Hey 👋 The Crew here.
To our surprise, we found out there are only two kinds of people—those that start eating spring onions from the “green” side and those who start munching on the “white” side first.
Which one are you?
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Outcome Bias
Imagine this: The cup final of your favorite sport is about to start.
You look at the pre-match information and you notice something weird… an unlikely player on the team sheet, or a tweak in your team’s tactics. It seems the coach has made a brave, bold move.
There are only two possible outcomes:
- It backfires. Your team loses, and you think the coach is incompetent.
- It succeeds. You’re on cloud nine. You think the coach is a genius.
In both cases, the coach did the same thing, but you’ve judged the decision based on the outcome.
Why? Because of something called Outcome bias.
Now, this is different from Hindsight bias, where we think events are more predictable than they are.
Outcome bias makes us prone to judge decisions based on the outcome only.
Jonathan Baron and John C. Hershey tested this bias by asking participants whether a surgeon made a good or a bad preoperative decision based on whether their patient lived or died.
Naturally, the answers depended on the outcome.
Outcome bias is common in real life:
- An investor who made a risky but ultimately successful decision one time can be deemed as an expert.
- A judge who makes a ruling based on a complex set of evidence and legal precedents can later be deemed as incompetent if that verdict is overturned.
- A friend who switched careers and is thriving will be judged positively. But would you feel the same if they failed?
All of this means you can use the outcome bias in marketing as well. So let’s check it out.
Three ways you can leverage Outcome bias
1) Use case studies and real-life examples
Marketers do this all the time.
You show your product or service helping your audience achieve a favorable result. Here, you emphasize the positive outcome and show your product in its best possible light.
Marketing agencies will advertise success stories of clients they did well with, while DTC brands tend to show before and after ads, or show only the outcome. It’s normal.
Take Shopify for example. There are millions of Shopify retailers—and there’s a huge number that have probably failed.
But Shopify only shows the successful brands on its page:
2) Be creative when presenting outcomes
Many times, showing the end result alone is not enough to trigger Outcome bias.
You also need to make the audience feel “invested” in the said result well before they start the journey.
Some brands use creative storytelling techniques to evoke strong emotions, while others simply involve their audience even before they make any decision.
Here’s how WeightWatchers did it:
By ripping a piece off this advert, the audience is already a step closer to the desirable outcome. And it feels so easy.
3) Emphasize quick success
An important aspect of Outcome bias is that we tend to ignore or downplay the journey that leads to the outcome.
So some companies try to make it seem as if the journey is easier than it actually is when using the product.
For example, here’s how Rosetta Stone—a language learning platform—advertised its courses:
This makes it seem like purchasing Rosetta Stone will propel you above your competition and straight into your dream job opportunity.
… And it probably will. The outcome is real. But the ad hides the time, effort, and individual capability to learn a new language to focus on the outcome.
Because in the end, only the outcome matters.
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ICYMI, last time we looked at the psychology principles in pricing.
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