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- [00:00]
Phil Agnew
Instagram is easily one of the most successful apps in history.
- [00:04]
Kevin Systrom
It was only six and a half years ago that Kevin and Mike launched Instagram. Last week the platform crossed 700 million active monthly users. Theirs is a familiar startup success story. Two smart guys get together with an idea and end up changing the world.
- [00:19]
Phil Agnew
It makes billions of dollars in ad revenue each month.
- [00:22]
Bas Wouters
Total revenue for 2018 was $55.8 billion.
- [00:26]
Phil Agnew
It has fundamentally changed the way millions of people behave.
- [00:30]
Unknown
Lavender fields like boomed recently. A big part of it is because of social media. People come from all over the world for this. What's the number one thing you want to do in the lavender field today?
- [00:42]
Bas Wouters
Take a photo.
- [00:43]
Unknown
Yes, of course.
- [00:45]
Bas Wouters
Take a photo and post it on Instagram.
- [00:48]
Phil Agnew
Without an Insta, I would be upset. And it keeps billions of us hooked on our phones.
- [00:54]
Kevin Systrom
Instagram marking a new milestone. 2 billion active monthly users.
- [00:59]
Phil Agnew
But it wasn't always this way. Instagram's founder, Kevin Systrom didn't find immediate success. His original idea was a check in app inspired by Foursquare called Burbn. Burbn was a check in app that let people share their location but also allowed you to post videos and photos. You probably haven't heard of Burbn because hardly anyone used it. Kevin Systrom was ready to abandon the app until he attended BJ Fogg's Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab.
- [01:31]
Bas Wouters
Vijay Fok is a Stanford University professor. He's also the founder there of the Behavioral Lab.
- [01:37]
Phil Agnew
That's Bas Walters. He's an expert in the field of persuasion and behavioral design.
- [01:41]
Bas Wouters
I am author of the book Online Influence and I'm also the co founder and CEO of Cialdini Institute.
- [01:49]
Phil Agnew
Baz has written extensively about BJ Fogg's model and its influence on Instagram.
- [01:55]
Bas Wouters
One of the two founders was actually a student of him and they previously built a similar app, but it's worked differently. It wasn't a big success and then BJ Fogg started helping and coaching them and then it became, well, quite of a success, right? If you sell it within a year for a billion dollars to that time, Facebook.
- [02:16]
Phil Agnew
Fogg taught Seystrom his model for human behaviour. This model enabled Systrom to redesign Bourbon into a much more addictive product. The model that BJ Fogg taught is surprisingly simple.
- [02:29]
Bas Wouters
BJ Fogg is known to be able to make very complicated behavioral science easy to explain. And his Fogg behavioral model shows there are three components that make behavior occur. And the first one we probably are all aware of, that's motivation. So if I ask you something Phil, how much you want to do it?
- [02:53]
Phil Agnew
Humans only take action if there is sufficient motivation. Initially, Burbn was cluttered with features. Users could check in at a location, share a plan with friends, upload photos, and also earn points. It sounds okay, but most users were not motivated to share their plans or share their location. Motivation was low, so action didn't occur. At the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, Systrom learned that humans are highly motivated by social approval. So he built features that let other users like and comment on photos. But motivation alone usually isn't enough.
- [03:31]
Bas Wouters
The second component, and that's for me the most interesting one actually is ability. How easy it is to do what has been asked.
- [03:41]
Phil Agnew
The original app, Bourbon, was cumbersome and as we've heard, overloaded with features. It was difficult to use. So ability was low. Fogg taught Systrom to simplify the app around just photo sharing. They stripped away everything else and boosted ability by adding easy to use photo filters. This increased motivation and ability. But there was one more important component to consider.
- [04:05]
Bas Wouters
And then he draws an action line and the third component is a prompt. And a prompt is something that asks for the behavior. BJ Fogg claims a human being doesn't do anything automatically. So he says, well, this glass that prompts you to drink water from it, your alarm clock prompts you to wake up, but also thoughts are prompting us.
- [04:28]
Phil Agnew
Systrom built lots of prompts into the app. Stuff like notifications whenever a friend likes or comments on your photo. But the prompt that truly propelled Instagram to success wasn't external, it was intrinsic. When users experienced something noteworthy in their life, they felt an internal prompt to use the app, go on holiday, well share that on Instagram, enjoy a nice meal, well post it on Instagram, see a cool sunset, well add it to your Instagram feed. This intrinsic prompt, combined with high motivation and easy ability, made Instagram far, far more successful than its predecessor, Bourbon. However, Instagram's original success back in 2010 came from the ability side of the fog equation. They made sharing cool looking photos with nice filters easy. Easier than ever. Making a behavior, even one with low motivation, incredibly easy to do can be a very powerful way to promote behavior.
- [05:27]
Bas Wouters
If we don't really want to do it, but it's super easy. The ability is high, motivation is low. We also do it and I always give an example. When I was a student, I had to go by train to the university and I make always a slight joke. I was a pretty lazy student, so I like to sleep in the train and not to read. But every morning they were handing out a physical newspaper. I'm an old man. Back then we still had physical newspapers and they almost shoved it in your hands. So it was harder to refuse the newspaper than just to take it. So every morning I ended up having a newspaper in my hand in the train. What did I do? I start reading the newspaper.
- [06:10]
Phil Agnew
Most people probably don't want to spend hours scrolling Instagram, but the endless scroll and algorithmic content makes it incredibly easy. Instagram's success? It wasn't random. They closely followed the BJ Fogg behavior model to create an app that was easy to use, motivated users to engage, and had powerful prompts to keep people coming back. All of us can use these same principles to improve our work. We can use them to make people buy our product, encourage someone to use our service, or simply persuade someone we know to take action Today on Nudge, Bas and I will show you how all of that coming up.
- [06:53]
Unknown
If you're in marketing, sales or leadership and you're serious about staying ahead, mark your calendar for inbound 2025. Happening September 3rd to 5th at the Moscone center in San Francisco. Inbound is genuinely, I think, one of the best major marketing sales leaderships events. I went last year and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. But this year looks even. The speaker lineup is genuinely world class. They've got Amy Poehler, Dario Amodei, Sean Evans from the hot ones YouTube channel. I'm a big fan of that. Plus Marques Brownlee, Glennon Doyle, Dominique Crenn, and Mike Benson, the CMO of cbs. An incredible lineup and over three days you'll get evidence backed strategies for marketing, leadership and growth. It's delivered by people who shape the future of business and practitioners. I know Nancy Harhurt, former guest on Nudge, will be there as well and if her talk is anything to go by, this conference will have no fluff, it'll have no filler, it'll just have insights that you can actually use to improve your work.
- [07:57]
Phil Agnew
And it's in San Francisco.
- [07:59]
Unknown
You got the tech scene as the backdrop. It's the ideal place to explore how AI and behavioral science are reshaping the industry. So if you want to be part.
- [08:08]
Phil Agnew
Of it, if you want to head.
- [08:09]
Unknown
Along, go to inbound.com register to secure your spot.
- [08:16]
Phil Agnew
BJ Fogg's behaviour model states that most people need sufficient motivation, ability and a prompt to take action. The prompt is probably the most interesting component of the three because it's something that we as marketers or behavioral scientists. Well, we can design the prompts. I can prompt you to sign up to my newsletter while you listen. You might not do it, of course, but I can create that prompt. Of course I can try and increase your motivation and ability, but that's much harder than creating a prompt. The prompt will have the highest chance of anything I can do to persuade you. So prompts are important. That's what we're going to focus on today. But what exactly is a prompt and how is it different from a message?
- [08:58]
Bas Wouters
I asked Bas and I like to give this example. So imagine you're driving on the highway and you see a billboard, let's say from McDonald's, but there's no exit where you can take right away to buy a burger. Well, now you have a message. McDonald's is telling you we have lovely burgers. A prompt ask you to do behavior. Now, what is a prompt? If you are driving on the highway, you see that billboard, but now the message is take the next exit to visit our restaurant and come buy a burger.
- [09:34]
Phil Agnew
Bas told me that to apply Fogg's behavior model to your business, you need to think carefully about what you want your customers to do. You don't just need to think about the general behavior you want, but also what he calls micro behaviors.
- [09:47]
Bas Wouters
If you want people to do something simple as download an ebook, what are the micro behaviors? Probably somebody needs to click on an ad. The next step, they have to read your header on your landing page. Then they have to fill in the form. Then they have to give consent with the privacy button. And then they have to press the button download the ebook. So something simple as downloading an ebook already contains five micro behaviors. And then what we teach per microbehaviors, you should look at how can you design the winning prompt, increase ability and boost motivation.
- [10:26]
Phil Agnew
Instagram didn't become successful by purely thinking about the fog model. They applied it to every part of their app, from logging in to liking a photo. Take liking a photo. Instagram increased ability by making liking incredibly easy to do. You just have to double tap. You don't even have to find a button anymore. Just press on the photo twice. Instagram prompts users by showing them that many other friends like them have also liked that photo. That makes them more likely to like it too. And Instagram increases your motivation by telling you that a friend has already liked your photo, making you feel like you need to reciprocate. It's a micro behavior. But Instagram has ensured sufficient motivation, ability and the right prompt to encourage likes on photos. But how do we apply this?
- [11:13]
Bas Wouters
How can we create a good prompt? We first of all need to use simple language, as little words as possible. Make it visual. We can process images much quicker than words and use emotions. Make it happy, important, dangerous, exciting. The next step is we need to grab the attention. You can do that by movement, motion or salience. Use emotions. And then comes the real magic. Let's say people really perceive our ad. We have their attention. Now we need something that we call stopping power. It sounds like a fancy term, but it's literally what it says. We need people to stop doing what they are doing. For example, back they are scrolling to Instagram to their timeline. Now they need to stop doing that. Click on our ad and continue the journey that we designed for them.
- [12:12]
Phil Agnew
For the remainder of today's episode, Bas will teach you his four principles to create stopping power. These four principles are each supported by reliable behavioral science. And they will help your ad or your landing page, your website, your email or your social post, whatever, whatever prompt you're creating. These four things will help you stand out amongst the thousands of other prompts your customers will see each day.
- [12:36]
Bas Wouters
The four principles are Curiosity, Exceptional benefit, Simple Question and Unfinished journey.
- [12:45]
Phil Agnew
Let's start with an example. A public park in Stockholm had a problem with litter. Swedes weren't binning their trash and the council was spending thousands on additional bin men. Bas says that using a curiosity inspired prompt helped change that behavior.
- [13:01]
Bas Wouters
It was done in Sweden by Volkswagen Fun Theory Project. What they studied was an average trash can, how many pounds of litter it collects, and that was 65 pounds. Now they made a trash can, the world's deepest trash can. And when you throw something in, it also had a sound like it wasn't super deep. But they created that feeling. The fun thing is it attracts curiosity. Wow, is this the world's deepest trash can? So people on purpose start throwing in more litter. Well, the outcome was instead of 65, on average, this trash can collected 150 pounds of letter. So it's approximately 150% more. Not bad for one message on your trash can.
- [14:01]
Phil Agnew
Now you don't need to build the world's deepest bin to use the curiosity bias.
- [14:05]
Bas Wouters
And a fun thing about curiosity is basically every message you can reframe in a curiosity way to make people more curious. And I have one example where we did a test and it was for a blog site and the header was the way of working is changing drastically. It's a fine header. You would say when we changed it to this is what work will look like in the future. The amount of clicks increased with 180%. And maybe the listeners now thinking but why? That triggers my curiosity. Well, let me give them a how can you reframe basically any message in a simple way to make people more curious? So you can use a how title. How to improve your design skills in one day. All the surprising statistics. You only use 5% of your brain. A why title. Why all people should learn behavioral psychology. The fourth one. Use the word this at the beginning of your sentence. And that's exactly what we did. This is what work will look like in the future. And the last tip is list it drives curiosity. Five ways to stand out. Three ways to right away increase your conversions. These types of framing let people move forward. And that's what curiosity does. When we are curious, we move forward to satisfy that curiosity.
- [15:41]
Phil Agnew
How titles, why titles? Surprising statistics and lists. All of these tactics help inspire curiosity. But the one I was most interested in is bas own test tweaking his title to this is what work will look like in the future. That tweak drove 180% more clicks than the control. That is remarkable. The word this. Well, it makes the title seem specific and concrete. It suggests that there's a clear visible answer waiting. If you just click on the article, I hear this is what work will look like. And I really can't resist the urge to learn what this is. So inspired, I wanted to test this myself. I wrote a newsletter about the decoy effect. I published this one a few weeks back. Many of you on my newsletter list will have received it. And to test Bass effect, I wrote two subject lines. My control was a pointless change that boosts sales by 10%. It's good. I liked it. But Bass thought I could do better. So I created a variant which changed just one word. This pointless change boosted sales by 10%. The newsletter was sent to 2,764 people, with each half receiving one of the two subject lines. I honestly wasn't sure it would work. I didn't think there would be a real difference. I was only changing one word and it was a fairly unimportant word. I changed the word a for the word this. And yet this tiny change did work. The email with the subject line this pointless change boosted sales by 10%, had a 4.5% higher open rate. A 4.5% improvement from changing just one word. Curiosity. It does seem to work. But what about Bass? Following prompt principle Exceptional benefits An exceptional.
- [17:31]
Bas Wouters
Benefit is something that you normally cannot get anywhere else. So it could be a huge discount, and that's often what people think. This also has a little bit to do, of course, with scarcity. If something is exceptional, it's unique or it's not common, it becomes scarce and there's a lot of value to gain. So it works on both ends, lots of value. And I cannot get it anywhere else. For example. Let's think of an example. Well, Netflix. Netflix could say you get a free trial. They also could say watch unlimited blockbusters for free for an entire month. Now, it's the same thing they offer, but by the framing of feels like a much more exceptional benefit.
- [18:21]
Phil Agnew
The most persuasive exceptional benefit I've encountered is beer 52. Beer 52 is the UK's most popular craft beer club. It's the popular, but it's not necessarily widely loved. Search for Beer52 on YouTube and the top videos you'll see are titled not happy with beer 52 and beer 52 rant. So how did this widely disliked beer subscription become so popular? Well, they offer every new customer an exceptional benefit.
- [18:52]
Beer Monster
Now this is their free trial that I'm doing.
- [18:54]
Phil Agnew
That was Beer Monster. He is a beer reviewer.
- [18:57]
Beer Monster
Well, I believe you get eight craft beers and two snacks. A free trial, although they say it's free, is technically free, but you do have to pay for the postage, which is 6 pound 95. So it's less than a quid of beer in it. Really, it's not bad.
- [19:10]
Phil Agnew
A free case of beer is a pretty exceptional benefit. It has encouraged over 200,000 people to sign up. But the exceptional benefit comes with a catch.
- [19:20]
Beer Monster
After the free trial is over is £24amonth, though, which seems quite a lot to me.
- [19:26]
Phil Agnew
And canceling is hard. You have to fill out an online form and then actually call their customer service team while their phone lines are open, go through a number of different questions, and then finally, you can only cancel over the phone after talking to them for about 10 minutes. Yet this exceptional benefit has propelled Beer52's growth. Despite the poor reviews, it's the largest company of its kind, with 50 million in yearly revenue. Exceptional benefits and curiosity are two principles that companies use to create irresistible prompts. But there are two more that bas will share after this short break. The Hustle Daily show is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the.
- [20:09]
Unknown
Audio destination for business professionals. The Hustle Daily show is a fantastic show. I had the pleasure of watching the Hustle Daily show live at the last inbound conference in Boston, and I loved it. The Wonderful hosts share these really informative takes on business and tech news, but it's in a fairly laid back style. It's really easy to listen to. It's quite conversational. I think it's fantastic.
- [20:30]
Phil Agnew
They've recently done a fantastic episode on.
- [20:32]
Unknown
Why tequila brands are failing and how you can turn greenhouse gases into butter. Both of those are excellent. I really recommend you go and give that show a listen. So go and listen to the Hustle Daily show wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:49]
Phil Agnew
Hello and welcome back. You are listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. I hope you are enjoying today's show. Or perhaps I should say, are you enjoying today's show? A simple question like that might prompt you to take action. Here's Bas to explain the power of simple questions.
- [21:04]
Bas Wouters
So the simple question technique. Every child in every culture, all around the world is taught a certain thing. If an adult asks you a question, what do you need to do as a child, you need to answer that question. So ask something simple. And simple question wants people to answer that question. It's also a presentation technique. If you're a keynote speaker and people are a little bit talking to each other, you just throw a question in that area and they are suddenly paying attention.
- [21:36]
Phil Agnew
Simple questions aren't just used for capturing attention during a presentation, they can be used online as well.
- [21:42]
Bas Wouters
What my co author Joris did, and he won the first CRO award with this case in the Netherlands was for bull.com and bull.com is basically the Dutch Amazon. They do, I think approximately $8 billion in revenue here. And like any other web shop, they wanted to collect reviews for their product. So in one case it was you bought something, you get an automated mail, do you want to leave a review button, Write review. Then they changed that email and they started with a simple question and the question was, how did you like it? And then they gave three answers. Better than expected. As expected, not as expected. And this is an important element in the simple question. If you ask a simple question, make it also simple to answer. Anyhow, they changed it and then something interesting happened. There were 200% more clicks to the.
- [22:37]
Phil Agnew
Actual survey of the review asking a simple question. So how did you find ordering with Bol? Well, that simple question increased clicks on their surveys by two times. But that wasn't all.
- [22:49]
Bas Wouters
So in the end they collected 400% more reviews because also more people finished.
- [22:55]
Phil Agnew
The survey four times as many people left the review compared to the control. This is the foot in the door technique. Ask a simple question. That's easy to answer first before making a larger request. Rather than trying to sell a package holiday to someone as soon as they click on your website, you should first ask, what does your ideal holiday look like? Rather than immediately trying to sell a new smartphone, when someone walks into your store, a sale assistant should ask, what features are you looking for in a smartphone? These simple questions can increase the likelihood that people will eventually take action.
- [23:29]
Bas Wouters
Zeigarnik was a Russian scientist and she proved that we don't like unfinished things.
- [23:36]
Phil Agnew
While sitting in a cafe in Vienna, Zeigarnik noticed that waiters remembered complex orders very accurately, but forgot them as soon as the orders were completed. Intrigued, she ran studies. In her experiments, she gave participants a series of simple tasks such as solving puzzles or stringing beads. For some of the tasks she allowed participants to finish them, but for others she deliberately interrupted they could complete the task later. She tested the participants memory of the task. So you know, what was your calculation for the puzzle or how many beads had you strung? At this point, the results showed that people were about twice as likely to accurately remember the interrupted tasks compared to the completed tasks. This is interesting because they spent more time on the completed tasks than the interrupted ones. This is why Bass calls the principle the unfinished journey principle. BAS has a great example of an online company that uses this principle.
- [24:33]
Bas Wouters
For example Airbnb. If you book something, you hacked your holiday, so you think, well, it's finished. They prompt you in a way, well, one last thing to complete your holiday, write something about the house or about your host. And they prompt you with the zeiganic effect. And they use curiosity often because if the host writes a review first, then they also prompt you find out what the host said about you.
- [25:00]
Phil Agnew
Airbnb don't say please write your review. They say one last step to complete your holiday. That feeling of an unfinished journey prompts the holiday goers to take action.
- [25:12]
Bas Wouters
Another example that I could give. Let's say people opt in for a webinar, they gave you their email and you also want their phone number. You could suggest, well, your last step to have the best way of communicating or stay up to date, fill in your phone number here. We tested this, actually this case and we saw a huge increase to other prompts because it was simply suggested it belongs to what you already did. But this is the last step and otherwise you didn't complete the journey.
- [25:42]
Phil Agnew
So don't ask for someone's phone number after they've signed up for your webinar. Instead, ask them as part of the signing up process. Curiosity Exceptional benefits simple questions and an unfinished journey can all help create prompts that make people stop and consider them rather than being ignored. These prompts stand out in our minds and they force us to pay attention. They can help you successfully apply BJ Fogg's behavior model. They can ensure you create the right motivation, offer the right ability, and deliver the right prompt to drive behavior. Following these steps closely could transform your business. I won't guarantee it'll help you create a billion dollar photo sharing app, but it will prevent you from creating a cumbersome, overloaded product like Bourbon that is all for this week folks. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you to the wonderful Bas Wouters for coming back on the show. If you'd like to learn more from BAS and get many more tips on how to improve your website, you can sign up for his brilliant Online Influence Academy I'm part of the Online Influence Academy. It's a great place to learn about behavioral science and how to apply it to websites. On the Online Influence Academ Academy, you'll find lessons that teach you how to boost motivation, design a winning prompt, and increase ability. There's a community forum, a great weekly Q and A. You get to learn a lot from BAS and ask him any questions you have. And so if you're interested in signing up, go and click the link in the show notes. Just click that link and you'll be able to sign up immediately. That way as well, you can tell BAS that I've sent you and that'll help the podcast out too. So if you are interested in signing up, make sure to click that link in the show notes. That is all folks. I'll be back next Monday for another episode of Nudge. Thank you so much for listening. Cheers.