Cialdini’s 7 Principles Of Persuasion: How To Boost Conversions — CXL Institute Digital Psychology & Persuasion Mini Degree (Review)
Real persuasion comes from putting more of you into everything you say. Words have an effect. Words loaded with emotion have a powerful effect. — Jim Rohn
Cialdini’s 7 Principles of Persuasion can be used in every part of your marketing strategy, from content marketing to basic brick-and-mortar type interactions.
By understanding these persuasive techniques you can persuade and influence your potential users into taking desired actions.
Of course, doing so isn’t always an ethical thing to do.
The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert Cialdini published his book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” in 1984. Since then, it’s been widely used in the field of marketing as something everyone in growth optimization should read.
In the book, he explores 7 factors that affect the decisions that people make, concerning sales and purchasing:
a) Reciprocity
b) Commitment/Consistency
c) Social Proof
d) Authority
e) Liking
f) Scarcity
and relatively new factor, The Unity Principle, which is all about appealing to “We” — a cohesive identity that is shared by a group.
This makes sense because: Conversions are all about persuasions.
Let’s take a closer look at each in turn.
The idea of reciprocity
Reciprocity basically says “Give a little something to get a little something in return”, because humans are wired to return favours and treat others as they treated us.
Psychology explains this by stressing that humans simply hate to feel indebted to others!
But, keep in mind that reciprocity is not a quid-pro-quo exchange, but rather a situation where one person gives something or provides a favour to another person with no requirement in return.
How to implement this factor?
Give people free tools, free downloads, free goodies that they benefit from
— and they’ll be way more likely to buy something from you.
“Sometimes, consumers decide to buy simply because they’ve gotten a freebie and, consciously or not, somehow feel obligated to pay the company back.”
Why people tend to behave consistently with the choices they’ve already made?
It’s based on the fact that people like to think of themselves as having a consistent self-image, they unconsciously want to behave in a manner that is consistent with past behaviour.
Try to include a prospect in a consistent sales cycle and make constant efforts to push them ahead. Take their commitment to ensuring they stick to it and don’t live in the middle.
For example:
- two-button opt-in forms
- ask your prospects on a small quote on your blog post
- make everything into completing a series of small steps to invoke that powerful commitment and consistency principle
Remember, Commitment is all about small favours leading to desired actions.
Social Proof — Your Key Element To Increase Conversions
As the old quote goes, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Cialdini defined social proof as people doing what they observe other people doing. For instance, They will choose the crowded restaurant over the nearly empty one, even though they’ll be served more slowly.
We are all familiar with social proof, as Peep Laja from CXL Institute says: “There’s nothing like feeling validated based on what others are doing”.
How is that implemented in the digital world?
Many salespersons and even marketers think that social proof is just the line that says “As seen on …” with the logos in the line section of a website, but there are lots and lots of space to be creative;
- Use testimonials with photos (people love to see faces, someone they can relate to)
- Listing what other customers also bought apart from that product can be really useful
- Include reviews, even the negative ones, brands with polite but negative reviews can actually be perceived as being “more honest, down-to-earth, cheerful, and wholesome” than one without any complaints.
- Provide a ‘best selling’ category — it can be very useful, especially for customers who do not have a specific item in mind
- Truthiness factor — Something is a little bit more likely to be true if you use a video or if you use a photo
- Use emotional language
- “Wisdom of the crowds” — let your audience decide, or have a say in your product or service
For example:
Their product pages include not just reviews but also a counter that tallies the number of site visitors who have “hearted” a particular item,
and the previous tactic allowed shoppers to vote on which styles they thought should be put into production.
Such styles were awarded a “Be the Buyer” badge, which doubled the rate of conversion rate compared to items with no badge.
If you want to see more examples on how to use social proof in marketing, check out this helpful article.
A tendency to obey authority figures
Have you ever been pushed to buy a product you were considering simply because it had the endorsement of somebody you trusted?
Its human nature!
People consciously follow the direction of an authority figure, and at a non-conscious level, they will tend to weight the opinion of authority more highly than that of others.
How is that connected to boosting more conversions?
When combining authority and social proof, you get a powerful tool for increasing sales.
For example: Buffer
For their individual product, they use primarily social proof, saying “three million people use our product”, convincing enough, and their individual product starts off with a free version, so very persuasive.
For the business products, they have a little bit of social proof with implied authority, saying “2,500 businesses use it”. But they also have logos of business that are using it, big-name logos.
Whats the desired message? It must really be legitimate.
Besides that, celebrities can also represent authority if they promote a product, they have an enormous reach and a big audience.
This is also an widely, used example of an authority:
In this case, we use specific words such as: Dr. , Award-winning, PhD, Dr. Ohras Probiotics, Best supplement awards, white uniform..
We know that it will make the desired effect in the mind of our customer, regarding the product — trustworthy, legitimate, “real deal”.
Here’s another example:
Shopify uses words like experts, right place, they have multiple experts for different fields, so customers get the impression that they are not just knowledgeable, but also very specialized and professional.
So how do you communicate authority as effectively as a guard’s uniform in such a short time?
Look professional and relevant to the industry.
As one of the findings in the Stanford Web Credibility Project states:
“We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. The visual design should match the site’s purpose.”
The study also found that people had more on visual appeal when assessing website credibility for certain categories of sites; one of which was eCommerce sites, below:
Their landing page looks polished and gentlemanly, which appeals to their target customer demographic.
Besides visuals, applying indirect cues or so-called trappings that accompany authoritative roles are also a key element:
- Social media (followed by prominent experts, follower count, likes, shares)
- Your website (“Featured by”, testimonials)
- What other people say about you on other websites (features, case studies)
Liking
What causes one person to like another?
According to Cialdini, a key element of liking is having things in common with each other.
Persuasion science tells us that there are three important factors:
a) we like people who are similar to us
b) we like people who pay us compliments
c) we like people who cooperate with us towards mutual goals
This principle can be applied to conversions in the following way: A company that wants to boost conversion rates should create a great “About Us” page.
Why?
Because the Company’s “About Us” page is an opportunity to tell potential buyers about the similarities between its staff and site visitors, and since similarity is a key building block of liking, an effective “About Us” page is vital.
This is an excellent example how the About You page should look like:
By adding staff bios with pictures of their pets, that not only emphasize the staff’s love of dogs, but also humanizes managers and employees by including hobbies and other personal details.
Since the Company is about helping pet owners all over the world move their pets from country to country, being friendly, and having pics with their pets, helps a lot in terms of liking.
Scarcity — Grab it while you can!
We hate to miss out, we really do.
And is there a more powerful motivator than fear?
Definitely not, fear is a powerful motivator to encourage us to act quickly.
You can learn to trigger your customers’ sense of urgency with these methods:
- Limited-number — Item is in short supply and won’t be available once it runs out
- Limited-time — Item is only available during that time period.
- One-of-a-kind Specials — Sometimes utilize one or both of the above techniques. Also from one-off events (e.g. collaborations, anniversaries)
- Utilising Competitions — Our inclination to want things more because other people also want them is often utilized in auctions or bids.
For example:
Booking.com, and other travel-booking sites, use the scarcity principle to boost conversions in many ways:
- “You missed it! We reserved our last available room at this property.”
- “Our availability in Dublin is low on your dates — lock in a great price before it’s too late.”
- “Today 45% off.”
- “5 people are looking right now.”
- “In high demand — only 4 rooms left on our site!”
Unity — The New 7th Principle
“We are just like you”.
Thirty years after his initial research, Dr. Cialdini added a new 7th principle of persuasion: Unity, very similar to Liking, but Unity is more comprehensive and considers the intersection of shared identity and family.
It’s about shared identities.
According to Dr. Cialdini there are several ways to invoke unity, and the most powerful manifestation of unity is family ties.
The interesting part is that you can use that same family-driven unity, even when you are trying to influence people who aren’t your own relatives.
You can do this in many ways:
a) Appealing family ties
b) Location
c) Religion (or CrossFit)
d) Co-creation
e) Specific and Unique jargon
f) Conveying Exclusivity.
If you want to know more about different ways to create, make sure to read this article.
It all comes down to the primary goal — forming a bond, a group or an exclusive group of people who share common beliefs, needs, or common characteristics.
That’s one of the biggest things that you can do as a brand, which is create those groups of people who have something in common.
That was it!
Hope you decide to implement some Persuassion techniques in your marketing strategy, its just to easy not to try!
See you on the next one.
