The Two Kinds of Loyalty

Which Kind of Loyalty Do You Want?

In 1976, Robert Hanssen became an FBI agent. He swore an oath of loyalty to the United States. In 1979, Hanssen became a spy for the Soviet Union. For the next 22 years, he sold American intelligence secrets to the Soviets.

Why did Hanssen violate his oath of loyalty? Because someone offered him more money.

That's the weak kind of loyalty: rented loyalty. You can rent loyalty from a person if the price is right. They will remain loyal only until a better offer comes along.

Most businesses have rented loyalty.

The second kind of loyalty is stronger, much stronger. It is loyalty rooted in the heart. It cannot be bought at any price: emotional loyalty.

You will find emotional loyalty wherever loyalty seems misplaced. For example:

• Long-suffering sports fans: The Chicago Cubs didn't win a World Series for 108 years. Boston Red Sox fans waited 86 years between championships. Yet fans of the two franchises are among the most loyal in all of sports.
• Battered Spouses: Most battered spouses remain loyal to their abusers. Sometimes, they stay until their abusers actually kill them.
• Fraternity Pledges: Hazing rituals don't drive frat members away. In fact, frat boys become even more loyal to their fraternity after their hazing has ended.
• Religious Fundamentalists: Even when their beliefs are proven false, fundamentalist religions retain and even attract more members at a time less dogmatic belief systems struggle to remain relevant.

Q. How do these groups create and keep such extraordinary loyalty?

A. They all use a set of simple techniques: Loyalty Triggers.

What are Loyalty Triggers?

Every human being is a bundle of hidden drives and unconscious motivations.

Punch the right hidden buttons, trip the right unconscious triggers, and you create a predictable response: emotional loyalty.

Loyalty Triggers are the unique psychological levers that activate those hidden drives and motivations.

Loyalty Triggers bypass conscious choice. Instead, they stimulate unconscious reflexes. Reflexes work all the time; choices are a roll of the dice.

You might be thinking, "isn't that kind of manipulative?"

I am sympathetic to that concern. However, it is misplaced.

Is it manipulative to give people what they really want?

No.

Is it manipulative to understand their hidden desires and then fulfill them?

Of course not.

When you give people what they want and satisfy their unconscious drives, you earn their loyalty.

That's not manipulative; that's a fair trade.

Attention Without Emotional Loyalty is Worthless

If you want to build connections with people, then - according to the so-called "experts" - you must attract their attention.

Attracting attention is easy. Holding attention is hard.

Your target market - whether potential customers or members or clients or even friends - has unlimited choices about where to give their precious attention. That's why our modern economy is called "The Attention Economy."

In The Attention Economy, one thing - and one thing only - will keep people's attention focused on you: a deeply felt inner sense of emotional loyalty to you.

When someone feels deep loyalty to you, then all the other shiny things clamoring for their attention lose appeal. Their deeply felt inner loyalty will repel every shallow spectacle that attempts to attract their attention.

Lacking that inner feeling of emotional connection, they will be like Robert Hanssen; their attention will go to the highest bidder.

Emotional loyalty keeps people connected - through good times and bad, through thick and thin - no matter what happens.

The Rider & The Elephant - A Metaphor for Human Desire

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt compares our unconscious drives and hidden motivations to the relationship between a rider and his elephant. The rider believes he can "steer" the elephant wherever he chooses. The reality is very different; the rider goes wherever the elephant chooses to go.

After the fact, the rider comes up with "reasons" to explain why he - the rider - chose to go one direction or another. It's not real, it's just post hoc rationalization.

Modern marketing, branding, retention and customer loyalty techniques all focus on the rider. They appeal to a person's conscious decision-making tools. Meanwhile, the elephant - those unconscious drives and hidden motivations - remains unaffected by those techniques. Anything aimed at the conscious mind fails to stimulate our hidden drives and subconscious motivations.

The fastest, simplest way to generate emotional loyalty is to learn how to use Loyalty Triggers. These techniques communicate to the Elephant rather than to the Rider.

Learning to use Loyalty Triggers will revolutionize your relationships with your target audience.

Put Loyalty Triggers to Work

In this video course, you will learn why Loyalty Triggers work. We dive deep into the cultural and psychological shifts of the last 100 years to discover how our hidden drives have altered the emotional landscape of your target audience. Armed with a deeper understanding of your audience's hidden drives and subconscious motivations, you'll be better prepared to craft your own Loyalty Triggers for maximum emotional impact.

Don't wait another moment. Once a person has granted emotional loyalty to your competition, you'll never win it back.

Capture the emotional loyalty of your own customers starting today.