‘Just won $7000 on a scratchy’ got 38 likes and 27 comments when I posted it on Facebook. When my father died, I got 13 comments.

It was an unexpected lesson in marketing.

It started when a Facebook friend posted she was pregnant. I commented. Here’s the response I got:

I’m really not pregnant… You should not have liked or commented! Now you have to pick one of the 14 below and post to your status. This is the 2014 breast cancer awareness game. Don’t be a spoil sport; choose your poison, and change your status. Post with no explanations. Sorry, I fell for it too!

#13  on the list was ‘Just won $7000 on a scratchy’. It seemed the least obnoxious of the choices.

In retrospect, I should have ignored the instructions. I manage to do this with internet chain letters. I didn’t stop to think, as another blogger did, how does this ‘game’ actually help breast cancer awareness? But I like and respect this Facebook friend, and support breast cancer awareness. My friend would see my post, know I had followed through, and that would be the end of it; I would not ask commenters to post on their profiles. And, after all, how many people would even see it? More than three comments on a post is a rare event for me.

The Marketing Lesson

Money sells. A title doesn’t even have to promise the reader money, the mere mention of money piques interest. 

It was gratifying how many of the commenters were genuinely happy for my good fortune. But good news by itself does not generate this many comments; another post mentioning that I was honored to receive the Volunteer of the Year Award from Women’s Economic Ventures did not get nearly as many likes and comments.

The sheer number of responses to the simple phrase ‘Just won $7000 on a scratchy’ proves that mentioning money is much more compelling than mentioning good news.

How can you use a reference to money in your marketing messages? Try it. Even better, do a split test, and see which message gets a better response.