3 Controversial Conversion Tactics That Will Increase Your Engagement & Revenue

 3 Controversial Conversion Tactics That Increase Customer Attraction
Don’t do this at home kids (Image Source)

Some people like to play it safe. And others like to make money. Those don’t have to be mutually exclusive propositions, but in my experience revenue tends to go up as safety —or at least the perception of safety—goes down.

Here are three conversion tactics I use routinely that feel very unsafe—but are surprisingly effective at bonding my customers to me and increasing my revenues. Many mainstream marketers might consider these tactics controversial—even mildly insane. But they work, and they work well.

1. Making Prospects Jump Through Hoops

Making Prospects Jump Through Hoops
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You know what they say about playing hard to get. An aloof man will drive the ladies crazy, whereas all those fawning, drooling idiots falling over themselves to buy a girl a drink are a complete turnoff.

Or so I’m told.

Why is that? Jim Camp, one of the world’s top negotiators and creator of the “Start with No” negotiation system, says it’s because deep down, we’re all basically predators. When we sense weakness, we ain’t attracted to it — we want to kill it.

And in a social or transactional situation, there’s nothing weaker than neediness.

When prospects sense that you need them, that you are almost desperate for them to buy, they feel that you’re weak. And that’s extremely bad news for you, because they are not looking for someone weaker than they are. They’re looking for someone stronger, who can solve a problem for them, guide them through a difficult situation, or somehow improve their own lives.

They need someone who they can lean on —not someone they sense will be more of a burden to them.

So while, oddly, making it obvious that you want someone’s business can turn them off, giving the opposite impression can turn them on. You can do this implicitly in your copy, of course; but one of the best ways is to overtly change the seller/buyer relationship in your favor.

Instead of you being the seller, and the prospect having all the decision-making power, wouldn’t it be better if your prospect felt like he had to prove himself to you?

One method I use often when promoting products by email is the “Reasons against” campaign. Take, for example, this email promoting a webinar:

3 Controversial Conversion Tactics example 2

2. Get People Riled Up & Engaged

get people riled up and engaged
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The examples above lead rather nicely into a second way of increasing conversions: antagonizing your prospects.

This can take many forms. You can dis on certain kinds of people, as I often do—calling people raving fanboys and questioning their grip on reality. And you can do it in email campaigns or on sales pages, or even on opt-in forms and in your paid products. You can also do it in ads or articles—for example, I recently wrote 3 Reasons Batman is Better Than Superman & How it Can Improve Your Conversion Rates.

Those might seem like unimportant topics — who really cares, right? Does it really count to “antagonize” people who prefer the Big Blue Boyscout to the Caped Crusader?

Well, there’s a lot of benefit in choosing topics that are ultimately unimportant. (Especially if you’re a bit chickenshit.) They get people riled up, which means they’re engaging with your content —but at the end of the day it’s not something they’re going to really hold against you. Conversely, the people who agree with you will bond to you: they’ll like you better, trust you more, and ultimately become better prospects or customers.

That said, if you’re up for a fight, and you know that most of your audience is going to agree with your stance on some important issue, why not go the whole hog? You’ll get the same bonding effect, but in the infamous words of Vegeta —it will be OVER NINE THOUSAND!

Having the stones to stand shamelessly for your convictions really sets you apart from your competitors. The stronger the convictions and the more shameless you are, the more a certain kind of customer will trust you.

Sure, you’ll send others running for the hills to get their pitchforks. But wouldn’t you rather have a smaller number of highly loyal and motivated customers (at the expense of a bunch of lousy prospects), than a larger number of lukewarm ones?

3. Talking About Irrelevant Nonsense

Talking About Irrelevant Nonsense
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Let me ask you what would come across as a random question: What do possums, sheep, guinea-pigs, bow-hunting, computer games, driving, or a 1,200-word joke about the secret of a long-forgotten monastery have to do with marketing?

You might think nothing whatever —and you’d be right in a way. Yet they are the topics of my most popular email campaigns.

In fact, “the secret that only monks can know” is one I’ve reused because of its effectiveness. People want to be entertained just as much as they want to learn about improving their business figures. Probably more in most cases, because entertainment is fun; whereas improving your business tends to get pretty dreary after a while. It is, after all, work.

That’s why many subscribers write to tell me that they read through the entire 1,222-word monk email, even if they already knew how it was going to end —just because it’s so entertaining. Whereas they’ll barely skim more “useful” information that’s half as long.

Now, if you’re thinking that simply engaging your audience is really worth nothing if you aren’t making any sales, you’re exactly right.

What would be the point of telling my prospects jokes — no matter how entertaining — if I didn’t make any money? That’s not a business model, and if you ever come across someone who claims that the key to successful marketing is to engage your audience without selling to them, run away.

But the monk story email is followed a couple of hours later by another short email, as follows:

3 Controversial Conversion Tactics example 3

Naturally, this campaign isn’t meant to produce outrageous profits —the product is only $29. But it’s a quick and easy way of getting people to put up their hands as prospects for a higher-priced writing training program and make a few bucks in the process.

What Bold Marketing Tactics Do You Use?

These tactics aren’t the only controversial ones I could write about. But they’re among the most solid, proven ways of increasing customer attraction that I know. Yes, they’re scary to implement, and not for timid and faint of heart. But that’s part of what makes them so effective.

What conversion tactics have you tried that others might disagree with or consider mildly insane? Share your own insights below.

— D Bnonn Tennant


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About D Bnonn Tennant
D Bnonn Tennant is the author of the free email micro-course “5 Sales-Spiking Website Tweaks Gurus & Designers Don’t Know”. When he isn’t teaching on turning visitors into customers, he’s schooling his kids in archery, fisticuffs and how to grapple a zombie without getting bit.
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