Case Studies | Marketing

Custom Keto Diet: You Should Know This Before Buying

Read this full post before buying the Custom Keto Diet by Rachel Roberts.

You might have already seen the video by Roberts, promoting the Custom Keto Diet. It’s a compelling message.

But can you trust it?

In this post, I’m going to explain the reasons why Roberts says what she does in the video (and text sales letter). The sales message has been carefully crafted to persuade viewers.

I’m going to explain in detail the marketing and psychology tactics used to sell the Custom Keto Diet.

Knowing the tactics that have been used to influence you will help you to make a more rational decision.

If you’re a business owner or marketing professional, this post will give you an insight into proven marketing and psychology principles that you can apply in your own campaigns.

In this blog post, you’re going to learn…

  • How Custom Keto Diet leverages a principle used by Starbucks and Nike
  • One of the most powerful human desires that Custom Keto Diet taps into
  • A trick used to change your perception of price
  • The psychology behind a money-back guarantee

About The Custom Keto Diet Plan

The Custom Keto Diet is one of the many products on the market that is based on the keto (or ketogenic) diet. 

The advantage of the Custom Keto diet plan is that it’s tailored based on personal life circumstances (age, activity level, goals, etc.) as well as food preferences – be it allergies, ethical considerations, or individual taste for different foods. 

Users are required to complete a short quiz in order to get their personalized diet plan.

After completing the quiz, customers receive an 8-week personalized keto meal plan, a list of recipes with step-by-step cooking instructions, and weekly grocery shopping lists.

According to the Custom Keto Diet affiliate resources, the target audience is primarily women and aged between 35 – 65.

Custom Keto Diet Affiliate Resources

Is Custom Keto Diet A Scam?

I do think it would be unfair to label The Custom Keto Diet as a scam.

Other popular diet programs I have written about are based on ‘secrets’ and largely unproven diet hacks. But the Custom Keto Diet is at least based on a diet that has been shown to be effective for many people.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that success with the Custom Keto Diet is guaranteed. Results will depend on your body type.

Whether you need to spend $37 on a customized keto plan is another question. Ketogenic diet information and recipes are freely available online or you could purchase a book like Simply Keto by Suzanne Ryan for just $10.

Who Is Rachel Roberts?

The Custom Keto Diet was created by Rachel Roberts, who claims to be an author and weight loss coach. In her sales video, Roberts claims to have written the sales script herself.

Unfortunately, there is no trace of Rachel Roberts on social media or other sources. It remains questionable if Rachel Roberts is a real person, let alone a certified weight loss coach.

But regardless of whether Rachel is an actor hired for the campaign or the real creator of the program, the sales video narrated by Rachel is very well crafted.

Comfort in Familiarity

The Mere-Exposure Effect is a principle in social psychology that was largely researched and demonstrated in the work of Robert Zajonc.

Also known as the familiarity principle, the mere-exposure effect is believed to work on a subconscious level. It states that the more someone is exposed to something, the more they develop a preference for it (over other alternatives).

In other words, we develop a preference for things that we are already familiar with. 

Well known brands like Starbucks, Nike and Coke have become so successful largely due to the mere exposure effect. Because people have been exposed to these brands so many times, they will generally perceive them more favorably than less familiar brands.

The Instantly Recognizable Starbucks Logo

Here’s another example. A new pop song hits the music market. It feels like everywhere you go – a bar, restaurant, lift, shopping mall – the song is following you. You hear it everywhere. 

You might have disliked the song at first (or you were just indifferent to it), but a week goes by, and you catch yourself silently humming this exact song while washing the dishes. The next day, you go on Spotify and add it to your playlist. 

How does the Custom Keto Diet benefit from the mere-exposure effect? 

Interest in the keto diet has grown rapidly in recent years. We can see the growth in worldwide searches for keto diet over the past 5 years from Google Trends.

keto diet google searches

Interest in the ketogenic diet was very low in 2015/16 and then peaked in 2019.

The diet has received extensive coverage in the media and online. The internet is filled with keto success stories, reviews, and instruction videos. 

Nearly everyone interested in losing weight has heard of the ketogenic diet – unless they “were lost in the Himalayas for the last few years,” as Rachel says.

With so much prior exposure to the keto diet, the viewer is likely to view the Custom Keto Diet more favorably than other diets.

They don’t need to learn about or invest in a diet that they have never heard of before. They already know what the ketogenic diet is about. And they know it’s worked for other people.

The mere-exposure effect is one of the key reasons why businesses often benefit from investing in advertising on social media platforms. 

Users of these platforms are not obliged to engage with or follow a business simply because they have paid for promotions. But the more users are exposed to the brand, the more they become familiar with it, and the more they are likely to develop a preference for it. 

In my article about Kerwin Rae, I talk about how any business can leverage the mere exposure effect through online advertising.

Easier Is Better

It’s human nature to gravitate towards the easy option.

Get rich quick schemes and diet pills are extremely appealing to many people for this reason. They promise a quick and easy path to success.

We want to get where we want to be, but we want to do so fast and with minimal effort. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we are lazy or delusional. It just means that on a subconscious level, the easier path or the shortcut to achieving our goals is always more desirable and appealing. 

Appealing to the human desire for ease is one of the most powerful techniques used in sales and marketing campaigns.

See More Examples of This Concept:

Gabriel St Germain Marketing and Persuasion Techniques Analysis

Russell Brunson’s $3.2 Million Presentation: The Influence Psychology

Alex Becker Shopify Webinar Psychology Breakdown).

The Custom Keto Diet marketing campaign relies heavily on this same principle. 

Firstly, they label weight loss (or “getting into fantastic shape”) as a generally simple process. 

Also, notice how they talk about nutrition and fitness “gurus” in the screenshot below? This is a calculated strategy that I explain in my blog post on Leptitox.

Second, notice the specific words and phrases used in the Custom Keto Diet ad copy: “automatically”, “like clockwork.”

These are powerful words, designed to appeal to the viewer’s desire for ease,

The entire video and sales page is crafted to create a perception of ease. As described in the screenshot below, dieting with the Custom Keto plan is not only enjoyable but completely effortless. The customer doesn’t have to feel restricted or distressed, they don’t need any cooking experience, and they don’t even have to think about what to shop for. 

Rachel Roberts promises all the struggles and effort typically associated with dieting will be removed.

Knowing how much customers value convenience, modern businesses will go to great lengths to offer their customers a more convenient experience.

One such example is Amazon Go – an advanced shopping technology that enables people to skip the line at the checkout and “just grab and go.” In other words, Amazon Go makes shopping faster, easier, and more convenient.

Amazon have continued to introduce new technologies designed to make the customer experience easier and more convenient. This includes one-click purchase and same day shipping.

Pricing Psychology Trick

People tend to love “a good deal”. We simply like offerings we perceive as good value. 

But what does a good deal even mean? A good deal, as compared to what?

In order to control people’s perceptions of price and value, marketers often use a strategy known as price anchoring or the anchor effect. 

First, they present a price which will serve as a reference point. Any prices presented after this will be viewed in relation to the reference point.

For example, imagine you’re shopping for video cameras. You’ve never bought a video camera before, so you don’t know what prices to expect.

If the sales person showed you a $150 video camera first, $150 becomes your reference point. Now, if they were to show you a $800 camera, you would view it as very expensive.

But if the salesperson had showed you a $2000 video camera first, then you would see the $800 camera as being very affordable.

In his book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely discusses a study in which getting people to quote the last two digits of their social security number influenced their perception of prices. That’s how powerful the anchor effect is.

How Custom Keto Diet Uses A Price Anchor

The Custom Keto marketing campaign also uses price anchoring, yet in a slightly different way. They contrast the price of their meal plan to the price one would typically pay for hiring and working with a nutritionist. 

The target audience of Custom Keto are not likely to hire personal nutritionists to lose weight (as an alternative to buying a diet plan for less than 40 dollars). Still, seeing what it would cost them to do so (“around 900 dollars”) makes the 40-dollar offer seem like a great catch. 

Rachel Roberts employs the anchor effect by contrasting the price of her product to the price of working with a nutritionist for 8 weeks.

The $900 for working with a nutritionist becomes the reference point. By contrast, the $39 she is asking for Custom Keto diet appears very affordable.

The anchor effect is commonly used in marketing materials to influence the viewer’s perception of price.

As you can see in the screenshot below from Udemy, they display their current price for courses right next to a ‘regular price.’ The regular price serves as an anchor, making the current price appear much better value than it would otherwise.

Removing The Risk

An offering might seem appealing to a potential buyer, but when it’s time to take the credit card out, people often hesitate. 

People are naturally afraid of making bad purchases. We’re all afraid of wasting money, time, and energy on something that doesn’t provide the expected value. 

This can be explained by a behavioral economics principle known as loss aversion bias. The loss aversion bias states that the pain of loss is twice as powerful as the pleasure of gain.

Marketing professionals and sales people are aware of the significance of loss aversion. To counter it, they will present their product or service as a risk-free investment. 

We can see the same principle applied in the Custom Keto ad. The purchase of the diet plan is presented as completely “risk-free”. 

In addition to that, Rachel emphasizes her total confidence that the buyer will be (“without a shadow of a doubt”) satisfied with her program. 

In the paragraphs below, you can see how she tries to remove the viewer’s fear of loss and comfort them.

Offering 60 days to try the product also helps to put the buyer at ease. Many products will offer a 14 day or 30 day money back guarantee. But customers will still be reluctant to buy, knowing that this is a short time to properly assess the product.

Summary

The sales campaign of the Custom Keto Diet offers a good example of how you can use marketing psychology principles to appeal to your target audience. 

I have to give credit to Custom Keto Diet for taking a more honest approach to their marketing than many other weight loss programs sold through Clickbank.

In other articles, I have discussed the marketing psychology tactics used to sell other weight loss programs, which could be considered manipulative and misleading.

For those who have purchased or considered purchasing the Custom Keto Diet, I hope this article has been insightful. If you’re still wondering whether you should purchase the diet, I would suggest researching some of the other reviews online.

But be aware that many of the people writing those reviews are affiliates – which means they get paid when you purchase the product. So they have an incentive to promote the Custom Keto Diet favorably.

For those looking for alternatives to the Custom Keto Diet, I would recommend looking at books like Simply Keto by Suzanne Ryan or the Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners by Amy Ramos.

If you are curious to read my analysis of other similar sales campaigns, check out some of my previous posts below.

Flat Belly Fix: Sales & Persuasion Tactics Exposed 

Diabetes Freedom Manipulative Sales Tactics Revealed

Leptitox Sales Page Analysis

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