 1,181 Facebook friends and Casey has 567 (Now think about all of the friends who commented, and the multiplier brings the potential visibility into the tens of thousands).
The bottom line for business owners is to identify influencers in the community and help them start productive conversations on the social web. I see way too many updates that go along the lines of ‘Check out our new [insert product here]‘ or ‘We want to be your local service provider’. That reeks of what I call ‘The Big Shill’.
Just be real!
If you’ve got something cool to sell, invite the community inside your tent. Jawbone could make a deeper impact by reaching out to those with sleeping problems or high endurance athletes. Athletes love metrics and require optimal performance. A recommendation from someone in a tight knit triathlon training group could result in lots of great PR and plenty of incremental sales.
So that’s my daily experience with the social web influencing buying behaviors of the friends in my community. What stories do you have about a casual product recommendation resulting in a purchase?