Shot #91: The Labor Illusion Effect

Use it in your marketing

July 04, 2023

Hello awesome marketers & founders 👋,This is Luv and here’s your weekly Marketing Shot :)

(Delivered every Tuesday)

In today’s Marketing Shot:🛠️ 5 Useful Tools & Resources💡 The Labor Illusion Effect🗞️ 4 Noteworthy Updates from the digital world

🛠️ 5 Useful Tools & Resources

  • Tweethunter - The only tool you need for Twitter growth. Write 100 high quality tweets in less than 1 hour (powered by AI). Build & monetize your TWITTER AUDIENCE FAST. Get sales, growth and new networks.

  • LastingSales - Close Leads 3X Faster And Grow Your Revenue. Using this All-in-One Lead Management Tool! (link)

  • 75 Places to promote your startup for free (link)

  • Memedaddy - AI generated memes for every situation (link)

  • Perfect your PR and link request writing process. Learn exactly how to develop effective pitches that get noticed with this free course from Semrush (link)

💡 The Labor Illusion Effect

The labor illusion effect is a psychological phenomenon that causes people to value things more when they perceive that effort has been put into them. This means that people are more likely to trust and value results that are shown to them after a delay (even if the delay is fake).

Why does the labor illusion effect happen?

There are 2 reasons to it:

  1. People are more likely to believe that something is valuable if it took effort to create. This is because effort is often seen as a proxy for quality.

  2. People find waiting more tolerable when they can see that work is being done on their behalf. This is because it gives them the sense that they are getting something for their time.

For example, imagine that you are trying to decide which of the two restaurants to go to. You see that both restaurants have good reviews but one of them has a longer wait time. You might be more likely to choose the restaurant with the longer wait time, because you believe that the food will be better if the restaurant has to work harder to get it to you.

Another example of the labor illusion effect is the way that some websites show you the work that they are doing in the background. For example, when you search for flights on Sky Scanner, the website will show you a list of all the different websites that it is searching. This makes you feel like the website is working hard to find you the best deal and it can make you more likely to trust the results.

How can you use the labor illusion effect in your marketing?

The labor illusion effect can be a powerful tool in marketing. Showing your customers that you're putting in effort, can make them more likely to trust and value your products or services.

Here are a few ideas :

Show the work being done: If you can, show your customers the work that goes into creating your products or services. This could be done through videos or even just concise explanations of your process.

Flaunt the expertise: Put the spotlight on the skills of the talented folks who create your product. When customers know that seasoned professionals are doing their thing, it automatically increases the perceived value.

Use artificial waiting: If you can't show the work being done, you can still create the illusion of effort by adding a short delay before you show the results. This delay should be long enough to be noticeable but not so long that it becomes frustrating. Use progress bars or other visual cues to show your customers that work is being done on their behalf. This will help them to feel more engaged and invested in the process.

Other Free Newsletters worth reading

  • Morning Brew - Get smarter in 5 minutes daily. There's a reason over 4 million people start their day with Morning Brew. Business news doesn't have to be boring, make your mornings more enjoyable.

  • Stacked Marketer - Carefully curated digital marketing news, trends, tech and actionable advice. From Monday to Friday. Read by 55,000+ marketers.

  • Ariyh - Get marketing recommendations based on scientific research from top business schools.

🗞️ 4 Noteworthy Updates

  • Google Ads May Disapprove Ads For Using Third-Party Click Tracking (read)

  • Meta Expands the ‘Why Am I Seeing This?’ Feature in Instagram, Facebook Reels to Explain Post Visibility to Users (read)

  • Instagram’s Twitter competitor [THREAD] to launch on July 6th (read)

  • Google’s updated privacy policy doubles down on using your data for training AI (read)

#Ad: Scammers and Spammers Hate Aura - and That's a Good Thing for You

Are you tired of unwanted emails, texts, and calls from scammers and spammers? Aura uses cutting-edge AI technology to scan the internet to identify where your personal information is exposed and being sold. With Aura, you can take control of your online privacy and secure your personal information. Reduce robocalls and keep your information safe from identity thieves. Try Aura free for 2 weeks and see if your information has been compromised.

📋 In case you missed the last Tuesday’s Market Shot- How to create content that is more likely to go viral?

See you next Tuesday :)Thanks,