Try loss messaging over “win” messaging to inspire change
- Sat, September 17 2011
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
Behavioral economists often talk about how people are more fearful of losing money than excited about winning money.
As Roger Dooley of NeuroMarketing Blog points out:
If I gave you $50 with the following two choices, what would you do?
* Keep $30.
* Gamble, with a 50/50 chance of keeping or losing the whole $50.An experimenter posed that question to subjects, and found that 43% of the subjects chose to gamble. Then the options were changed to:
* Lose $20.
* Gamble, with a 50/50 chance of keeping or losing the whole $50.Same thing, right? In fact, though the dollar amounts are the same, with these options, 62% of the subjects chose to gamble. Expressing the first option as a loss caused a 44% jump in the number of people avoiding that choice!
What does this mean to you?
Think about changing to loss messaging.
From: “Save $100 in energy this month! Turn your thermostat down 3 degrees!”
To: “Don’t lose $100 in energy this month! Turn your thermostat down 3 degrees!”
Or…
From: “Save 5 acres of our town park! Vote against rezoning!”
To: “Don’t lose 5 acres of our town park! Vote against rezoning!”
You get the idea: Remind people of what they have to give up - more than what they get.