A Big List of Persuasion Techniques for Marketing — Part 5

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.

Peak-end rule

The peak-end rule is our tendency to judge an experience — pleasant or unpleasant — almost entirely on how it was at its peak and its ending. Other information, while not lost, is not used in the qualitative memory of the event (i.e. extension neglect and duration neglect).

Online persuasion tips:

• Bring your ‘enlightening moments‘ from your sales dialogue together in one happy climax.
• If possible, make sure that this positive peak is at the end of your sales dialogue.
• Next, map out all service dialogues, micro-conversions, and other ‘exit points’.
• Create small positive peaks there, too.
• Use enticing extras, such as the good old ‘unexpected gift on your thank you page!’, or specific extras such as unlocking badges or access to exclusive content, games, or apps.

Domestic country bias

We are biased against foreign products and favour domestic ones. This domestic country bias is manifested in our product perceptions, as well as our buying behaviours.

One should be careful though: The domestic country bias doesn’t apply to all product categories. Moreover, this bias is more prevalent when our patriotic feelings are active (e.g. Independence Day in the US, Kingsday in The Netherlands, or when your national team wins the World Cup).

Online persuasion tips:

Determine your customers’ domestic origins (via the use of a social plugin, login+CRM data, IP address, and/or browser settings).

When operating abroad:

• Don’t promote your domestic origin as a USP
• Try to sell your product through local domestic etailers
• On patriotic days, save your online marketing budgets for better times

When operating domestically:

• Subtly remind your customers of your shared domestic origins (also through using domestic icons, colours)
• Use a local suffix instead of a .com .eu etc. one
• On patriotic days, boost your online marketing efforts and increase your domesticity.

Country of Origin-effect

We tend to stereotype products based on their country of origin. This effect is specific to a product category, and particularly relevant for brands with a weak country of origin (e.g. countries that we stereotype as producing low-quality goods). Especially quality perception is vulnerable to the Country of Origin-effect and the effect is higher when we’re a novice in the market.

For example — Germany is typically known for building good cars, whereas the French produce the best wine, the Swiss the best watches, and the Japanese are known for good TV sets.

One way to counter our country of origin stereotyping bias is to encourage us to use our imaginations in a positive way.

Online persuasion tips:

• First, analyze whether your country of origin is advantageous or disadvantageous.

When advantageous:

• Subtly remind your customers of your country of origin (e.g. by mentioning, using country-specific icons, colours, etc.)
• Co-brand with other country stereotypes (icons, brands, products etc.)

When disadvantageous:

• Try to sell your product through etailers that originate from a ‘positive country of origin’
• And either avoid or minimally mention your country of origin, or
• Activate counter stereotypical associations. For example, by advertising product attributes that replace preconceived country notions, display counter stereotyped ratings and reviews

Mimicry

Mimicry refers to the (often subconscious and automatic) imitation of other people’s behaviour. You yawn when I yawn. You smile when I smile. You shake your foot when I shake my foot. We mimic because mimicry has clear benefits for us and it helps us reach our goals. For example, when I mimic you smiling at me during a conversation, you’ll like me more. We will also be more likely to bond together and our conversation will be much more fluent.

There are two paths via which mimicry can be used to persuade us. First, we mimic the consuming behaviour of others (we eat more if we see others eating lots). Second, when our mannerisms are mimicked (such as smiling, shaking feet, fondling hair, etc.) we like the other more, making us more vulnerable to persuasion.

Online Persuasion tips:

Mimic the behaviour of your customer:

• Verbally mimic your customers’ terminology and dialogue (social networking sites, reviews, feedback tools, etc. are great places to learn about your customer linguistics…).
• If your customer care centre uses webcams, instruct them to mimic their customer’s behaviour.

Make your customer mimic behaviour:

• Use pictures showing actual consumers buying or consuming your product (not only on your site but also on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media platforms).
• The same applies to videos: Post videos of actual people shopping for your product. Show who actually buys and/or uses your product (a Facebook pile is easy to implement).

Position targeting

When choosing between competing products, we find it difficult to compare complex aspects. We even find it hard to use more than a few simple comparison attributes. Therefore, we tend to base comparisons between competitors on just a couple of easily comparable criteria.

Online persuasion tips:

When you have absolutely the best offer in the marketplace:

• Make sure your prospects learn about every aspect of your product and then emphasize that they should ‘follow their heart’ when choosing.

But when you don’t (which is mostly the case):

• Find out which competitors and/or comparison sites your customers visit (pre-purchase).
• Then, find out which ‘easily comparable attributes’ you win in these comparisons and promote those easily comparable product attributes.

That is it for this part will continue in the next part. Hope you all find this series interesting and it helps you in your day to day marketing. If you are interested do visit cxl.com and check the conversion optimization course. There are various other courses, specific for someone who wants to work at SEO or content or even social media marketing. Hope everyone is doing good and healthy, have a good week. See you next week!