Implementing psychological tactics into your marketing can help you craft your campaigns:

• With the decoy effect, present several options, but make one superior to the others. Also, try the sleeper effect or the amplification tactic.
• Are you reading the wrong books for the wrong reasons? These 5 Ps can help you narrow down what you're looking for (including recs!).
• $480K in total revenue from web development. Oleg Malkov launched, failed, battled depression, grew his company, then exited.

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by Akshay Raveendran

Try these strategies to craft a killer marketing campaign!

Amplification hypothesis

The amplification hypothesis states that people are more likely to believe something if it is stated with certainty. Express absolute confidence or absolute skepticism.

Limited edition

Create a feeling of rarity and scarcity, fostering a sense of immediacy among your users. This is one of the ideas I have used in selling my products, and it works well every time.

Decoy effect

Provide several options, but make the last one superior to the others. Consumers tend to have a specific change in preference between two options when also presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated.

Priming

Draw attention to certain words, phrases, or sentences. For example, talking about "climate change" with a person might activate their thinking about "extreme weather," prompting them to check out your weather-related product.

Reciprocity norm

This implies that a favor is owed. It can be understood as the expectation that people will respond to each other by returning benefits for benefits.

Sleeper effect

A message ignored at first becomes more powerful over time. People remember the content, even if they forget the source.

Social influence

Here, consumers influence each other in the purchasing process. The goal is to encourage positive influence among consumers.

Yale attitude change approach

The effectiveness of the communication depends on aspects of the communicator. For example, use an attractive or cool speaker, and have them speak first or last.

Avant garde

Show how your product is the latest and greatest, exploring new forms or subject matter.

Magic ingredient

This is a persuasive advertising technique that suggests a product has an intangible element that makes it unique from competitors.

Patriotism

This is a marketing strategy that uses images, slogans, and taglines to appeal to a broad consumer base by appealing to their sense of patriotism. It can also convey a sense of national pride by emphasizing the use of domestically-sourced materials or labor.

Plain folks

Use "every day people" to make a product or idea seem more relatable and trustworthy. The goal is to show that it's appealing and valuable to everyone.

Snob appeal

This is a strategy that convinces consumers that purchasing a product or service will elevate their status. It appeals to people's desires to be part of an elite or glamorous group.

Bribery

Add something extra. Think "buy one get one."

Bandwagon

People want to be included. Bandwagon advertising often plays upon the fear of missing out on an opportunity.

Rhetorical questions

Ask people to ask questions of themselves. This can be used to make a point, or create a dramatic effect.

For more, check out the strategies I used to get my first 10 customers!

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🔎 Six mistakes that advertisers make in regards to targeting.

🙅‍♀️ Debunking common Google E-E-A-T misconceptions.

🥹 How vintage typography can build emotional connections.

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by Channing Allen

Books are Swiss Army knives that do at least five distinct jobs, yet most people are aware of only two or three of these jobs. Books gives us the five Ps, explained below.

1. Propositions

You want to learn a general set of facts about a subject. You're probably not looking for specific action steps here. You just want to go from being ignorant to being somewhat less ignorant.

Here are five propositional books I love (in no particular order):

• Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson.
• Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll.
• The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich.
• Traffic by Ben Smith.
• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.

2. Procedures

Whereas propositional books are about "knowing that," procedural books are about "knowing how." You pick them up when you want to learn the action steps for solving a specific problem in your life.

We spin up new crowdsourced products all the time for Indie Hackers, and it's always difficult to get started. So, a few years ago, I picked up The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen.

Here are five other procedural books I love:

• Mindful Self-Discipline by Giovanni Dienstmann.
• Deep Work by Cal Newport (plus all his other books).
• Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.
• Change Your Brain Every Day by Daniel Amen.
• The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.

3. Perspectives

These books explore new ways of framing the world that are less about offering answers, but more about suggesting better questions to ask.

Two of my favorites are The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky and Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse. Here are five others I really love:

• A First-Rate Madness by Nassir Ghaemi.
• Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (plus all his other books).
• Reflections on the Self by Krishnamurti (plus all his other books).
• Dynamics in Action by Alicia Juarrero.
• The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford.

4. Provocation

These books are for when you need rousing, not reason. Currently, I'm reading about Deng Xiaoping, the "needle inside a ball of cotton" who turned China's economy from a communist backwater into the fastest-growing economy in the history of the world.

For me, it's not about ideology transfer, it's about energy transfer. Here are five more:

• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
• This is Marketing by Seth Godin.
• The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter.
• Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins.
• Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami.

5. Pleasure

You read these books simply to feel good. I won't give examples here since pleasure is highly subjective, and we all can think up good examples!

Mixing and matching

In my case, how I read a book depends on why I'm reading it. If I'm reading a "procedural" book, I'll expect a lot from the author. If they don't clearly know more about the subject than me, I'll discard the book immediately.

But, if they're legit, I'll take my time. I'll take a lot of notes. Sometimes, I'll convert insights into standard operating procedures within my personal productivity systems.

If I'm reading for perspective, I'll read with a lot more patience and open-mindedness. I'll also go quickly, but will slow down with each successive read.

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from the Marketing Examples newsletter

“Put the most intriguing fact first.”

— Alfredo Marcantonio

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by Oleg Malkov

I’ve been in the SEO game since 2006. In 2014, a crisis hit, and sales plummeted to zero. At the time, I was living in Thailand, and I was in a deep depression.

The SEO breakup

There I was, completely disillusioned with SEO. I went full throttle into freelancing, taking on anything and everything. In eight months, I managed to scrape together $12K. I stumbled upon ThemeForest, a marketplace that sells website templates, WordPress themes, plugins, etc.

I decided to start a company and hire a team! And....it failed miserably. I'll save you the gory details, but think product errors, dwindling funds, lack of training, no roadmap, and the list goes on. We did, however, manage to create a website template.

The breakthrough

I finally got my template accepted into the marketplace, and in the first month, I made $8.7K+.

The setback

In 2016, I borrowed $19K to grow the business, and we got four templates accepted into the marketplace. Then, I spent 2017 paying off the debt. I also tried to update unsold templates with second or third designs, but it didn’t help.

I decided to seek investment. Eventually, two investors gave me $35K, and I put together a new team:

• Two average designers. I should have invested in hiring one amazing designer instead.
• Three frontend developers.

It worked! We saw relatively fast results. However, the marketplace had significantly raised its design standards, and our templates were repeatedly rejected. The challenge became consulting with top-notch designers to figure out what was wrong.

After six months, I got lucky and found a strong art director. He corrected all of our mistakes, and our first few templates were accepted. He raised our design quality immensely. During our best months, we were releasing five templates to the market.

COVID-19 helped our sales. After three weeks of lockdown, it seemed everyone was launching online businesses and in need of website templates. We created 17 accepted products in 2020.

At the peak, we were making $6.5K a month, but eventually, our sales stopped growing, even with new products. This barely covered salaries for seven people, plus operational expenses. So, I decided to sell the project through Empire Flippers.

The exit

I applied to Empire Flippers and received a maximum valuation of $210K. Everything seemed set, but then I hit a roadblock: ThemeForest’s terms of service prohibited account sales!

For six weeks, I corresponded with them, resorting to threats, pleas, blackmail, and every tactic under the sun to get permission to sell the account. I don’t know which argument worked, but they allowed it, though they emphasized that it was a one-time exception.

I found a buyer, and we eventually settled on $180K. I popped the champagne!

Back to SEO

After my stint as a product manager, I realized I didn’t want to deal with immeasurable data like design, which can’t be quantified or compared. So, I returned to my first love: SEO and data analytics.

Together with a partner, I founded MonsterPBN. We specialize in auctioning domains and PBN building services for SEO in highly competitive niches.

My top learning? It’s crucial to seek qualified experts for advice right away. It will save you years, and tens of thousands of dollars. You can’t achieve something big without top-notch specialists and employees!

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by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Akshay Raveendran, Darko, Harry Dry, and Oleg Malkov for contributing posts. —Channing