The Mount Everest Rule in Marketing
When surveyors first measured Mount Everest, the number they got back felt a little unbelievable: 29,000 feet on the button.
The surveyors, though, weren't super happy with this number. They had real concerns that the general public would view 29,000 feet as an estimate and not a precise calculation, so you guessed it: they added 2 feet. Or two meatball subs. However you wanna look at it.
Mount Everest, when surveyed, was presented as 29,002 feet to make sure the public believed the number.
There’s a lesson in marketing here
In short, humans tend to believe precise numbers. In most cases, saying that something has increased by 48.5% is more believable than saying that something has increased by 50%. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but also it kind of does.
You may have an inclination to round to a whole number because it looks cleaner, but your audience trusts precision more than whole numbers. Here are a few use cases for marketers to keep in mind.
When you're considering hooks and opening lines in a social media video, you're more likely to have someone hold on and finish a video if you ask them to watch a 34-second rundown versus telling them to watch this quick video.
If you're presenting data on your website about how you help your customers, give the hard number. Don't round up or down to sound pretty. Sharing a specific data point signals that your story is real and your results are real. No 29,000-foot estimate here.
The same goes for the title of your videos. It's better to be accurate than round. One of the secrets of marketing is to have your written content read as measured, not marketed.
Maybe one of my favourite use cases for the Mount Everest Rule is when it comes to calls to action. Instead of saying something like "follow me for more industry news here…” say something like "I post industry commentary 3x per week here…” You're giving your readers or followers concrete expectations.
It's also great to know this when you're selling your services. Price out your contracts with exact numbers instead of rounding up or down. Show the data and metrics that you provide for your other clients precisely instead of trying to reach for whole numbers. This will absolutely make you feel more trustworthy to potential clients.
Climbing down the mountain
The bottom line is that on social media, trust is an extremely scarce resource. Once you accept that fact, the whole game starts to shift. You start looking for more and more ways to show people they can trust you (before they’ve even bought anything from you). This is one of those simple ways that you can do it without really changing anything at all. Just add or subtract two feet.
Side note: Have a social media, web design, or marketing project you need help with? Shoot me an email, I always respond within 23.5 hours.