Businesses use this psychological principle to influence customer impressions

We all know that experience and size matter when it comes to business.

SEO is a tough field filled with established brands and powerful SEO agencies. And yet, the majority of SEO businesses are small to medium sized. So, what can you do if you aren’t a huge SEO agency and you still want to shine? How can you compete against the huge brands and have a fighting chance? Well, today you will have at least one answer.

The simple principle we will be discussing today, if used correctly, will almost instantly improve how customers perceive your business, help you close more and better deals and raise your branding potential to a whole new level.

Major companies have used this psychological trick for ages to get an edge and improve their branding and marketing potential. Nations have used it in warfare, animals use it in nature, and most of us follow it subconsciously. And it’s so common, you already know it even if you never thought about it.

Project a high-quality image and appear established.

One of the most important elements of a first impression is how professional and established a business looks. Appearances are VERY important. Simply put, customers will opt to go with the more established brand in most scenarios. It’s a psychological principle that dates back to our evolutionary roots and is so ingrained into our decision making that virtually every successful business uses it on some level.

Microsoft used this principle when releasing the second-generation version of their Xbox gaming console, naming it Xbox 360 instead of going for a chronologically ordered naming scheme and calling it Xbox 2. This was a clear attempt to get a branding edge over Sony’s Playstation 3, the competing parallel product about to be released. As obvious as that sounds, 360 is simply a more impressive number than 3. Xbox 360 vs. PS3 simply sounded better than Xbox 2 vs. PS3, which would just seem outdated in comparison to most customers at first glance. Worse still, consumers that didn’t follow  the latest trends could end up thinking PS2 was the parallel and Xbox 2 would look expensive by comparison. Xbox 360 ended up being the best-selling console Microsoft had, and yes, it outsold Playstation 3. While this simple naming change was not the sole reason for the console’s huge success, it played a part.

Numbers matter a lot for consumers as this study found. Customers will focus on impressive numbers favorably, regardless of what they represent. A 36-month warranty will sound better than a 3-year warranty to most people. Big numbers usually mean better and stronger, and big brands know this.

Google leased their first complex of buildings from SGI, which were numbered 40-43 (still visible on Google maps). While Google was already a powerful and well-known search engine at the time, many speculate the numbers of the buildings were also a means of further brand establishment; it would make more sense and feel more natural to assume that a company such as Google had amassed at least 40 buildings. Another example of Google flexing their size for branding power is when they published the size of their search index, claiming it to consist of 130 trillion webpages.

Eventually they did rename the buildings and stopped boasting about who had the biggest in the game, after having absolutely nothing left to prove.

 

You can even look close to home inside the SEO niche for prime examples of this. SEO agencies always proudly and boldly list the addresses of their different offices that are spread out across the country or world to give the impression of a huge international chain business, even though these offices might be small and insignificant in comparison to the main office.

HP used this trick with their first product, naming it HP200A to give the impression the fledgling company was already an established player.

A common piece of advice new business owners get is to start their invoice at a higher price so they won’t seem so new to the game. And many companies always mask their customer ID’s inside large numbers just to give customers that psychological comfort zone. It’s a move that makes sense. You would probably feel much more at ease being customer no. 1513 instead of customer no. 13. That’s just how consumer psychology works.

And this is evident not just in business, but it has also been used in war since the dawn of history, making armies appear bigger and stronger than they actually are (some will say the two are very similar in the face of Capitalism — just ask your typical hedge fund manager who lists Sun Tzu’s The Art of War as a major influence). Richard Marcinko who named SEAL Team Six knew that principle, considering there were only two SEAL teams operating for the US Navy at the time. But “six” implied that the US had more teams, and it sounded more impressive and intimidating, achieving a psychological advantage. With just a name that sounded better, he managed to confuse Soviet intelligence.

It’s just the way people have been primed to act since we organized into human societies – larger and more established, simply put, means safer. If you’re going to join a hunt, you would probably prefer the group that has the most experience and has the biggest and strongest hunters. We can go even more primal than that and say this is an evolutionary element. It’s a principal we encounter in nature all the time when animals and bugs use various methods to look bigger and more impressive to intimidate rivals, get that coveted territory and seduce a desired mate.

Just think back on how many times you were influenced by it, and how you make decisions as a consumer, and where your automatic comfort zone lies. Sure, if you step back and truly analyze why a certain brand seems more solid than another, you might end up looking at factors other than the cosmetic surface impressions. But most consumer decisions that we make are fast and don’t go deep because we need to make time and head space to focus on our main tasks, so our brain will operate on default modes such as this one.

The good news is you don’t have to lease a building number 40 to look established. There is a far better much more affordable way. So now comes the really cool part – how to make yourself appear like an established highly professional SEO business with the help of PRT.

Important note before we begin! The methods and features you will read about here are really effective, can really boost your image and can make you seem like a notable player in SEO. Be sure you can handle the sudden increase in your branding power, and be prepared to present high-quality results to your future customers, because looking big and established will only take you so far!

 

White Label Magic

One of the best ways that exist to make yourself look bigger and have more authority is by having your own branded SEO tool. In this case, you can virtually have your own branded SERP tracker at a fraction of the cost it takes to develop one.

PRT is a 100% white label SERP tracker. That means every label that says PRT can be replaced with your company’s logo, keeping us fully behind the scenes and letting us power your brand. Since this feature has a lot to do with showcasing your logo, it will work even better if your logo already looks very polished and professional.

Here is a guide of our white label features from the most basic to the most amazing:

Level I – Branded SEO ranking reports

The PDF ranking reports you send to your clients through our system can all be customized to showcase your brand. Not only that, but they can be set up to be sent from YOUR email address!

Set a unique header, footer and cover letter to be featured in every report that you send:

Make as many templates as you like! We understand you might have several different clients that all require different information to be included in the report, so that’s why you should make several unique templates to fit each case.

An unlimited amount of reports! Send as many reports as you like to as many clients as you can get. This also leaves you room for some trial and error until you come up with the ideal report for any eventuality. For example, you can set a trigger for a unique template that will be automatically sent to your client once their website hits the No.1 position on Google and have the header say something positive, like “We did it!”

Our reports are also a great way to make stunning case studies for future clients.

PRT has a total of 11 different types of reports to serve your every rank-tracking need. You can go over all of them here:

The 11 types of SEO ranking reports you absolutely must know (+special premium features)

Finally, here is a sample Overview Report for you to check out.

Level II – Shared Reports

The next level of white label is a report generated on a unique webpage that will show your client their LIVE ranking data. The beauty of this feature is that the webpage can seem to be hosted on YOUR website, further putting us backstage. The logo embellishing the Shared Report will also be yours, and the colors of the page can be styled to match the colors of your logo.

You can encrypt the webpage with a password and set an expiration date. Just like this! The password is ‘shared‘.

This feature and anything above it will also let you shine in a very important field – customer service. Having the live reports constantly stream the freshest ranks allows high levels of transparency – it will show your clients you have so much confidence that you share the progress at all times. Being good AND open about the process will attract more referrals and increase your potential to spread organically through word of mouth.

Shared Reports offer amazing flexibility and customization options. Here’s a fully detailed breakdown of our Shared Reports feature:

Introducing PRT’s updated Shared Reports: The next-gen of SEO ranking reports

Level III – MyRanks client app

We are now entering the top tier of white label solutions. This is the cream of the crop. MyRanks is an exclusive app that your clients can download and see their live ranking data any time they like from the convenience of their phone. The app features your own logo and has an ‘About’ tab that will have your company’s info:

Simply set a unique username and password, choose the data you want to show, and let the app do its magic.

MyRanks is a real showstopper, truly impressing existing clients and future ones, since chances are you’re the first one to show them such a cool feature. We have a full breakdown of the MyRanks app you can read about here:

Taking white label reports to the next level with MyRanks

Level IV – Sub Accounts

How would you like to have our full SERP tracker at your disposal and have your logo instead of ours, hosted on YOUR website? Because this is what sub accounts can do for you. It doesn’t get any more white label than this. We will lend you our tool entirely, with all features, power and fresh ranking data included. Simply choose the permission levels you want for the sub accounts and you’re set to go:

While sub accounts are usually used for distributing tasks to your team and improving workflow, you can also give a sub account to your client. Some tech-savvy people will enjoy having their own VIP access to their data, and seeing a whole SERP tracker with your name on it will look very impressive!

This is basically like having your very own tool at the fraction of the price, and without spending the time, expertise, effort, and money to develop one. Not to mention that focusing on rank tracking for years and improving our methods has made us the best at it.

Here’s the full story of all the awesome ways you can use sub accounts to advance your business:

How PRT’s sub-accounts can advance your SEO business and optimize your workflow

Level V – API Access Galore

In case you did develop your own branded SEO tool and just want the highest-quality ranking data, then this feature is perfect for you. This is the highest level of white label attainable through PRT – pure, raw, fresh, unadulterated ranking data straight to your tool, collected from all the major search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yandex, Amazon, YouTube and more. This includes ALL the needed Google ranking factors filtered by exact locations, device types, UI languages, Snack Pack and full Google map results.

You will also get to enjoy the benefits that come along with our SLA, such as reliability, stability, and security. And you will have a dedicated API specialist to help you set up everything perfectly and smoothly.

Interestingly enough, it can also be the most affordable, with the lowest price-per-tracked term at only $0.017 USD! (It can even get lower depending on the quota needed).

Brand preservation and empowerment

Once you become big and established, preserving your brand is just as important as continuing to build it, which is why large SEO agencies that have PRT make use of these features as well, so it’s not just for the small guys.

So, now you have all you need to level the playing field and appear impressive and established. We hope you use these features wisely and provide your customers with real value that would justify your professional image. We know you might be great at what you do (and be even better than some big SEO agency) because you are more dedicated to the success of your client. There’s no reason why the bigger players should win by default just because of their size advantage.

If you liked this article, you might enjoy our previous one about how Microsoft used the principle we discussed here and other ways to turn Bing into a highly profitable and successful search engine in a world where unstoppable monsters such as Google roam:

Is Bing really a failure? Should you even track your Bing ranks?

Also, please share this article (every share counts!) and let us know your thoughts on brand cultivation in the comments below. And if you don’t want to miss out on any more posts such as this one, subscribe to our blog and get updated when the latest news and stories hit!

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Great SEO skills are not enough – the way you track ranks and monitor search engine progress needs to follow 2018’s SEO standards for SERP tracking. PRT is an industry-standard SERP tracker with over 50k users of all sizes and levels. We guarantee the highest quality, most accurate and updated ranks on the market.

So, you want to give us a test drive but DON’T want to give your credit card? Well good! We don’t believe you should have to for a free trial, which is why we will NOT be asking for one. After your FULL 7-day trial with ALL the features unlocked is over, you will simply revert back to our regular free plan that has no time limit. That’s because we have a feeling that once you try PRT, you will upgrade to one of the most affordable paid plans on the market, and we don’t need some sneaky auto-renewal trap to accomplish that.

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