Internet Marketing Strategy - Reciprocation

Reciprocation is a commonly used internet marketing strategy.

When someone gives us something, we feel obligated to return the favor. That is the power of reciprocation at work.

When we get a shiny ring, we are more likely to say yes. When we get a present, we usually give one in return. When someone does us a favor, we feel obliged to help them in the future.

Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, consider this justice a gift on my daughter's wedding day.

~~[Don Corleone, The Godfather]

In his book, Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini highlights reciprocation as one of the six key marketing strategies that trigger automatic patterns of behavior in us all. These automatic behaviors are used by online marketers to get us to buy products and click on their affiliate links.

Giving someone a gift or a reward establishes some level of trust or loyalty. That is why reciprocation is such an effective marketing strategy on the internet.

For example, you will likely visit a person's profile if he fans you or leaves an online comment on one of your articles. Some internet marketers rely on reciprocal fanning or reciprocal commenting in order to increase their visibility, get profile views, and enhance their standing in an online community. Some promoters may even automate this process through server scripts that programmatically friends everyone in a community, or leaves them spam comments.

However, these techniques have been overused and are now well recognized as spam internet marketing techniques. Most sites have spam detectors which will filter out and censure this type of behavior.

The law of reciprocation can also be combined with what we know about schedules of reinforcement from behavioral psychology and operant conditioning.

Studies show that repetition of behavior is enhanced by using a variable schedule of reinforcement rather than a fixed schedule. This relates to both the time and quantity of reinforcement. If you give someone unexpected rewards, at unexpected times for performing a behavior, they will be more motivated to repeat that behavior than if you gave them fixed rewards, at fixed times.

A common example for variable schedules of reinforcement is in games of chance, such as buying a lottery ticket or playing slot machines. In these activities, the size and timing of reward are both greatly variable. Frequently you will win nothing at all, sometimes you will win something small, and very rarely you will win a jackpot that is so big that you will be set for life. This is in contrast to fixed schedules of reinforcement such as your monthly salary, which is always paid at the same time, and of the same quantity.

Getting a salary is a good thing, but it is not something that will make your heart race and give you a thrill. And it is exactly this heart racing thrill, achieved with variable schedules of reinforcement, that makes gambling into such an addictive and successful business.

Variable schedules of reinforcement can be combined with the reciprocation internet marketing strategy.

For example, an internet marketer can apply a variable schedule of reinforcement to the rewards or comments that he makes. Rather than commenting on all of the articles published by any one of his friends, he only comments on some of them. The trick is to keep his friend in a reciprocal state, while expending the least amount of energy himself. He can also keep the quality of his comments variable, i.e. most of the times he makes generic comments, but sometimes he actually makes a really good and relevant comment.

By keeping it variable, the internet marketer can escape being labelled as a spammer, generate goodwill within the online community, and still minimize the time and effort he needs to use the law of reciprocation effectively.

Another variation on the internet marketing strategy of reciprocation is to combine it with the law of diminishing marginal utility.

In economics, the law of diminishing marginal utility states that we derive the most utility, i.e. satisfaction, from the initial units of goods that we consume. As we consume more and more of the good, our marginal utility (i.e. additional satisfaction gained) from consuming another unit of the good diminishes so that ultimately, the increase in satisfaction becomes very small.

What does diminishing marginal utility mean in internet marketing?

It means that new members of a community (i.e. those with few fans), will generally value fans and comments a lot more than established members who already have many fans and get many comments. This was certainly true for me when I first joined the HubPages community. I still remember my first few fans and the people who first made meaningful comments on my hubs.

However, as a community member acquires more and more fans, and more and more comments, the marginal utility/increase in satisfaction derived from each new one, is greatly diminished. Therefore, if you fan someone who already has a lot of fans, or comment on an article that already has many comments, the likelihood of reciprocation is much less than if you fan a new member, or if you comment on a less popular article.

The internet marketing strategy here is to only target new members and new member articles, where an internet marketer will get the greatest reciprocation rewards for his efforts.

Reciprocation is powerful and reciprocation works.

However, this does not mean that reciprocation is bad. Most of the time, when someone leaves a comment on our article, it is sincere and real. Therefore, it is good to return the favor to show our readers that we appreciate their input.

Using reciprocation as an internet marketing strategy is not bad either, as long as our comments are real and sincere.

Automatic commenting, spam commenting, link spamming and many other free internet marketing strategies offered up by so-called gurus only end up creating a lot of noise, wasting your time, and wasting other people's time.

Truly, the best type of reciprocation is to offer your readers or customers something truly useful or entertaining. In this way, they will buy your products and recommend you to their friends. Everybody walks away happy.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

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