The Temptation of Addition Bias

Issue 211, May 8, 2025

We are addressing a common strategy that many organizations use to solve an immediate problem. Addition bias is something we’re pretty sure you have encountered as a problem-solving strategy when dealing with business challenges. To set the scene, we offer you a case study.

Trouble in Paradise

This situation may sound familiar. Let’s say you are responsible for audience development for a media brand, association membership or event production. Your audience has been shrinking over the past few years, although your offerings have been well received and get good customer reviews. A new digital marketing manager has joined the staff with a lot of ideas that have been successful in the digital marketing sector in consumer audience development. As the marketing director for your B2B brand for the past 22 years, you are suspicious.

You meet with the new manager to present your strategy, which is to add popular, new bells and whistles to the mix. You’ve done it in the past, and this is what you’re comfortable with. You are convinced that you know your audience and what they want and need from your organization. So, here are a few typical reaction items you want to use to right the ship.

Editorial

New gated content available only to subscribers
Redesign the website to make it look more robust
Add new content channels including podcasts, webcasts and shortform video on social

Events

Add new networking activities including baseball cap customization, wine tastings, industry Jeopardy competitions and scavenger hunts
Bring in an inspirational speaker as the final presentation on the agenda
Introduce pricing tiers to incentivize group registrations

Membership

Add rates for emerging professionals that include quarterly online meetups
Introduce a mentoring program for students and young professionals with veteran professionals
Add a gated industry insights report exclusive to members

The Past as Prelude

You are understandably proud of your creativity and talent to add new assets and benefits to enhance and enlarge your audience. But here’s the rub. As reported by Axios “The default human instinct is to try to solve problems by adding rather than fixing. More people, more time, more resources — rather than making a tough decision.” The additive bias “is insidious, with multiple causes. As human beings, we have a tendency to solve problems or try to attract new customers by adding things rather than taking them away.” Is this beginning to sound familiar? The article continues, “That’s why businesses are constantly releasing products or features of dubious value. Add to that, a quarterly earnings drumbeat that focuses attention on the short term, and the temptation to focus more on your competitor than your customer. Together, all of these factors produce a gravitational pull in the wrong direction.”

This report could be demoralizing to our marketing director. He’s a great example of additive bias. But he’s not alone. Look at the additive bias crisis in just a few packaged goods:

18 versions of Triscuits
85 flavors of Oreos
50 types of Crest toothpaste
15 flavors of Cheerios
11+ categories of Glad trash bags

Why are our businesses and organizations run by the principle of “more is better” as a strategy to grow their customer bases?

Digital Dazzle

Back to our new marketing manager. She presents her strategy to her boss. Here are a few examples of her digital marketing tactics that apply across the board to content, events and membership:

Add embedded CTAs within high-traffic content
Use exit-intent popups with compelling hooks
Add recommendation plugins that surface the most shared or trending content for deeper engagement
Pin CTA to subscribe/register/join in the comments or post copy
Promote offers via carousel posts, LinkedIn Articles, and Live/Audio Rooms
Run low-cost retargeting ads to site visitors who didn’t subscribe
Collaborate with aligned brands and platforms
Tap into sponsorship partners’ audiences
Use event registrations as warm leads and nurture them with post-event recaps + subscribe CTA
Track and optimize with dashboards to monitor audience growth rate, source attribution, engagement and A/B test subject lines, CTAs, and landing page copy monthly
Retarget website visitors with segmented retargeting audiences

But wait a minute. This sounds like a different version of addition bias. Are these adds or fixes?

The Wisdom of Crowds

We fielded this commonly shared situation with a roundtable of marketing experts who bridge generations and disciplines. We also asked GPT for some instantaneous insights to create a playbook that looks at audience development from a fresh perspective. First of all, the consensus was that both the traditional and digital approaches are largely driven by addition bias. There exists a reflex to add more features, content, tactics, and tech rather than critically assessing and fixing what’s broken. But neither approach actually examines nor fixes the root causes of the shrinking audience.

Fix-Based Strategy

What’s a true, fix-based strategic approach, not just a different flavor of the same problem? Here’s a playbook:

Start with subtraction: Audit what’s not working

Cut underperforming content, channels, offers and events.
- Use engagement data to identify what your audience is ignoring.
- Stop producing content or programs that generate little value or retention.
Simplify your offering.
- Streamline events—maybe fewer, more focused sessions instead of scattered fun activities.
- Trim content formats to only those with consistent engagement and ROI.

Go deep, not wide: Reinvest in core value

Instead of adding podcasts or content types, improve the quality and insightfulness of existing content.
Rather than launching new events or channels, enhance the relevance and strategic curation of the ones you already have.
Interview lapsed members or attendees to find out why they left, not just how to lure them back with gimmicks.

Clarify the value proposition

If your audience is shrinking despite “good” reviews, something is likely off in positioning, communication, or expectation alignment.
Are you clearly articulating the outcome or benefit of your content/membership/event? Is it relevant to current industry pain points?

Fix the feedback loop

You’re not getting actionable insight from “good reviews” alone. Implement structured feedback systems that tell you:
- Why do people stay or leave?
- What they’re missing.
- What truly drives value?

Stop copying competitors

The pressure to do what others are doing (especially digitally) is a major source of additive bias.
Just because others are using LinkedIn Audio Rooms or retargeting doesn’t mean it fits your brand or audience.

Navigating Digital Marketing

Even smart digital tactics (like those from our new manager) aren’t automatically bad—but they become problematic if they add noise without value, distract from core issues, and are used as a crutch to avoid harder strategic questions.

At 2040 we work with clients to address addition bias. To truly fix any shrinking audience problem, you need to: diagnose first, subtract waste, reinvest in proven value, tune your messaging, and reconnect with the audience you already have. No new bells, whistles, or popups are needed until the core is sound.

Get “The Truth about Transformation”

The 2040 construct to change and transformation. What’s the biggest reason organizations fail? They don’t honor, respect, and acknowledge the human factor. We have compiled a playbook for organizations of all sizes to consider all the elements that comprise change and we have included some provocative case studies that illustrate how transformation can quickly derail.