A Big List of Persuasion Techniques for Marketing — Part 3

I will be reviewing the CXL mini degree of Conversion rate optimisation. Today we will be covering the course of People & Psychology. In this course, we learn about how people are affected and influenced while they are making a decision. We will be continuing our previous lessons on persuasion techniques.

Let’s move to the next persuasion technique and how to implement them online.

Visual cueing

A visual cue is a signal that your brain extracts from what you see. It directs your attention and interest to something in your field of perception.

Now, only 1% of what you see enters through your eyes (the rest is — surprisingly accurately– made up by your brain). You can only see well with your ‘fovea’: The area in the dead centre of your retina that’s the size of your thumbnail from an arm-length distance).

Therefore, it’s important to direct your customers’ fovea-attention, for example, by using visual cues in the periphery of their vision. These cues can be obvious (e.g. an arrow) or very subtle (e.g. text in the form of an arrow).

Online persuasion tips:

• Use a visual cue to emphasize your most important content/USP/CTA.
• Use of arrows and visual hierarchy at the same point
• Furthermore case studies and examples are provided in the course itself.

Endowment effect

“When we own goods, we value them higher than when we don’t”

How does our perceived value of items change depending on whether or not they’re ours? The effect that ownership has on perceived value (also known as ‘divestiture aversion’) shows that, when there are two identical products, we tend to value the one we own more.

In other words: We expect more money when selling a product than what we’re willing to pay when buying it.

Online persuasion tips:

• Use trial periods so your customers feel like they already own the product.
• Imply a ‘return for free’ policy (obligatory in a lot of countries).
• Among existing customers, experiment with asking whether or not they are willing to sell the product for the price they paid. This might make them realize how much they value your product.
• Find more tips and live examples in the course.

Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is a person’s belief in his/her competence. According to Albert Bandura — who defined self-efficacy theory — this personalized belief in our ability to succeed significantly affects our behaviour. The more competent we think we are (a high level of perceived self-efficacy), the greater our intrinsic motivation to act is.

There are at least three types of information that enhance our self-efficacy online:

• Our behaviour: When we’re successful at something, we become convinced that we will be successful at that same thing again.
• The behaviour of others: When we see others being successful with certain behaviour, we become convinced that we’ll also be capable of success with that behaviour.

Online persuasion tips:

• Provide instant feedback on correct behaviour (i.e. green checkmarks appear when fields are filled incorrectly).
• Visualize the simplicity of procedures (a progress indicator with three-five clear steps, an easy looking infographic, etc).
• More such amazing tips are mentioned in the course do have a look it’s worth it.

Base rate neglect & Base rate fallacy

We tend to base judgments on known specific numbers and percentages, ignoring necessary general statistical information. We are often erroneously over-evaluate options with high numbers and percentages because of this, ignoring what subset or base these numbers come from…

Online persuasion tips:

When mentioning numbers or percentages:

• Supersize your numbers and percentages by changing ‘the base’ (e.g. 99% of our active clients give us a 5-star rating, instead of 80% of all our clients).

Self-generation memory effect

We remember information better when it’s generated by our minds than when we read or hear it from someone else. So, if you want your customer to remember something, a highly effective strategy is to have them generate the information themselves.

Online persuasion tips:

• Don’t show all of your USPs, but ask your customers to think of one or two reasons why to buy your product themselves.

Perceptual incongruence

Only 1% of what you see enters through your eyes. Your brain itself fills in the rest. Your brain does this by using prior visual information and established assumptions about the real world. 99% of what you see is ‘computed vision’, based on highly advanced algorithms, providing you with a surprisingly accurate visual image.

Perceptual incongruence occurs when the true visual information gathered via the eye doesn’t fit visual algorithms. When this happens, parts of the brain starts asking for more information (because it doesn’t necessarily fit the algorithm).

Therefore, incongruence can have large effects in directing attention.

Online persuasion tips:

• Do something unexpected when someone enters your website (or another platform).
• Within your platforms, use incongruent colours, fonts, images, etc. for important content and interactions.
• Purposely advertise on thematically incongruent platforms.

Status quo bias

We have an irrational preference for the current state of affairs. Even when offered a new option or choice, we tend to stick to the default option.

The status quo bias is closely related to loss aversion and anchoring & adjustments since the default option is taken as a reference point. Any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss.

Online persuasion tips:

• Present behavioural options in such a way that you prefer your customer not to act.
• Phrase questions in the same way (you prefer ‘no’ as the answer).
• If a question is phrased the wrong way, prefill it (be careful though with multiple prefilled answers, that might result in changing all of them).
• If you want your customer to deviate from the status quo, use a disruptive intervention technique like ‘forced choice’ to get your customer to act.

Availability heuristic

The more easily we can imagine an event, the more often or more likely we are to believe that this event will occur. So we have a tendency to judge the frequency of an event based on how easy it is to recall similar instances. And since memories are highly biased toward vivid, unusual, and emotionally charged examples, these will also influence how likely we are to consider events.

Online persuasion tips:

• Use anecdotes (easy to recall).
• Use examples that are frequently and/or recently covered in the media.
• Use USP’s and arguments that are vivid, unusual, and/or emotionally charged.

That is it for this part will continue in the next part. If you are interested do visit cxl.com and check the conversion optimization course.