A Big List of Persuasion Techniques for Marketing — Part 4

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.

Commitment bias or labour-love effect

“We like something more when we’ve invested more effort into it”

More effort leads to more love (but only when we can complete our actions). Customization is about more than individual preferences. It’s also about the amount of effort put into it. Customization effort increases liking.

This effect is also called the ‘Ikea-effect’ since Ikea lets its customers assemble their products.

Online persuasion tips:

• Allow people to tailor your product (not just to satisfy individual preferences but also to invest effort, thereby liking your product more).
• You might even allow your customers to create and design their products.
• In your sales dialogue, don’t just focus on usability (decreasing effort) but play with the opposite as well (“play hard to get”) to find the optimal mixture of effort that maximizes liking while ensuring that your customers find the digital sales dialogue simple enough.

Conceptual & Associative Priming

Our brain is fundamentally associative. Each time we have an experience, a huge neural associative representation is activated (e.g. moon: reading this word sets off a series of associations like night, white, wolf, and illusion). This neural representation overlaps with related representations (e.g. seeing a table will also activate parts of the neural network representing chair).

Because of this spreading and overlapping activation in our brain, others can use specific ‘stimuli’ to pre-activate specific behaviour that they want to from us (e.g. buying). The desired behaviour is then already partially activated, requiring less additional effort to make us display that behaviour.

Online persuasion tips:

• Think about which subconscious emotions and conscious thoughts are involved in buying your product, and subtly prime these during your online dialogue.
• For primers, use and test: emotions, matching and stereotyping content, colours, and images (but also the complete look and feel of your pages).
• Also, consider each desired sub-interaction, and micro-prime these in the step(s) above.
• Be cautious of obvious priming which can cause a so-called ‘reverse priming reaction.
• Thoroughly scan your online dialogue for negative primes (e.g. minuses, crosses, asterisks, or colours and images that mismatch the desired prime).

Signalling Triggers, Reminders, & Alerts

For us to act, we must 1) be sufficiently motivated, 2) can perform the behaviour, and 3) be triggered to perform the behaviour (based on B.J Fogg’s 2009 paper describing his Fogg Behavioral Model). Even when we have both the ability and the motivation to perform the desired behaviour, we need a “signal, reminder, alert, etc.” — in other words, a trigger or nudge to act.

When motivation and ability are high, these reminders, signals, and alerts should not try to motivate us more or simplify the task (that could even be annoying or condescending). Nor does it matter what form the trigger takes. From alarms, text messages, mobile push messages, or a call-out or pop-up on your website: they simply have to make us consciously aware of the option.

Successful triggers have three characteristics:

• We notice them,
• they bring the desired behaviour into our conscious awareness, and most importantly:
• the triggers happen at a moment when we are both motivated and able to perform the behaviour.

Online persuasion tips:

Are your customers both highly motivated and able to act as you’d like (e.g. buy or use your product)?

• Analyze what the optimal timing is to remind them of the option of this desired behaviour.
• Analyze which media and devices can be used to intervene with your reminder or trigger an alert at that precise moment.
• Push your reminder/alert, simply bringing the option into their conscious

Sparking Triggers

When something is really easy to do, but our motivation isn’t very high, we tend to do nothing. However, ‘sparking triggers’ can rather easily boost our motivation, and thereby do make us act.

A ‘Sparking Trigger’ will make us act when:

• We notice it,
• it levers one or more relevant motivations, and most importantly,
• the trigger occurs at a moment when we’re both motivated and able to perform that behaviour.

Online persuasion tips:

Assuming that ability is high, but motivation needs some leverage:

• Identify which motivational elements your customer is lacking to take action.
• Analyze what information will fill in or compensate for each gap in their motivation.
• Then, analyze what the best moments are to intervene with this information, and choose the most appropriate medium and/or device accordingly.
• Find the most appropriate medium for your nudge and design your trigger to perfectly suit this medium and moment.
• Finally send out your ‘Spark’ at the chosen moment, via the chosen medium, including the motivation-leveraging information.

Facilitating Triggers

When we have high motivation but lack ability, a ‘Facilitating Trigger’ can make us act. A facilitator not only triggers us but also makes the intended behaviour easier to do.

Online persuasion tips:

Assuming that “motivation is high” but ability needs some leverage:

• Identify which ability elements your customer is lacking for them to take action.
• Then, analyze the best moments to intervene with this information or functionality, and choose the most appropriate medium and/or device accordingly.
• Lastly, embody a self-efficacy and response efficacy boosting ‘Facilitating Trigger’ (a button, link, text, sound, video, graphics, etc.) in a way that fits the chosen channel and moment.

Repetition & Direct Priming

The more we repeat something, the easier we process, remember, and act on it. Repetition simply smoothens our neural pathways. Repetition is also called ‘direct priming’ since each repetition ‘primes’ later experiences, leading to quicker and more intense reactions (or slower in the rare case of negative priming).

There are two direct priming effects. First, there is a very brief ‘lexical effect’: Each repetition activates its representation in our brain. Then that activation slowly ‘fades away. This way, the experience remains ‘primed’ during the fading period (usually a few seconds), leading to quicker reactions when it is repeated.

The second effect is a long-term effect: The neural pathways in our brain are smoothened. This long-term effect works especially well for new ‘stimuli’ (since highly familiar ones have already acquired a highway in our brain).

Online persuasion tips:

• For each link or button, analyse what your customer will see or do the first few seconds after they click and subtly prime this to be located near those specific links.
• Use the same words and phrases in your text across pages and in your links/buttons.
• Use one consistent visual link and button format.
• Display cross-sell combinations as soon as you know which product someone intends to buy.
• Show existing customers what they bought before (if you want them to buy again).
• This also applies to other desired behaviours: products they previously looked at, used, rated, etc. (if you want them to look, use, rate, etc. again).
• Do the same with the behaviour of others (show others who are buying/using the product).

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.