What Can You Learn About Marketing from Internet Fights?
Since the election, I have seen some really brutal internet slap fights. I’m sure you have too.
I’ve been thinking about them a lot, and something I have noticed is that most internet fights are pitifully ineffective at actually changing anyone’s opinions. In fact, the way that most people go about fighting — you may even be strengthening the “wrong” belief of the person you’re arguing with.
Why does that happen? What should you do instead? What does this have to do with marketing anyway??
All questions that we’re going to answer today, my friend.
What is the backfire effect?
The first rule of changing somebody’s mind is to never tell them they are wrong.
Whattttt???
Yes, well the simple fact of the matter is that you like to be right. In fact, your brain is always looking to be right.
Your brain is organized in a pattern of remembering and recalling information that already aligns with your existing beliefs first. This is called the confirmation bias.
Normally, the confirmation bias happens when you’re seeking out new information.
If you are trying to find information about a completely new topic, you are more likely to pull info out of the heap that already aligns with your existing beliefs — and to spend way less time to considering information that does not neatly fit into your beliefs.
This can make something wonky happen when you are surprise presented with information, like when somebody hyperlinks you to something in an internet argument for example…
You might like to think that if you had an opinion, and you were presented with information that proved your opinion wrong, that you would then adjust your opinion.
This is not what actually happens though.
Because your brain is always trying to “confirm” what it is that you already believe, being presented with counter information actually makes feel even more strongly about your original opinion.
So if telling someone they’re wrong doesn’t work, what should you do instead?
3 Steps to changing anyone’s mind
Here is an example of a post that I made demonstrating all 3 steps to this process.
Let’s unpack what’s happening:
#1 Validate —
So we know that telling someone they’re wrong definitely doesn’t work. What I like to do is start with the complete opposite! Start by talking about common ground, and things you can both agree on.
The main focus of this step is to confirm the person’s existing beliefs on the topic.
Phrases that are good for this are going to be “I know that…” and “I think we can both agree…”.
In the example above, the first portion of my post is dedicated to confirming the beliefs of the person I was responding to.
“I was called ableist for having ‘auto playing music’ on my Tumblr at some point.
Somehow that is offensive to the deaf. To that I say, ‘What about the blind?’
But I think PC culture involves being quick to offend.”
Another key about validating existing beliefs, is minimizing.
If you find that you are having trouble fully agreeing with the person’s position, try to find a less extreme position that is palatable to you.
For me, the belief that “Being politically correct is not important” is extreme. But I can say comfortably that the “culture” of being politically correct involves calling out perceived injustice, and sometimes in doing that people are hasty to get upset about an event.
In Neuro Linguistic Programming, this concept is called pacing and leading. “Pacing”, responding to the words being said or the thoughts/feelings being implied, is a key part of building trust and rapport with someone — mandatory if you expect this person to listen to you.
The key takeaway from pacing and leading, is that while you’re in this Validate step try to match the emotions and intensity of the person you’re speaking with for this step to be the most effective.
#2 Reframe —
In the Reframe step, you’re shifting to the “leading” of the pacing and leading.
At the end of the day, don’t you just wish that the person you’re arguing with thought a little bit differently about the issue?
That’s exactly what you’re trying to do by Reframing.
In the example above, I move into the Reframe step at “At the same time, I think there’s nothing wrong with…”
You’re trying to get them on board “for” something that you think you could both support.
What exactly this winds up being will depend on the situation.
In my situation, the author wrote an article for a position that I disagreed with — so I already had his platform spelled out in front of me. His line of thought is that being PC had evolved from a well meaning movement, to something that is not entirely required anymore AND something that creates fear in backlash against what one says (and that the backlash could be against anything perceived as offensive).
Here is my way presenting “a different way” to look at political correctness (the full reframe section):
“At the same time, I think there’s nothing wrong in having a strong conviction that people should be spared abusive language. Obviously what you said wasn’t abusive at all, but some people stretch ‘freedom of speech’ to the point where it does infringe on others rights.
Where is the line where language slips into violence?
Opinions like these are permissible to hold in private, but I see nothing wrong with the fact that Mr. Fuhrman faced professional consequences. Especially considering his station as an officer of the law, it is clear that he does not… Treat everyone that fairly under the law, to say the least.”
So minimizing is going to be a key skill when you’re trying to change someone’s opinion.
If I only said something along the lines of “Language can be abusive and violate other people’s rights”, do you think that would have went over well? No.
Why?
Because if I just make a statement about how “Language does hurt people”, he may have read my statement as “I am telling you that your statement hurt people”. Even if I did believe that (which I don’t in this case), we’ve established that flat out telling him that actually you are wrong what you said IS offensive would not have worked.
A key part of minimizing is using modifiers. Look again at what I wrote and you will see the phrases “some people” and “to say the least”. You want to make what you are saying easy to agree with. Not easy to agree with for you, you have to scale back your beliefs so that they are more neutral and easy enough for anyone to agree with.
Other good phrases are “can”, “different” (instead of “wrong”), and in general just picking less extreme synonyms for verbs and adjectives. So don’t say that something is “cruel” say that it’s “mean”, or even “not nice”.
I didn’t say that Mark Fuhrman was a racist (wouldn’t have went over well with the author), I said that he “Doesn’t treat everyone fairly under the law”.
Can you disagree with that?
Sure, but it would be hard to when there are 14 hours of tapes of him speaking about being a bad cop, and his negative opinions of a HOST of groups he comes into contact with on the regular (African american people, hispanic people, women).
Is it disagreeable to say that it is important for a police officer to treat everyone equally under the law while on the job? Not really.
One of the other important tools for Reframing are questions.
Again, if I made the statement “There is a point where language becomes violence.” do you think that would have been effective?
Probably not. It is clear from the article that myself and the author have a different perspective on whether or not it even matters if people’s feelings are hurt by words.
Making those disagreeable statements into questions, though, will just raise the possibility in the other person’s mind — as opposed to making a direct statement, which if it contradicts their beliefs then we’re in Backfire effect territory.
Reframing takes the most finesse out of all the steps, to be totally honest with you.
The reason is because you need to at least have some understanding of what the person values, how it is different from your current position, and decide on how to bridge that gap between where they are in a way that speaks to what they value.
Again, in my situation I was responding to someone who wrote an article — so it was pretty easy for me to see what they valued.
But if you are in an anonymous internet fight, there is still some hope for you!
If you know where the person falls on the political spectrum, there are certain values that consistently speak to Democrats/liberals and Republicans/conservatives — you can read the published research here, and find the book here.
The “values” come from Moral foundations theory, which basically says that the differences in people’s opinions comes from assigning different levels of importance to 6 main values: Care, Fairness, Liberty, Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity.
Additionally, people who are conservative are more likely to value arguments that are based off of constitutional rights. Not that liberals don’t value constitutional rights, but their value comes more from the dislike of others being treated unfairly.
For conservatives, I think that constitutionally based arguments resonate better (and actually have a weight of their own, unlike liberals who the “weight” of the argument again comes from someone being treated unfairly — not necessarily because it’s the Constitution) because it aligns with some of their other values like Authority and Liberty.
This is why I decided in my situation, to reframe part of the argument as a potential violation of Constitutional rights (I was implying that Mark Fuhrman violated the 14th Amendment rights of people he discriminated against), in addition to some of the other points.
#3 Confirm —
Phew! You’re done a lot of work so far, now it’s time to bring it all home.
You close the conversation by asking them, basically, whether or not they accepted your reframe.
When I close, I also like to try to incorporate another element into the confirmation. So in the example above, I preface the confirmation with another instance of confirming existing beliefs.
“I understand that the PC culture of being quick to judge and demonize is agonizing. But there is also a conversation to be had about the role of language and violence at least, don’t you agree?”
When confirming, you want to re-state the reframe and ask it as a positive question. My two go-tos are “Don’t you agree?” and “Don’t you think?”, you can pretty much make a statement and tack one of those onto the end to transform the statement into a question.
Why do you want to turn the statement into a question? Refresher: Questions are raising possibilities, statements are telling the other person they’re wrong.
Why do you ask them to confirm?
Because it is incredibly powerful if they say “Yes”.
Dr. Robert Cialdini explains this phenomenon in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
During the Korean War, many American soldiers found themselves in prisoner-of-war camps run by the Chinese Communists.
Now, these soldiers are guys who are trained to give nothing but their name, rank, and serial number. But something the Chinese did made them incredibly more effective at getting the soldiers to inform on each other, a striking contrast to POW’s in WWII.
“In fact, nearly all American prisoners in Chinese camps are said to have collaborated with the enemy in one form or another.” — Dr. Cialdini
Weirdest of all, there was no brutalization or torture.
So what gives, how did they do it?
The first problem facing the Chinese was how to get the soldiers to cooperate at all. The answer was simple then: Start small, and build.
For example, while being interviewed prisoners were asked to make statements that were very mildly anti-American or pro-Communist, so mild that it seemed inconsequential (“The United States is not perfect.” “In a Communist country, unemployment is not a problem.”).
Once you agreed though, you found yourself pushed to submit to even more requests.
A soldier who had just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the US isn’t perfect might be asked then to list some of the ways that it’s not perfect.
He may then be given a pen and paper and asked to write down what he just talked about, his statement that “The United States is not perfect” and his list of reasons, then to sign his name to it.
Later he might read his list in a discussion group with other POWs. He might be asked to write an essay later, expanding his list and discussing the problems in greater detail.
He might then have his essay read aloud the anti-American radio broadcast beamed not only to HIS entire camp, but to all of the other POW camps in North Korea, and to American forces in South Korea.
If he was tortured into doing this, the man may have no problem separating himself from what he said.
But faced with the fact that he had written these statements without any strong arming, many times a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with his “collaborator” actions.
Often, he would then participate in even more extensive acts of collaboration!
What does this tell you?
Something extremely powerful happens when people commit their opinion to text (“Yes, I can agree that…”) with their face and name next to it.
What can you learn about marketing?
QUICK action step: Write down (on paper or in a document) everything that you believe is awesome about your business, what your favorite parts of your business are, or what you think the best features are, why you think your business is the best in the industry.
Now throw that away.
What you can learn about marketing, is that it’s not about you.
No matter how strongly YOU believe something, unless you speak to your audience you will not succeed.
In fact, you should go review your website, your email sequences, and all of your marketing materials and redact anything that is what you listed in the above exercise.
Because you know what? That is what you believe about your product.
When was the last time you asked your customers what they like the best about you?
When was the last time you called up a customer and asked what they found valuable about your product? (Instead of just telling them.)
When was the last time you asked somebody who didn’t go with you what they valued about the competitor, or where you fell short?
Again, it’s not what you think the reasons are. If anything, I hope that I can instill in you how absolutely vital it is for you to get a clear understanding of your customer’s values and beliefs not by guessing.
I’m going to give you a list of questions to use as a jumping off point, use these to springboard your own list of questions to ask and contact 3 or more of your previous customers.
Whether you want to email blast a survey, or email a few individual customers and ask if they would hop on the phone with you, either way is acceptable.
But as a marketer (or a business owner trying to market), you need to get out of your own head and actually get inside of the head of your target.
- What problem (or pain) were they trying to solve with your product?
- What value did they hope to get by solving their problem? What was it like before, and what do they hope the “after” looks like?
- What made them decide your product was the best solution to their problem?
- Did they look at any other competitors before your product? What made them decide the other options would not solve their problem?
If you have the ability to talk to people who you know have been pitched, but have not converted ask them:
- What made you decide the product was not the best solution for your problem?
- Why did you decide (the competitor) was the best solution to their problem?
You may also want to ask non-buyers the same questions above as the buyers. For example, maybe there is a difference in the “What did you hope to gain from solving your problem” that you will discover by asking these questions to buyers and non-buyers.
I encourage you to do this exercise for yourself, because a lot of business owners find that they either: 1) Fundamentally misunderstood the “value” of solving the problem to their customers or 2) Fundamentally misunderstood the problem.
Just like internet fights, your marketing will fail when you fail to connect with the other person’s values.