3 creative strategies to make your product counterattack "short, flat and fast" to capture users

If you are "unfortunate" enough to operate some truly good products, but it takes "some time" to see the effects of using the products, you will definitely find out painfully that most users would rather choose those products that "seem to be effective but are actually useless (or even harmful)", but leave your good products aside.

An obvious fact is that those who exercise regularly, both men and women, are mostly energetic, have radiant skin and look much younger than their actual age.

However, for today's young people who believe that "life is precious, but appearance is more valuable", why do most of them prefer to spend their time on WeChat Moments , watching TV series, playing games , and daydreaming rather than taking some time out for exercise?

For example, everyone knows that if you read and think frequently, you will eventually achieve a "great leap in work ability and buying a car and a house will no longer be a dream"; but as long as the tweets from Mi Meng and the author's public account arrive on your phone at the same time, you will still choose Mi Meng without hesitation...

If you are "unfortunate" enough to operate some truly good products, but it takes "some time" to see the effects of using the products, you will definitely find out painfully that most users would rather choose those products that "seem to be effective but are actually useless (or even harmful)", but leave your good products aside. The most typical examples are training products, books, and nutritional supplements. The most popular and best-selling ones are more like fast food.

Of course, if all this is caused by "stupid users" or "easy to be deceived", then people who are engaged in these businesses can at least "know their loss clearly".

But the most frustrating thing is -

Users are not stupid, their minds are as clear as mirrors (but they still make "bad decisions" ).

As:

• People who smoke know that smoking is neither cool nor healthy, but they still light up a cigarette without hesitation;
• People who stay up late also know that staying up late is like running into menopause, but they still go to bed late every day...

So, what is the root cause of all this?

How can we break this strange curse when we operate and promote various good products that "do not have immediate effects" (such as sports products, educational products, in-depth content products) and good commodities (such as nursing care, and elderly financial management insurance)?

Or when we personally want to change the "bad habits" in our lives, is there an effective scientific method?

1. We are all gorillas in suits

Neuro- and behavioral economists have done an interesting experiment:

Give the experimenters two choices:

1. Get $50 now
2. Get $100 after one year

As you might expect, most people chose option 1.

Of course, from a rational point of view, unless the inflation rate increases by dozens of times, 2 is a wise choice.

However, the interesting phenomenon is still to come. Give the experimenter two more choices:

1. Get $50 after one week
2. $100 after one year and one week

At this time, most people chose 2.

What's going on?

Simply delaying the "immediate benefits" by one week , other things remaining the same, will make people "rational" ?

The emerging representation theory in psychology, the construal level theory, explains this phenomenon well:

Simply put, people's degree of reflection (value perception) on an object does not depend on its "objective size" but on the psychological distance between the object and us .

However, factors such as "large time span", "long spatial distance" and "long social distance" will significantly weaken psychological response and thus affect value perception.

The above experiment is obviously because "time span" significantly affects our psychological distance .

In other words, getting $100 a year from now, a "good thing" that happens in the future, is "abstract" and difficult to measure in our minds, while getting $50 "right away" is very "vivid" and of obvious value.

So, here’s a popular chicken soup:

“Time heals all wounds” has a scientific basis, but it also hides another sentence: time also heals future gains.

From an evolutionary perspective, people greatly increase the weight of "present time distance" and despise the weight of "future time distance", which is consistent with the jungle environment of primitive society:

After all, when a saber-toothed tiger suddenly runs out of the woods, the best response strategy is to "grab a nearby weapon" or "run away."

While those primitive people who preferred to pursue "long-term interests" might still be pondering "whether it is possible to tame this beast and hunt like a dog...", they would "click" into the beast's stomach.

In other words, this special group of people who have this kind of "preference for future interests" have not been able to preserve their genes, and we are all descendants of primitive people who prefer present interests.

This theory explains the above phenomena very well:

For example, people know that staying up late is bad, but they still like to do it:

• The benefits of staying up late are obvious - instant enjoyment (usually staying up late is for entertainment)
• The benefits of not staying up late are: being younger, more beautiful, and healthier than your peers, but this may be three to five years later... several years later, who TM cares?

If you replace "staying up late" with "smoking, eating junk food, and reading jokes", all of the above will apply. I won't go into details here.

Therefore, it is not that users are stupid or greedy. All this is ultimately due to the fact that the evolution of our brains is far behind the development speed of post-industrial society :

Our "psychological distance intuition" can adapt well to the jungle environment, but it cannot cope well with Guo Jingming, beautiful internet celebrities , smoking, drinking and playing games.

So, as an operator ( marketing planner, entrepreneur ), should we give up promoting those good products that " take a long time to show benefits (long-term feedback)", and then just fight with our peers for the small number of old users in the crowd who have already formed habits?

On the one hand, the number of users who like "long-term feedback" products is small, but on the other hand, they are generally very loyal, making it difficult to get them to change products, and it is very difficult to enter this market.

Or just quit in despair?

Of course not. Things that are risky and difficult often have excess returns.

In the long run, "good products" is a blue ocean market with greater potential. Are those fast-food products that seek "short-term feedback" already overcrowded, right?

Once you can get good products with "long-term feedback" to cover the market first, your company will be one step ahead of others and the winner will take all.

For you personally, your net worth will undoubtedly increase by several times .

So, for people in the workplace, how should we operate and plan products that provide "long-term feedback"?

As individuals, how should we control our primitive instinct to prefer “short-term feedback” and suffer big losses?

As mentioned earlier, "temporal distance", "spatial distance" and "social distance" can significantly "manipulate" our psychological distance. So, can we use the above factors in reverse?

Below, Li Shaojia shares three strategies based on this idea, just for your inspiration:

• Creating the illusion of “time distance”: making “future benefits” concrete
• Creating the illusion of “spatial distance”: Playing “foreign artillery fire” in your ears
• Creating the illusion of "social distance": Nothing touches people's hearts more than talking about the things they cherish most

2. Create the illusion of “time distance”: let the future come “now”

Neuroeconomists conducted an experiment using magnetic resonance imaging technology. When people imagined their "future selves", the brain's reaction was far less than imagining their "present selves".

In other words, our instinct is to interpret our "future self" as someone else , or even a stranger.

This is consistent with the construal level theory (CLT) mentioned above.

But a follow-up study has more practical implications: we can trick our brains into mistaking our future selves for our present selves.

The researchers used digital technology to simulate the subjects' photos into their older selves, and then used virtual reality technology to allow the subjects to "interact" with their future selves. After a period of time, the aforementioned psychological distance phenomenon of not caring so much about "long-term value" disappeared !

We all know that humans have an innate ability to empathize . In other words, even just seeing someone chatting with their future self can free us from the influence of short-sightedness.

Therefore, when we are operating a product with “long-term feedback” (such as training, education, sports and health), our focus should not be on “how to reflect or even exaggerate the value of the product”, but should be on:

How to let users meet their “future selves” in advance .

For example, the most common approach is:

• Find some volunteer users and shoot a video of them using the product before talking about their confusion and pain.
• Then, after a while, shoot a video of the user using the product;
• Finally, a video of the same person's future self talking to his past self was spliced ​​together as a product promotion plan.

A similar approach can also be made into a text version.

Alternatively, for users who participate in fitness or training, if conditions permit, the "post-participation" results can be produced in advance, such as (virtual) photos of users after bodybuilding, for users to refer to, etc.

Since we can create a virtual "time distance" to make users' decisions rational , we can naturally use "spatial distance" to achieve a similar effect.

3. Creating the illusion of “spatial distance”: Playing foreign artillery fire in your ears

Take “not staying up late” or “insist on exercising” for example. If we as individuals want to develop these good living habits, what can we do?

Let's think about it first. When we stay up late, most people's subconscious reaction is to use the "immediate benefits" of "staying up late" as a psychological reference point, and then compare it with the "future benefits" of "not staying up late": This has been fully discussed before. With this comparison, it is obvious that we tend to stay up late.

However, have we ever thought that we can completely reset our "psychological reference point"? Why not compare the "benefits of staying up late" with the "disadvantages of staying up late" (rather than the benefits of going to bed early)?

Of course, you might say that the harm of staying up late also requires a "time span" to be reflected.

Yes, but we can easily increase the fear of "bad things" by shortening the "spatial distance", thereby affecting people's "short-sighted" decision-making .

For example, isn’t it common to hear news about sudden death due to “working overtime and staying up late”?

So why aren't people alert? That's because these "events" are far away from us (spatial distance).

However, you could collect some of these unfortunate news headlines , print them out and place them in a prominent place (close in space).

Friends who don’t believe in staying up late can try it themselves, and the effect is guaranteed to be significant.

Yes, as smart as you are, you should have discovered immediately that this idea can be fully used in operations (marketing planning) or social welfare activities.

For example, when the government conducts public welfare propaganda to encourage people to save water, we often see similar words:

"Two-thirds of the country's cities are facing a shortage of drinking water. Saving water is everyone's responsibility..."

In fact, these public service advertisements are mostly placed in densely populated cities with no water shortage. Will people feel anything when they see them?

People may think: Which cities are short of water (due to long distances), but we are not short of water here.

Therefore, we should change our way of thinking and think about what kind of "punishment" people will receive when they are wasting water within a short distance . With this in mind, it is not difficult to come up with the following creative ideas:

In the park, a young man who left the water tap was used by his parents as a negative example to educate their children: "Look, don't learn from that uncle."

This is just an example. Please imagine the real effect of the promotional picture.

Similar thinking, whether you are doing the operation, planning, or copywriting of any product, when users are not impressed by the long-term value of the product, you can try to reset the psychological reference point:

• Through the illusion of virtual "spatial distance", it tells users:
• The negative events that are happening “around” you (close to you) are caused by not using the product.

4. Create the illusion of "social (relationship) distance": Nothing touches people's hearts more than talking about the things they cherish most.

Li Shaojia clearly remembers a scene from an American TV series he had watched before:

The protagonist in the film tries to persuade a judicial officer to help arrest a senior government official. When he fails after several attempts, he suddenly remembers that the officer wants to repair his relationship with his daughter very much, and then the protagonist says:

Your assistance to me may not bring much wealth, but I can be sure that you will always be a hero in your daughter's heart .

This rhetoric finally impressed the other party.

Then why didn’t the male protagonist say that you will become a hero in the hearts of “people”, but instead emphasized that you will be a hero in the heart of “daughter”?

It is precisely the psychological reinforcement effect produced by "narrowing social distance" . (“People” is a mass relationship, and its social distance is much smaller than “the most beloved daughter”)

Similarly, when we operate products (commodities) with "long-term feedback":

For example, when promoting fitness products, if we emphasize “what benefits it can bring to the user, such as being more beautiful, stronger, and healthier”, it will not have much effect. (Time and distance weaken the effect)

However, if we try to create some illusion of closer “social distance”:

For example, if your target user group is unmarried people with strong hormone secretion, you can focus on bringing them closer to "romantic couples"

This picture is just a rough example

Or, if your target user group is young parents with children, you can focus on strengthening the "parent-child relationship"

This picture is just a rough example

It is worth mentioning that the above-mentioned strategy of narrowing the "psychological distance" is very flexible.

There are usually many different strategies for operating (marketing) the same type of products (or commodities):

For example, sports products:

• The fear effect created by shortening the “ spatial distance ” of negative events can be used to motivate users to make decisions;
• Or the effect of " social distance " that brings people closest to you closer can be used to encourage users to make decisions;
• You can also use the “ time distance ” created by the dialogue between your “future self” and your “present self” to influence user decisions.

Each strategy is suitable for a specific group. The final decision on which strategy to choose should return to the current status of the product you are operating and observe which user group you need to attract first .

Never follow blindly, never memorize, and never give up thinking .

V. Conclusion

Most of us seriously overestimate our own "rationality". In fact, when making most decisions, our so-called rational brain is just "rationalizing" the things decided by the emotional brain .

Although our primitive human brains have been well adapted to the jungle life for tens of millions of years, they are not suitable for modern life made of reinforced concrete:

One of the traits that has the greatest negative impact on us is "short-sighted wrong decisions" caused by "psychological distance" .

Fortunately, no matter how much we personally want to correct the foolishness that comes with such short-sighted decision-making;

As an operations or marketing personnel , if you want to try to change this "short-sighted effect" of users or consumers , the best way is to " use human nature to resist human nature ."

The following three strategies can be used to reverse the “psychological distance”:

• Create a virtual "time distance" to make future value "close at hand" ;
• Shorten the "spatial distance" of negative events, causing users to feel fear and thus change their short-sighted decisions;
• Close the "social (relationship) distance" and directly improve the high-weight benefits that the product brings to users ;

Finally, repeat:

All strategies are tools .

Tools are dead, but your wisdom is flexible .

Never follow blindly, never memorize, and never give up thinking .

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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