The simple way to increase engagement by 92%
Have you read ‘Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion’?
If not, you should!
It’s a great book on influence and on how to nudge others to act in a certain way.
Chapter 2 illustrates how people similar to us are more likely to influence our actions.
The authors ask “whose behaviors are we most likely to follow?”
To answer the question they ran a social influence experiment with hotel guests.
Most hotel rooms display cards asking guests to reuse towels to help the environment.
What if the card said that the majority of guests that stayed in the same room reused the towels?
There was a 33% increase in participation when compared to the control group.
The latter received a card referring to the majority of hotel guests with no mention of the same room.
The more similar we are to an individual or a group of people, the more likely we are to act as they act.
So I thought I would run my own study using the greatest social influence lab on the planet.
Enter Facebook Ads!
If you are not familiar with Facebook Ads, the targeting capabilities are astonishing.
You can show ads to users depending on their age, gender, location, social connections….
And on and on… The choice is bewildering.
I manage Italiansinfuga, a website aimed at Italians wishing to live and work abroad.
As an experiment, I created Facebook ads to test the social influence hypothesis.
Here are the results!
Exhibit A
A few months ago I published one of the most successful posts ever.
A Reddit user shared his story of how, at 46 years of age, he had realized to have wasted his own life.
I translated it for the readers who are not too familiar with the English language and it blew up!
My hypothesis was that it would resonate more with 46 years old males.
So I devised a simple experiment to test if 2 simple words could influence the clicking of the ad.
The target: 46 years old males living in Italy, not connected to the my Facebook page.
This is the original version of the ad.
The text above the photo says “How I realized that I have wasted my life”.
The text below the photo says “Don’t waste your life”.
In the alternative version of the ad I have added “46 years.” to the text above the photo.
My theory was that people would be more engaged with the story of someone they know is their own age.
One small change, one giant leap for the understanding of social influence?
With just under $10 in advertising spend, the results are clear.
The Click Through Rate for the Original version was 2.37%.
The Click Through Rate for Alternative version was 4.55%.
A 92% increase in readership!!!
You might think “no shit, Sherlock”.
Yet, testing, verifying and quantifying the improvement has massive significance.
Imagine you can improve with near certainty the engagement of your audience by 92%.
Just by better understanding your audience and adding two words.
As an added bonus, Facebook rated the Alternative version as a better ad.
Its Relevance Score was 10 while the Original’s was 8.
It also translated in a lower Cost per Click ($0.02 vs $0.07).
Exhibit B
The second experiment promotes a post written by a reader about his experience of a new life in Paris.
The author is from Pescara, a city in central Italy.
So I wanted to test whether readers from his hometown would be more influenced to click and read the article.
I created two audiences for the same ad.
The first audience contains males aged 25–35 (same age bracket as writer) from Pescara.
The second one contains males aged 25–35 living in Italy but excluding the city of Pescara.
Both ad sets contain people NOT connected with my Facebook page.
Here is the ad.
The text above the photo says “How I found a meritocratic career in Paris.”
The text below the photo says “From Pescara to Paris.”
The audience from Pescara responded with a Click Through Rate of 1.11%.
The audience NOT from Pescara responded with a Click Through Rate of 0.65%.
By identifying a crucial element of the story, I was able to increase reader engagement by 71%!!!
BTW, I am not worried about the absolute level of engagement.
All I am concerned with is finding ways of better connecting the content to the audience.
Also the cost per click to reach the more engaged audience was $0.15 versus $$0.21.
A 29% saving!
Imagine all the good you can do when you discover how to influence better engagement with readers!
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