The Economy Insider

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Manipulative Marketing Strategy

Manipulation in marketing (and politics, the media, and everything else)

Marketing was built on this fact. The reason Coca-Cola became the giant it is today is because it creates omnipresence through billboards, TV spots, newspaper ads, etc. The company knows if you see the brand enough, you’ll form attachments to it.

And it’s not the only one.

Just think about the 2016 U.S. election — the tactics used, and the conspiracies built on the back of it like “fake news.” Political groups built momentum by targeting specific “bubbles” of people, and it grew from there as things that may or may not have been true were made to feel true.

And as they say, perception is reality.

Again, this isn’t new. Companies, governments and religions have targeted “bubbles” like this throughout history. As a species, we’re bred to attach ourselves to such “bubbles”: hobbies, political beliefs, age/peer groups, interest, religion, etc.

The problem is, the stakes are higher these days. Anyone with access to the right algorithm (and if you have access to Google or Facebook, you have access to these algorithms) can target, re-target and manipulate these bubbles of people. Amazon can manipulate you into buying certain products. The media can manipulate you into believing (or not) in a new agenda or campaign. Politicians can manipulate you into forming certain perceptions or prejudice.

You cannot escape this, and this not only impacts you as a person, but as a business owner. Because as a business owner you can — and will — manipulate your audience every single day.

The good news is … you get to choose how you do!

Ethical manipulation in marketing

If you own a business, manipulation in marketing is part of what you do. It’s the only way to create raving fans, sell them products and gain their trust. Manipulation is part of what you do, so the trick isn’t whether you do it or not — but rather how you do it.

The most successful entrepreneurs I know are conscious about how they use manipulation in marketing. They don’t feel guilty about doing it, and neither should you. Because done properly it can have a positive impact on your audience.

Take Amazon, for example. Have you ever found a book you absolutely love, all because Amazon recommended it to you as you searched its site?

What about Facebook. Have you ever come across an influencer or thought leader you now love and follow, all because Facebook targeted you with one of his or her messages one day?

Done right, manipulation in marketing is a good thing. But, like most good things, it can quickly turn sour in the wrong hands. Which leads us to ask …

How do you ethically use manipulation in marketing?

It begins by you know your offer or product at a deep level. Does it transform? Is it a “vitamin” or a “painkiller”? Is it, and you, the real deal? Will it have a genuine, massive impact on the other person? You have to believe in what you do, and commit to becoming the best at it.

Once you do, you then have to know who this helps. You need to know your audience on a deep level, too. What is their biggest problem right now? What is the largest pain are they feeling? Are they avoiding this pain, and resisting taking action?

This is why manipulation in marketing is a good thing, because it’s in our DNA to feel comfortable; we are born to survive and avoid dangerous situations. So, we remain in our comfort zone and remain blind to the solutions we need.

Your job is to illuminate their pain, so they know they have it. Your job is to show them the solution, so they know what to do. Your job is to guide them, so they overcome their problem.

Economics goods

The Available Quantities

If it is generally correct that clarity about the objective of their endeavors is an essential factor in the success of every activity of men.

The second factor that determines the success of human activity is the knowledge gained by men of the means available to them for the attainment of the desired ends.

The quantities of goods available, at any time, to the various members of a society are set by existing circumstances, and in determining these quantities the only problems they have are to measure and take inventory of the goods at their disposal.

The ideal result of these two varieties of provident human activity is the complete enumeration of the goods available to them at a given point in time, their classification into perfectly homogeneous categories, and the exact determination of the number of items in each category.

In practical life, however, men do not even attempt to obtain results as fully exact as possible in the existing state of the arts of measuring and taking inventory, but are satisfied with just the degree of exactness that is necessary for practical purposes.

To the degree to which men engage in planning activity directed to the satisfaction of their needs, they endeavor to attain clarity as to the quantities of goods available to them at any time.

Wherever a considerable trade in goods already exists, therefore, we will find men attempting to form a judgment about the quantities of goods currently available to the other members of the society with whom they maintain trading connections.

As long as men have no considerable trade with one another, each man obviously has but a small interest in knowing what quantities of goods are in the hands of other persons.

However, as soon as an extensive trade develops and men find themselves dependent in large part upon exchange in meeting their requirements, they naturally acquire a very obvious interest in being informed not only about all the goods in their own possession but also about the goods of all the other persons with whom they maintain trading relations.

As soon as a society reaches a certain level of civilization, the growing division of labor causes the development of a special professional class which operates as an intermediary in exchanges and performs for the other members of society not only the mechanical part of trading operations (shipping, distribution, the storing of goods, etc.), but also the task of keeping records of the available quantities. Thus we observe that a specific class of people has a special professional interest in compiling data about the quantities of goods, so-called stocks in the widest sense of the word, currently at the disposal of the various people and nations whose trade they mediate.

Government activity directed to the determination of the quantities of goods available at any time to a given people or nation is, therefore, naturally confined:

(1) to goods whose quantities are subject only to slight changes, as is the case with land, buildings, domestic animals, transportation facilities, etc;

(2) to goods whose available quantities are subject to such a degree of public control that the correctness of the figures obtained is thereby guaranteed, at least in some degree.

A. Economic Goods

In the two preceding sections we have seen how separate individuals, as well as the inhabitants of whole countries and groups of countries united by trade, attempt to form a judgment on the one hand about their requirements for future time periods and, on the other hand, about the quantities of goods available to them for meeting these requirements.

The task to which we now turn is to show how men, on the basis of this knowledge, direct the available quantities of goods to the greatest possible satisfaction of their needs.

An investigation of the requirements for, and available quantities of a good may establish the existence of any one of the three following relationships:

(a) that requirements are larger than the available quantity.

(b) that requirements are smaller than the available quantity.

(c) that requirements and the available quantity are equal.

We can regularly observe the first of these relationships—where a part of the needs for a good must necessarily remain unsatisfied—with by far the greater number of goods. I do not refer here to articles of luxury since, with them, this relationship seems self-evident. But even the coarsest pieces of clothing, the most ordinary living accommodations and furnishings, the most common foods, etc., are goods of this kind. Even earth, stones, and the most insignificant kinds of scrap are, as a rule, not available to us in such great quantities that we could not employ still greater quantities of them.

Wherever this relationship appears with respect to a given time period—that is, wherever men recognize that the requirements for a good are greater than its available quantity—they achieve the further insight that no part of the available quantity may lose its useful properties or be removed from human control without causing some concrete human needs, previously provided for, to remain unsatisfied, or without causing these needs now to be satisfied less completely than before.

B. Non-economic goods.

In the preceding section I have described the every-day phenomena that result from the fact that requirements for certain goods are larger than their available quantities. I shall now demonstrate the phenomena arising from the opposite relationship—that is, as a consequence of a relationship in which the requirements of men for a good are smaller than the quantity of it available to them.

Suppose that a village is dependent for water on a mountain stream with a normal flow of 200,000 pails of water a day. When there are rainstorms, however, and in the spring, when the snow melts on the mountains, the flow rises to 300,000 pails. In times of greatest drought it falls to but 100,000 pails of water daily. Suppose further that the inhabitants of the village, for drinking and other uses, usually need 200, and at the most 300, pails daily for the complete satisfaction of their needs. Their highest requirement of 300 pails is in contrast with an available minimum of at least 100,000 pails per day. In this and in every other case where a quantitative relationship of this kind is found, it is clear not only that the satisfaction of all needs for the good in question is assured, but also that the economizing individuals will be able to utilize the available quantity only partially for the satisfaction of their needs. It is evident also that partial quantities of these goods may be removed from their disposal, or may lose their useful properties, without any resultant diminution in the satisfaction of their needs, provided only that the aforementioned quantitative relationship is not thereby reversed. As a result, economizing men are under no practical necessity of either preserving every unit of such goods at their command or conserving its useful properties.

Nor can the third and fourth of the above-described phenomena of human economic activity be observed in the case of goods whose available quantities exceed requirements for them.

It is clear, accordingly, that all the various forms in which human economic activity expresses itself are absent in the case of goods whose available quantities are larger than the requirements for them, just as naturally as they will necessarily be present in the case of goods subject to the opposite quantitative relationship. Hence they are not objects of human economy, and for this reason we call them non-economic goods.