Review of Digital Psychology & Persuasion Minidegree Program (Pt. 5)
If you’re to sit besides your prospects when they visit your website, see how they interact and what picks their interest so they move forward and buy, what would it mean in your business?
Well, unless you are some sort of a wizard who can read people’s minds, it’s going to be an impossible task.
The thing is that many businesses focus on getting as much attention as possible.
They place all their resources on finding where to place their ads, trying to increase brand awareness (whatever that means) and fighting for a click.
Not many put the same effort in keeping that visitor that they earned with their effort to get it…
and the way to keep attention, we first need to debunk a theory.
This is known as the dual process theory. That was the first section inside the course of Non-conscious Motivation inside the CXL Institute.
Chances are you learned about the right brain and left brain having different processes, and that each person has a tendency to a particular side, yet…
that’s not the case, as many processes are not dependent on a specific side.
This goes as well as the 3 brain theory many have found (the lizard brain, the paleo brain, and the neo brain).
And the issue with these theories is that they don’t take into consideration that we make decisions on emotions. I like the metaphor that it was used between the writer and the elephant. You as the writer may want to do something, but the elephant may want something completely different. As the elephant has it’s own brain, you’re not going to move him as easy as you would.
So how do you move the elephant to the direction you want?
You have to erase the obstacles that are in the path of the elephant that you want him to take.
A way to think about this is about the System 1 and System 2 that we talked in the previous reviews, where System 1 is our default.
What’s persuasion to you?…
You might have heard about the book “Influence”, the classic book on persuasion by Robert Cialdini.
In this amazing book there were 6 principles of influence: liking, social proof, authority, reciprocity, commitment and consistency, and scarcity.
But… it happens to be another principle that Robert Cialdini found it was important to include.
Unity.
Let’s briefly discuss how you could use these principles in your efforts to persuade online.
1.Liking
In simple terms, you need to show attributes that you share with your customers to create “liking effect”.
Whatever commonalities you can have with your potential customers, make sure to include them in your marketing.
Interestingly, flattery also works as a way to build liking.
2. Social Proof
If you only think of testimonials as social proof, think again.
A key element of social proof is that it should be like your customers. A powerful formula to use social proof is to tie it up with your benefit.
The only place where social proof doesn’t necessarily work are on things such as luxury, status, or signaling. In these cases, people want to be different and unique, so showing that others have bought the same item can make you lose the sale.
As an interesting fact, would you believe that customers trust strangers 12x more than a brand description?
The goal is to start thinking of social proof as a way to reduce fears or uncertainty that might be holding your prospects back.
3. Authority
Read these headlines and tell me which one is more persuasive:
A) “When people feel sick, they use this.”
B) “When doctors feel sick, they eat this.”
As well as people tend to respond to the B) example, it also shows why you are prone to respond to a command from a policeman in the street.
Sure, not every business has something where they can relate to a doctor or a policeman. Sometimes, a celebrity can have the role of an expert.
The bottom line is to have an endorsement of someone your customers trust.
4. Reciprocity
I used to think that giving a Free report, e-book, or other type of lead magnet was a form of reciprocity.
Not anymore since I learned about this principle in detail.
Also, rewards do not equal reciprocity.
A good way to use reciprocity in your pages is to put a CTA after a good piece of content.
5. Commitment and Consistency
The best way to use this principle is to ask for a small favor before asking for a big one.
For instance, we can make a Quiz in small steps and ask one question at a time instead of displaying the entire quiz.
In that way, once a visitor gets to the end of the Quiz has committed to the particular thing he/she wanted to know from the survey. So by the time you ask them their name and email to send them the results, doing so is aligned with the committment.
In addition, when giving options for visitors ask them for a crazy request. From there, granting a second and bigger favor maintains that consistency.
Having a CTA that gives them an option that has nothing to do with what they were committed to look for can cause them a little bit of cognitive dissonance and make them think whether they really want to pass an opportunity or not.
6. Scarcity
This principle is pretty much straight forward, so will give you a key aspect to take into account.
Show scarcity by displaying the decreasing availability of an item you have (in case you’ve an ecom page), or if you don’t have a scarcity mechanism…
crete your own scarcity.
Find ways that you can incorporate this very important principle into your offers, such as “Offer expires at midnight.”
Keep in mind that if your prospect doesn’t have an incetive to act now, they simply won’t act.
7. Unity
So here’s the new principle that you may haven’t heard of before.
And to put it in simple terms, it’s a little bit like the liking effect.
Unity is about some shared identity you have with your customers… show them that you’re part of the same tribe.
Lastly, in this course they also talked about the motivational chemistry and susceptibility to digital persuasion.
Motivation is emotion, so we really need to ask ourselves: “How can we trigger emotions, to nudge users in the right direction?”
Some of the brain chemicals that we need to pay attention are dopamine, cortisol, oxytocin, and serotonin.
By focusing on how you can use these brain chemicals to trigger them to get them towards where you want, while helping them avoid what they don’t want.
So if I were to sum up this course of Non-conscious Motivation, I’d say that it was a great refresher and a larger break down of the 6 principles (sorry, now 7 principles). Having practical examples of how each of them were applied and how to use them to persuade online was not only full of insights, but also details of previous examples and research done to back them up.
It was also important to relate brain chemicals to online persuasion and how to trigger each one of these.
So far, I’m enjoying the journey of this Minidegree.
Next week, I’ll be covering cognitive biases in great detail.
Nos vemos,
Ivan
