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In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we’re exploring The Reciprocity Principle today: giving to get or spreading gratefulness profitably.
What is the Reciprocity Principle
In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini explains that we are hard-wired to respond positively to a gift, even when we didn’t ask for it or particularly wanted it. We feel gratitude, which leads to feeling indebted to the giver.
This isn’t pop psychology: it’s an instinct deeply embedded in our brains because it’s connected to the survival of the human race: you scratch my back, I scratch yours, and we both thrive.
I’m sure you’ve been on both sides of this principle:
- A co-worker helps you with that pesky spreadsheet formula, so when they need help with a task, you offer it without a second thought.
- Your friend offers to pay for dinner, so you instinctively say: “OK, but drinks are on me”. Or: “I’ll pick up the tab next time.”
- A leader took you under their wing and mentored you. In exchange, you became loyal to them. Or perhaps you were the leader who mentored others?
- You sign up for a newsletter and get an excellent freebie. In exchange, you’ll be more inclined to buy the newsletter author’s products in the future.
From Cialdini’s Influence: a waiter increased their tips by 3% after offering diners a free mint. They were increased by 14% when given two mints. If the waiter left one mint with the bill and returned quickly to offer a second mint, the tips increased by 23%.
The last one is extremely insightful: because the diners sensed an extra effort from the waiter, they tipped a lot more. I have an example of my own in the same vein — you’ll find it below.
How you can use The Reciprocity Principle in marketing
TL;DR: give before you get.
You run a business, so your audience expects you to sell them something. They know there’s a commercial agenda behind everything you do.
If you pay for their “dinner”, they expect you to ask for a favor in return.
This isn’t a bad thing. It just means that you need to calibrate your freebies and your pitches accordingly.
So, what can you give your audience so they feel thankful?
Freebies
eBooks, lead magnets, free webinars, whitepapers, short courses, a value-packed newsletter, or a blog article — the world is your oyster here and format is the least important thing.
What matters is that your audience needs your gift. So:
- If you have a lead magnet, don’t make 70% of it a pitch for a paid product. If you run a free webinar, don’t spend 50% of the time promoting your paid offer.
- Don’t ask too much in exchange for said gift. An email address is more than enough.
- Make sure people need what you’re offering. Yes, we all like free stuff and we may download your freebie. But time is limited for everyone, so we may never use it → buh-bye, feeling of gratitude.
Referral programs
Referral programs are great for two reasons:
- They use The Reciprocity Principle — people like what you do because you’ve helped them one way or another and they want to support you, so they’ll share your content/products with their peers.
- The referrals you get this way are very likely to be ideal-fit leads. They were recommended by someone who already loves what you do, after all.
So, you’re not just building an audience, you’re building a relevant audience.
To make this work, make sure the rewards you offer are gifts your audience truly wants.
By the way, have you seen the rewards you can win in my referral program? Find them at the bottom of this email!
Don’t be stingy with praising others — share the spotlight
Collaborations and cross-promos work in nearly every industry. Sometimes, even with people who are your direct competitors.
Don’t be afraid to show your appreciation for a peer! You might be surprised at how prone people are to reciprocate.
More importantly, don’t be stingy with praising your clients!
Every time I get a testimonial from one of my clients, I make sure to share the spotlight with them — I add their preferred URL, a photo, and a few nice words about them. I tag them on social media if we’re connected there because I know every little bit of visibility helps.
Go beyond the bare minimum: delight, don’t just deliver
If you deliver exactly what you promised, you’ve met expectations. You didn’t wow your clients, nor win their undying gratitude because they got what they paid for — unless your products are incredibly good and priced lower than the market average.
You can do more:
- Add bonuses to your digital products → my ready-to-send launch email sequence has a bonus section that teaches you how to write killer subject lines yourself. My Guided Strategy Template has a bonus section with additional resources to help you master marketing strategy.
- Deliver a little something extra with your services: free advice, a quick assessment, a bonus resource, or simply deliver before the deadline.
Caveat: the bonuses shouldn’t be worth more than the main offer itself. That’s just cramming too much stuff in one place — the value of freebies decreases with every new bonus you add to the same offer.
I want to tell you a story about how I recently used The Reciprocity Principle without even realizing it.
A client of mine snagged a strategy session with me during my anniversary discount campaign two weeks ago. Our session took place on Friday last week.
After each session, I send all my clients a document with additional advice, my initial assessment, growth ideas, and other goodies.
For this particular client, I built a few frameworks/templates they could use for their social media posts. I promised I’d send the frameworks (a bonus to our session together) by Monday.
Except..they mentioned they were planning to write their social media posts the next day, on Saturday. So I buckled up and sent them the frameworks on Friday evening precisely so they could use them the next day.
What happened next blew my mind — and I’m not saying this to clickbait you!
My client took one framework I created for them and the accompanying example post, turned it into an email, sent it to their list (on a Saturday!), and made $9K.
I was over the moon because that meant they had a 3500% ROI on their session with me! And that’s just the ROI of a tiny add-on, not the full thing.
How cool is that?
I went the extra mile for a client without expecting anything in return but I got a story I’ll be using as social proof for a very long time!
Which brings me to my next point.
This is not a quid pro quo, so don’t expect 1:1 reciprocity
The Principle of Reciprocity only works if you’re genuinely trying to help people, not rip them off or gain something instantly.
I told you the story above for two reasons:
- To brag. Sorry, it had to be done.
- To point out that not everything in marketing is measurable. I went above and beyond for my client because I wanted to. I genuinely like them and I’m rooting for them. My only goal was to make their work easier — and delight them in the process.
I got more than I was expecting.
Much as I loved this, I know it’s not the norm. It’s an outlier, so I don’t expect a repeat performance any time soon.
Just like you shouldn’t expect a quick win from everything you give.
Reciprocity compounds, but, just like interest, it takes its sweet time to become life-changing.
Limitations — don’t abuse The Reciprocity Principle
Seriously, don’t. Your audience can smell disingenuous offers. Don’t tell them you’re doing something for them if you have a hidden agenda — they can see right through it.
- If you have to tell people how generous you are and how incredible your offer is, you’re not and it’s not.
- “I can’t believe I’m giving you this for free!” is a phrase that needs to disappear from landing pages — for everyone’s sake, your bottom line included.
- Feel like you’re giving too much away for free and your audience isn’t reciprocating? I’d make sure the freebies you offer are wanted AND that they don’t bite into your paid offer. If you sell services, you can freely share everything you know — your audience is looking for someone to do things for them. If you’re selling knowledge, save the juicy bits/frameworks/how-tos for your paying customers. I
We’ve covered what to give away and how to do it. Now let’s talk timing.
Reciprocity decays with time
If you have to ask your audience for a favor, do it as soon as possible.
If you ask for a review a month after you deliver the product/service, they’ll forget about it. Find the shortest possible window to ask for a testimonial.
Take a page from the eCommerce book: they know when your parcel is delivered, so they ask for a review the same day, while the excitement is fresh in your mind.
I ask my strategy session clients for a testimonial while still in the session, at the very end. They’re still excited and pumped about our time together so that increases my chances of receiving it. Plus, it’s a face-to-face ask and those always work best.
For my other products, the pre-written launch email sequence and The Guided Strategy Template, I wait for a couple of days before emailing them about a testimonial. They need time to open them, read them, and/or use them.
The same goes if you’re offering something for free. You’ll often see newsletter operators ask you to reply to their email and add their address to your contacts list as soon as you’ve subscribed.
They know you’re in action mode, probably already excited about their newsletter, and thus willing to reciprocate.
Before you go, can I ask you for a small favor, [FIRST NAME GOES HERE]? (I know, how meta of me!)
It takes 20 seconds!
If you haven’t yet, please fill in this form to help me pick out the topics that will help YOU grow your business. See? Reciprocity in action!
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Adriana’s Picks
- This Black Friday, my friends at ConvertKit are offering their biggest deal of the year. For any free and monthly plan users, all annual plans up to and including 10K subscribers will be 30% off for the first year! That’s as low as $76 annually for the Creator plan! Grab it here! [Affiliate link]
- Snoop Dogg just dropped one of the best campaigns of the year. No, he didn’t drop that kind of smoke.
- Did you catch this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert? I don’t want to spoil it for you but I can tell you it’s just as tear-jerking as the other ones — and it has a carnivorous plant!
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That’s it from me today!
See you next Thursday in your inbox.
Here to make you think,
Adriana
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