Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Richard Bliss, and you're listening to Digital First Leadership. Now, my guest today is someone who I greatly admire. Uh, I think she's a special guest. I know I say that about all my guests, but this one is special. Nancy Harthut is the uh co-founder and head of marketing for HBT Marketing and the author of a book called Using Behavioral Science in Marketing, a book that I love, my daughter loves, my wife loves. And so, Nancy, I'm so thrilled to have you here.

Richard, I am so thrilled to be here. I mean, you are the guy, okay. I when, you know, when we met at Mark's Uprising, I was like, oh my gosh, you're like such a fountain of information for me. And I've continued to benefit from everything you share. And now we're actually talking on your podcast, and this is like uh it's a career high for me.

So thank you for having me. Stop, stop. Okay, well, I appreciate that. Now, if we're gonna return the favor, when we go on travel vacation, my wife takes your book as reading material to uh to read. Uh I gotta say, meeting you and and the encountering of what you've talked about. So let's just let's just be clear. So you obviously you and I are excited to meet each other. Now, the audience is listening, and maybe, maybe they don't know who you are. So let's talk to them briefly about the book using behavioral science in marketing and kind of where you're at and and what you talk about. So help the audience understand that.

Absolutely. So you know it's funny, you know, people hear behavioral science, and some people are like science and their eyes roll back in their head, and then other people think, oh, it must mean like, I don't know, programmatic buying for media or something. But but really at um at its basic level, behavioral science is is um the study of why people do what they do, okay? Why people they do do what they do, and how we as marketers can maybe make them do more of what we'd like them to do. And it turns out that very often, uh, even though we think we make these well-thought-out, well-considered decisions, very often we rely on decision-making shortcuts. We're cruising along on autopilot, um, we're trying to conserve mental energy, and so we rely on decision-making shortcuts, automatic, instinctive, reflexive responses. We encounter a situation, we respond, giving it, you know, little if if any thought. And so that's what behavioral science is all about. It's it's why do people do what they do? And then, from my perspective, as a as a marketer, how do we get them to do more of it? How do we kind of prompt those little decision defaults?

Right. So I follow you on LinkedIn, you follow me on LinkedIn, and I gotta tell you, almost every piece of content you put out, I save because I'm like, oh, that's so good. Oh now, let's just be clear because what you're talking about, when I share some of my insights about how behavioral science works, particularly in digital first leadership, being online, LinkedIn, some people say, well, that sounds manipulative. And what do you say to that? That you're using behavioral science to anticipate and even influence how people respond. Doesn't that sound like you're manipulating manipulating them?

That word again. Right? People have asked about that. And I I I prefer to look at it a little bit differently. It's um it's not so much manipulation as it is motivation, okay? Ooh, I like that. It is a it's it's a if if handled correctly, it's a win-win for both of us, for for the brand, the advertiser, the company, as well as for the prospect or the comp or the customer, right? It it needs to be a win-win. Um, people are again cruising through life on autopilot, and um it's hard. It's hard to know what to pay attention to. It's hard to choose from among different products. And anything that you as a marketer can do to help somebody, to genuinely help somebody, is a very good thing. And behavioral science, when you infuse it in your marketing messages, will help you get noticed, will help you uh make sure that your message is understood, that uh help you make sure that people remember it and that they'll be more likely to respond to it.

Well, and I like that because again, we're gonna come back to uh LinkedIn. I talk to a lot of salespeople, and they get a 1 to 2% response rate on the connection request they send out, right? And then I give them a scenario where I sent my sales team, one of my daughters, you've met Maggie, I sent Leah to a technology conference, and of the 100 prospects at the conference, 100% accepted a connection request or initiated the connection request. The prospect either initiated it or accepted 100 out of 100. Now I use that stat and I show and demonstrate how they did it with LinkedIn and it blows their mind away. But the problem is that you've just talked about is behavioral science can actually explain why those salespeople are failing at establishing any type of connection with their prospects. So it's not just you're manipulating, but that science can help them understand why they're failing, right?

That's absolutely right. Yes, yes, because I mean, and I think in in those cases, you know, the salesperson wants you to connect. And they haven't provided any particular reason why you should, other than they want you to connect. Because what's going to happen as soon as you do, you're gonna get, you know, pitch slapped. You're gonna get pitch slapped, right? That's exactly what happens, right? And so it's a very one-sided um situation, right? Like what like what's what's in it for me. But if I get a request from somebody and I've been following their content or I've you know learned something from them, uh, you know, I'm I'm much more excited to, you know, to say, sure, all right, I'd I'd be happy to accept this. Uh the other thing that I find helps when you're trying to get someone to accept a um LinkedIn request. And I've tried this myself, and so it's a very unscientific but scientifically informed study. Okay. But instead of just, you know, saying, hey, can we connect, you know, I often provide a, you know, a reason why. But the phrase I use is, would you be willing? And so instead of saying, Richard, can we cur connect or will you connect, I say, would you be willing to connect? And the reason is there's scientific research that shows if you ask someone, you know, do you want to connect or how do you feel about connecting? Or you know, would you like to connect? It's a well, it's a yes-no because it's about my preference. Yeah, and I don't want to. I how do I feel? I don't feel very good about it, you know. But if if you ask me, would you be willing, it goes from being about my preferences to being about my character. Am I the kind of person that would be willing, that I would entertain this, you know? And so I've started using it. Now I don't send people connection requests willy-nilly. I mean, there's usually a reason why, but I switched from, you know, so can we connect here or, you know, to would you be willing? And what's interesting is, you know, used to be people would just hit yes. Now I get answers back saying, of course, absolutely, you know, because it's about their character, you know, and it's like, well, but of course I would. Like they want to go on record is saying yes. It's not enough just hit the yes, you know. So, um, so part of it is the way you phrase it. That's a little tip. But but the truth of the matter is if you're just, you know, if there's nothing in it for the other person and they're about to be uh pitch slapped, that how you phrase the request isn't gonna make a difference. And if they do accept, and then that's what happens and they're getting no value out of it, what's gonna happen? Boom, they delete you, they block you. That's the end of that.

That is the end of that. Now, I I love what you're saying there because one of the things that you you're talking about is this idea of um of how you phrase the question. So I was taught a technique a while ago because I spend time on stage, you spend time on stage. And during my presentations, I there's no QA at the end. The QA is dirt is live during the whole thing. Even if I have 500 people in the audience, the QA is live during the whole thing. And so I have certain spots I know where I have driven ideas where exploded the minds of my audience, right? There's certain things I say and they're just like, I know it's causing them, their mind just exploded. So what I do is this is what I learned, is how you ask the question. And I'll pause and I said, instead of saying, Are there any questions? which is your yesno, and everybody's gonna sit on their hands because they don't want to be the one embarrassed that they don't know something. Instead, I say, I know my content has now generated questions in your mind. What questions have I generated for you? That phraseology is a positive. Now, if you don't answer, implies you're not paying attention. The other one says that you don't understand, but this one says you didn't pay attention. And now people want to like, oh no, I gotta say, I gotta ask a question. And then here's the other secret, Nancy. You probably know this one. I put proverbally, metaphorically, put my hand behind my back. And then you count off 1001, 1002, 1003, 1004, 1005, 1006. And if you get to 1007, the audience can't help it. And it's guaranteed someone will ask a question. But you have to be careful comfortable with seven seconds of silence. So I was listening to a speaker, and he was on stage, and he's very good. And so he's going along, he's doing his thing, and he says, Is there any questions? Okay, good. Let's move on to the next wing, right? So I pulled him off stage afterwards and I gave him some critique because he had critiqued me and now I critiqued him. I said, Chris, you really didn't want anybody to ask you questions. He's like, What are you talking about? I said, You gave him three seconds to respond and moved on. So I love what you're saying there is rephrasing the way you approach it. Oh my gosh, I think I'm more excited to tell you and try to impress you with what I've been doing than okay.

I love those. I love those. I love the idea of framing it so that you know the act of asking a question reflects on me and it either reflects that I'm an idiot and I don't know things, or it reflects that I've been paying attention and want to contribute to the conversation, you know. And if I don't ask a question, it means that I haven't been paying attention. So how that frame is engineered to take into account what the audience is feeling and thinking, I think that's fabulous. And then the yeah, the silence thing. I mean, I uh from you know, I watch those cop shows on TV and they do the same thing when they're interrogating people, you know, they ask the question and they let it sit. But it's so true. People, you know, journalists do the same thing, actually. They ask the question, somebody answers, they just wait for a while, and what happens is people rush to fill the silence, you know, and they say things. So, yeah, that uncomfortable silence, you just have to be more comfortable with it than your audience, and a hand will go up.

Right? Silence is powerful. And I've noticed I did a presentation of 500 people. So the first time I paused, and I'm silent, one or two people over here on the right. Okay, I got a question. They shout the question out, I repeat the question, blah, blah, blah. And then another person raised their hand. So then we go along about another 10, 15, 20 minutes. I stop. More questions. Well, now a dozen hands go up. You know, I can't take all of them, but I call them out. And then by the time I get to the end, 500 hands go up because now they recognize wait, I can participate. And I've had so many people tell me, Nancy, that they've never seen a participatory speaker with such an audience, and each person felt like I was talking to them. And it was like, now I did not learn this. I was shown this, and then I applied it, and it was like, this is amazing. This is behavioral science. Okay, I got a question for you though. You mentioned our friend Mark Schaefer. Yes. Mark mentioned recently how, and I know you talk and you get asked about AI all the time, but he made an observation. I don't know if you saw it because I saw it, about the how AI is changing and rewiring the brains of the buyer by the fact that the buyer is no longer looking us up, the buyer is no longer searching for us, the buyer is no longer oftentimes making the decision about us. It's their AI intermediary that's doing the looking up, the research, the buying, the and in your work, and I gotta believe things are moving so fast that this is like real time, that you're like, okay, today it's this, tomorrow, who knows? What are your thoughts about what Mark was pointing out and how that's impacting the marketing people out there who now are trying to market to an AI engine? Used to be SEO, but now they're trying to get the attention of the AI because the customer isn't even going to get to them. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, no, it's uh it's yeah, AI has become the great uh disintermediary, I guess. But yeah, I mean it's scary and things are changing really quickly. And I am not an AI expert, and I am certainly not Mark, um, but uh I absolutely do agree with him. And uh, you know, so it's like, yeah, you used to be you'd search things, or you'd go used to be you'd go to somebody's website. Then it's like, oh, you just click search handle it, and now AI comes up with that little summary, and that's what we go with, you know? And so from a marketing perspective, from a brand perspective, the question becomes, how do I make sure that I rise to the top and I'm in that summary? And, you know, how do you do that? Well, you make sure that your content is really good, that it's valuable, that it's relevant, that um it answers the kinds of questions that people are asking, right? So um, you know, if if your audience is out there and they have certain questions, if your content is at is answering them, your content is going to rise up uh more, you know, uh higher in the in the rankings, and you're gonna be thought of as a uh a credible source or as an expert uh, you know, because of the content that you put out there. But uh it is interesting. We're as people, you know, as potential buyers, we're offloading a lot of the responsibility. You know, the things that we used to ideally, I guess, pride ourselves in doing that careful research, that um, you know, vetting of of uh of companies, and we're outsourcing it. And, you know, for better or for worse, we're outsourcing it. If things go well, that's great.

But um, you know And you you made a comment earlier on, so many people are on autopilot. They're already on autopilot, and now they've turned the autopilot over to an autopilot, right?

And very we're taking ourselves out of the equation. We really are, uh, you know, um, at the um, you know, for the for uh efficiency or expediency, or you know, to um uh but in my case, sometimes it's not even that.

I I use AI heavily, and one of the things that I discovered was that I went to do something and I asked my AI, I use Claude and chat both heavily. Claude mostly, but uh chat a lot, and I asked it something, and it came back and it pointed out references from my past and my experience, and it connected dots about me that I had forgotten. You know, I served 14 years in the in the army as an artillery officer. Not that I forgot that, but I forgot that that might be relevant in a situation where this just it was just like, oh, I didn't even make that connection. And so it's amazing how it's helping us remember things and at the same time, it's making things up. We always got to be aware of that, right? That's making things up. So, my question then in this one is behavioral science. So, Ed Keller, did you get the chance to meet Ed Keller over at uh Marketing Research Institute? Um, he was at one of the uprisings. I don't know if he was at the one that you were at.

I don't think I did, no.

So he's a word of mouth guy. Uh all this research on the word of mouth. Now, my because my question to you is is that behavioral science is there a difference between behavioral science in person and a difference between behavioral science in the digital world? That's my whole book, was digital first leadership. That I believed, and I'm leaving the question here to the uh person, that look, you need a whole new set of skill sets because you're being met first digitally than you are in person. So do you see a dual parallel track of science, or does it cross over and we just have to think about the same thing in a different light?

Well, you know, there's um and it's it's core, people are people, right? And we, you know, we respond and you know, we respond to certain uh tactics, you know, loss aversion or social proof or scarcity or autonomy bias or you know, what have you. And um, and you know, this can work in person, this can work on the phone, this can work uh in in a mailpiece and in email, online, you know, so so in some in in some respects it's channel agnostic, if you will, okay? Um, but in other respects, when humans are starting to outsource themselves to uh like the the digital persona, uh that becomes very different, right? So what what is this, you know, what is this digital representation of me going to be? And do I, you know, do I need to treat it differently? I just read a piece of research this morning, and it was about influencers, human influencers versus um digital influencers, right?

Um and so let's clarify what we're talking about. Somebody who's online who's uh an influencer versus somebody who in person who has a network, uh a charismatic person or something. Is that what we're talking about?

No, no, more a flesh and blood person versus a uh artificial intelligence influencer, right? Like a created one, right? And it turned out that um, you know, the the research was suggesting that one is is better for one kind of a product than another. So you have some very, you know, practical utilitarian products, and you have some more what you would call hedonic products that are more like an indulgent, right? And the human, the flesh and blood person was better suited based on this particular bit of research I read, to the um hedonic ones because there's more emotion there. There's a chance to build a relationship with somebody. There's there's the stories, there's the anecdotes, there's the just the little personality quirks. And then the more utilitarian products, they did quite well with a you know artificial agent as an influencer, uh, just because it was, you know, there wasn't the depth of emotion, there wasn't quite the need for authenticity. Um, and I found the research very interesting. It's not my research. I haven't had a chance to even tinker with it. I was literally just reading it this morning. But uh, it's just I think one example of how everything is changing uh with you know, with the rapid growth of AI and you know, so much moving online. So, you know, getting back to your you know, behavioral science, it's yeah, behavioral science is behavioral science. And to a certain extent, you know, whether I'm in person with you or whether I'm communicating, you know, online with you, it's still behavioral science. But now that we're starting to factor in AI, um, I think we have to be a little bit more careful. I mean, you know, you could you could ask your agent to bang something out using social proof and you'll get something that uses social proof that's a reasonable, you know, facsimile of, you know, but the problem is, you know, if you're a if you're a lousy rider, you'll have just gotten better. But if you were a reasonably good rider, you'll have just gotten pulled down, right? And um, you know, you're gonna start to sound like everybody else. And if you weren't good enough to sound like everybody else, it's a win for you. But if you were, you know, doing pretty well, it's gonna pull you down. And it's it's just not gonna make the connection that you're looking to make, and it's not gonna have the the uh recall and retention factor that you're hoping for.

So one of the things, so we're getting out of time here, but one of the things that you're you're making me think about is that when I have content that I need to create, um AI is helping me do that, and I'm oftentimes very open about the fact that, yeah, I use AI tools to help do this. But oftentimes I'll have an idea. I want to talk about this topic. So I give it to my Claude, or sometimes I give it to chat first, and then I give it to my Claude, and don't tell Claude that actually I had chat read it, write it, that I told it I wrote it. And then I'm like, how did I do? So they're kind of like dating, but I don't want them to know that chat and Claude are dating because my Claude's a male entity in my head, and chat's a female entity in my head, which I also think is kind of weird, but I discovered I'm not alone on that. But one of the things now I gotta get back on topic, what I was gonna say was that I have no idea what I was gonna say. I completely lost my own train of thought there, derailed myself. Because what were you talking about? You were just saying online, whatever. I'll I'll just have to come back to it. My own That's amazing.

The you the thing that strikes me about what you're saying though, you've got you've got chat and you got Claude and you're playing off each other. And um, you know, in order to really use these agents properly, um, you you need to do the work. And I think that that's sometimes missed by a lot of people. It's like, you know, we're looking to just save time, we're just gonna outsource this, but um, you know, it's the old you know, garbage in, garbage out in a way. Like if you don't take the time to train it about about you or about your content, about your writing style, or about your target market and the the products and the services that they're interested in, and the you know, the buying behaviors that they typically exhibit and the goals that they have. Like, if you don't do the work, um, what you're gonna get back isn't gonna be nearly as good as um the people who are doing the work. Like you're talking about playing these two off of each other, and you know, someone who's just a casual user, they're not gonna get the quality response that you are. They're you know, um you know, the agents aren't gonna know enough about the individual to even play back certain things. And and I I really, you again, I am not an expert, I stipulate that, but that it comes back to me time and time again that if you really want to use these right, you have to put in the time and and the effort.

One of the techniques I use, and I found I figured out what my train of thought is when I go to Claude and I've used, I've come up with an idea, I have some content, I create it, and then I ask it to interview me. Claude, I want you to interview me on this topic on my personal my personal take on it. And so now it'll go through and ask me one question at a time Do I have any personal anecdotes? Is there a time that this worked for me? Is there something that reflected on me personally? And then I it's almost like I'm talking to an interview, somebody's interviewing. And I talk to it. And then what it does is it takes my personal observation along with its semi-generic, because I have trained it heavily on my content. And now it blends the two of them together with my me and my idea. And now those two come together, allowing me to have content that resonates with my audience, captures my ideas, accelerated the production of it, because I didn't have to sit around and you know my typing speed. Um, and so that became a very interesting way of me having those conversations to personalize that content again, using AI to create that.

Yeah, no, I love that because you know you're using it to interview you so that you know ultimately what you're gonna put out is a story, right? Or content that it involves some personal stories. So, you know, not everyone can say that. It's your story, right?

Yeah, and there's no way I could have Googled that and found that out about me or anything. Nope.

That's uh it's like it's just not out there unless you put it out. You have to pull it out of yourself, or you have you trained AI to pull it out of you, but you know, but then when you put that content out there, it is authentic, it's real, uh, it's gonna resonate with people, it's got a story that you know people aren't gonna find any place else, and that's the difference, you know, versus someone who's just kind of phoning it in, they're gonna get you know something that yeah, and we can do the job as humans, we can spot it.

We can tell the difference, exactly. We don't know exactly why, but we know, and I'll tell people sometimes they'll send me something. I'm like, I had I sent a proposal to a client once, and this is true. They sent me back some suggestions on my training, and I read it and I said, I emailed back and said, Did you use AI to analyze my training and send this back? Oh no, this came from one of our executives. I was like, then one of your executives used AI because then I took it and I gave the feedback to my AI and said, Does this sound like somebody wrote this, or does it sound like you wrote this? And it's like, oh, I wrote that. It's like, yeah, that human element is what's been lost. And I think uh that's going to be what differentiates when we come back to your your behavior, human behavior, our human behavior is going to be what sets us apart here in the future in an AI-driven world. And so I think your human science uh research is going to be even more invaluable when the world is flooded with artificial behavior. And it's like, okay, which one will I actually resonate? Sometimes I think about just putting a spelling error in on purpose so that people don't think totally. It must yeah, I must not have written that anyway. Nancy, this has been this has been awesome. I appreciate I could keep going. I try to keep it at 20 minutes. We're just a little bit over 20 minutes. Um, as we wrap up, any questions you want to ask me?

Well, first of all, thank you very much. And second of all, yes. So um, so we were talking about earlier, uh, before we actually start to record about um posting and what you know, the the on LinkedIn optimal times to post and all on on LinkedIn. And um, yeah, I had come away with this idea, like I really try to post every day, every day, every day. Not more than once, but you know, at least once a day. And um, and then in our conversation, you were saying to me, yeah, you know, you don't have to do it once a day. It's a you know, so um once every other day, once every few days, or or does it depend based on when when I post on day one and I get a certain amount of traction, let it sit for a couple of days.

If I post on day one, it's not there. And so what's going on here is that LinkedIn is trying its hardest to prevent you from automating your content. And so content that's posted every day, I'm not saying that you do this, but a lot of organizations, particularly marketing organizations, cue up all the content, stick it into buffer, hoot suite, octapuest, or whatever, and it pumps out that content. And then LinkedIn sees that and says, you're not sticking around, or you're starting a conversation, and then before that one even gets done running, you're starting another conversation, and then another one, and another one. And so what happens then is, and I shared this with you earlier, is that the average reach of your posts, if you do it every day, drops by about 45%. So almost in half. Now, you could argue that, well, I'm gonna get 5,000 in a week because I posted every day and I got a thousand, but now I'm gonna get 2,000 every other day. So now, right? The point here is that the argument is wrong to start counting impressions as the value metric. Because the new LinkedIn algorithm is now reading the quality of your content, not just the buzzwords, not the keywords, not how many clicks did you get, how many engagements, the whole engagement ratio has now been thrown out the window with LinkedIn. It's not following any of the other social media platforms. It's like, how good is that content that you put out there? And how good are the comments that you drove with that? And if the next day you put out another piece of content, LinkedIn's like, okay, you're done with that one. We'll go ahead and shove it off to the side. Let's start looking at this next one. And you're like, no, no, no, no, that one actually was better. This one was just uh an announcement. Well, if it's just an announcement, you might want to wait and let that first one, which means you have to pay attention. You can't just automatically put it on autopilot and let it just run. And this is where people get in trouble is that I see a lot of marketing teams put it on autopilot. And they're like, we're just not getting engagement. Yeah, no kidding. Because LinkedIn sees you basically posting and ghosting. You're putting it out there, you're not showing up, people comment, you're not responding. And LinkedIn's like, why should we show this to anybody? We're not gonna let you use this as a dumping ground for your content. And so, yes, that's one of the key things is that you don't have to post every day. Now, your content, and we had this kind of discussion, is incredibly on point. You are so consistent with everything you put 100% of what you post is so consistent that you're getting an outsized amount of attention because you're getting so much effort on a single uh topic authority. So I see your content almost every day. Other people see your content almost every day. I don't have to do anything because I, well, I do. I save it, I like it, I comment on it, I love it. But LinkedIn's gonna start showing your content to people who aren't in your network, who are also interested in that topic because you have shown yourself to be such a strong topic authority. So it's no longer about frequency, it's about depth and um depth. I'm gonna stop with depth.

Yeah. No, it's funny as you say that, I'm thinking to myself, it's like you get rewarded for authentic conversation. So if if you know you met somebody at a networking event and you're having this really good conversation and it kept going and going, going, that would be a rule. If, on the other hand, you were talking to somebody and that person kept introducing a new topic every, you know, you'd you would probably quickly excuse yourself and you know or another person walks in, you're trying to have a conversation with this person and it's really in-depth, and then another person walks up, and so you switch to that conversation.

Well, you you just lost that one, right? You just lost the first one, and maybe that was the really interesting one. And this person was just coming up to ask you a question, so you're now you're over here, and then the next one, and now you're over here, and then and you never get back to that other one, and by that time they're gone.

Right, that's right. Now, there's there's a there's a lot of there's it's funny, it is is you know, far you know, as quickly as we move towards artificial intelligence, we keep bouncing back to what makes us human, you know, human behavior.

Wow, that's a great way to bring this all the way back. So I'm gonna say if anybody's out there and they want to figure out what's going on, why their customers aren't paying the attention, or why they are, using behavioral science and marketing is going to be the book you want to read. Nancy Harthutt has been my guest. Nancy, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much. It's been a blast. You've been listening to Digital First Leadership. I hope you've enjoyed it, found some insights. I have, and so we'll catch you next time. Take care.