Review of Digital Psychology and Persuasion Minidegree Program (Pt. 8)
This is over…
After enjoying my journey learning in CXL Institute, I am already in the last track of it.
But interestingly enough, we’re now going to talk about Applied behavioral psychology.
So even when it’s close to an end, I’m going to love the remaining parts of the program.
And there’s no better way than start learning about the applications of the concepts I’ve been describing in previous articles and put them into action.
To do this, the first 2 courses covered were Psychology of products, and Psychology of websites.
Let’s discuss the first one.
In the Psychology of products, Erik Johnson shared a 4-step framework to building habits and high customer satisfaction around your product.
Sounds like you wouldn’t benefit from it?
Of course you would, so here are the steps:
- Engage your users
So how do you keep someone engaged in your product/offer?
In this step, is key to define the behavioral plan you want your users to make
You’ll also want to think of what they must do out of the product, not just in it (AKA cues/triggers).
And there are 2 type of triggers: external and internal
External — think of anything that drives attention, such as your ads, emails, notifications, and CTAs on websites.
Now, don’t forget to make the trigger clear and make it exciting and engaging.
Internal — you’re prompt to do something without external cues.
Think back of when you are distracted. What do you do? Chances are either enter a social media like Facebook or Instagram, or go check your emails.
These apps are great at driving intrinsic motivation and have a HOOK model built in… Start thinking how you can create the same with your product/offer.
2. Complete the action
So you trigger your prospect or lead to see your page. Now what?
Well, you should know that taking action (especially that is outside of our normal behavior) is hard. Because you’re making people change, you have to do so slowly.
One way to effectively make someone complete an action is to be very clear on what that action is and make it easy.
So having a strong CTA on an ecom page should be “Get this product”… Amazon does this in a great way. And Amazon also does this by making the CTA easy, with the option “Buy now with 1-click®”.
Again, think how you can make the action you want people to make easy and clear.
3. Keep them coming back
The best way to do this is to reward your visitors. Rewards keep us coming back.
And based on the HOOK model by Nir Eyal, here are 3 types of rewards that you could test: social, resources, and achievement.
The more you use them (as you could combine them), the better.
4. Create investment
At this point you may be familiar with the IKEA effect (the investment we have to put on something makes us value it more).
If you could create the IKEA effect within your product, like some customization, will make people get back to you.
So that was about the Psychology of products, now let’s review the Psychology of websites.
First, let’s review a study on value proposition and the effects of layout on perpection and message recall, shall we?
In case you didn’t know, the value proposition and the mechanism of your product/service is different (a copywriting thing, but it’s worth noticing).
The value prop is something that can be strong and increase conversions, so it’s worth give it the time to constantly tweak it.
Now, in this case study we could conclude that people are able to recall more services when there is more info about it to read.
But saying something is not the same as hearing something, right?
If I tell you “I don’t want to go out today”, you could hear “I don’t want to go out WITH YOU today”…
Same words, different meaning of the same sentence.
The same happens with your prospects and with your value prop.
So to communicate more efficiently (and effectively) your message, you have to speak to the right system in your prospect’s head and prime them.
But what do I mean with these 2 things?
Well, I’ve talked before about System 1 and System 2, which Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky developed after their work.
The first part is to make things more intuitive, since most of our days we spend in System 1 on autopilot. And if you are striving to the System 2 (the reflective side), then you’re preventing action, because…
thinking prevents action.
This happens regardless of the industry, product, or market you are. In the end, you’re dealing with humans.
So to appeal to the System 1, you are going to want to clearly state your value proposition and speak in language your visitors use.
A valuable tip I use as a copywriter that should help you, is to have your FK score (you can Google it if you don’t know what’s about) and your value proposition shouldn’t be more than a grade 5.
Now, talking about value proposition is not about you or how great you think you are.
It’s all about your prospects.
To do this, make sure to turn back to the station radio your prospects are always in. What’s this station?
WIIFM…
or What’s In It For Me.
You should be able to turn your value proposition to that statement all the time (and your entire copy to be honest) to capture more leads.
And talking about copy, from all the elements out there… the value prop is the most influencial element we can control.
To do so, ideally you should also answer the “Why should I choose you (over X)?” in your value proposition.
Now, the true beauty about crafting your best value proposition is that you don’t have to spend hours thinking or guessing about it.
Your prospects will literally give you these answer, you just have to ask them and then prove it that you can deliver on your promises.
But another concept you must be aware before start changing your value proposition, you should know the Market Awareness Level your market is in.
This concept was developed by the great copywriter Eugene Schwartz, who later introduced this idea as well as Market Sophistication inside his book “Breakthrough Advertising”.
Why is this important?
Simply put, you have to consider the current level your company is in, how big or small it is, and develop a message depending on how aware your market is about you/your product/your company.
So to help you do this, you should focus on higher customer awareness if you have an established product and are a big company, if not… focus more on the solution to your prospect’s problem.
Lastly, let’s explore how to create a landing page that address the emotional needs of your customers.
And this was a talk that Talia Wolf gave on a Conversion event in 2016, where she explained… the root of of every conversion is human behavior.
So simply think of optimizing your pages for mobile. This is huge, and sadly not many do it.
If you have a fully optimized site for mobile, you’re not going to lose 56% of your customers.
Plus, we need always get inside our customer’s head and see things from where they are seeing it. To do so, Talia shared a 4-step framework:
1- Emotional competitor analysis: in here, we want to understand where the market is emotionally, and where you fit it.
For this first step, choose 10–15 of your competitors and see what they’re doing in terms of: message, colors, image, and emotional triggers.
2- Emotional SWOT: we all know about SWOT, right? Well, in this step you’re going to want to see what are your customers feeling about you and what they feel about the industry by using the SWOT model.
3- Emotional content strategy: with the previous steps, you want to address or answer the particular threats that people are feeling about the problem they have. And the best part is that you can use multiple emotional triggers.
4- Testing: there is nothing if you don’t test everything. So the goal is to do this with the frame of mind of gaining knowledge about your customers. That is the only way you can continue growing.
So that’s it in terms of the Psychology of products and websites.
I could say that they were very thoughtful and very insightful courses that showed me not only how to do things, but why to do things.
Knowing the application of these concepts can give you an advantage by knowing what to test and how to get better.
That’s my comment on these 2 courses.
Next week, I’ll be talking about the Psychology of communication and pricing.
You’re not gonna want to miss them.
Ivan
