Let's face it: we'd all like to be more persuasive in our marketing, and in our lives. As Aesop put it, "Persuasion is often more effectual than force", and as marketers, we know how important it is to have the right persuasion skills honed and at the ready. But being persuasive isn't something that comes naturally to most of us, and we could all use some guidelines to help us develop the art of being convincing.
Robert Cialdini, well-known psychologist and author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, pioneered 6 pivotal principles of persuasion that have been used to boost advertising and sales for years. These same principles can be used by Inbound Marketers to further their efforts in being more persuasive and capturing those all-important leads.
The 6 Key Principles Needed to Making Your Marketing More Persuasive
1. Consensus
We've all experienced a problem or something that leaves us uncertain about how to proceed. Normally, when uncertainty strikes, the first thing we do is look to others and ascertain whether or not they've experienced what we're going through, and if they have, what they did when they were in our specific circumstance. The principle of consensus means inbound marketers need to seize opportunities in their ToFu content to assure their readers that they're not alone in their situations or problems, something that can easily be achieved through stories, statistics, and facts.
2. Reciprocity
When someone gives you something of value, more often than not you feel compelled to respond in kind. It's an inherent trait most of us can relate to, and it refers to the principle of reciprocity. When you ask your visitors to give you access to their details, be it their name or email, you need to reciprocate in kind with content that is worthy of their information. But it goes beyond that - your landing pages should include compelling CTAs that highlight the value of your offer and motivate your viewers to reciprocate with their details before they even fill in a form.
3. Authority
The principle of authority refers to your ability to persuade others based on the authority you hold. As inbound marketers, the best way to build authority online is to keep creating informative, entertaining, and insightful content. Remember to avoid creating aversion in your readers by only focusing your content on your particular service, brand, or product. This tactic comes across and pushy and distasteful - instead keep your content focused on the party which matters, your customer.
4. Liking
It's nothing new - the ability a brand has to influence us is directly proportional to how much we like the brand in question. It's also influenced by how well we can relate to them, and the similarities we can establish between them and ourselves. For inbound marketers, this principle means creating well thought-out buyer personas to ensure you can spot similarities to establish between your brand and these personas, and create content to aid in building trust and approval with your target personas.
5. Scarcity
As cheesy as scarcity tactics are, and as abused as they've been in the past, they still serve a purpose for inbound marketers. By making your target audience feel as though a limited amount of something exists, and time is of the essence, you drive them to action. And while "Buy Now!" messages have lost their power, there are still opportunities for marketers to play upon the scarcity principle, such as when offering discounts for sign-ups or by hosting webinars and events.
6. Commitment and Consistency
It goes without saying that if we want to keep out target audience happen and committed, we need to be consistent in everything we do as marketers. Our campaigns and content need to be on-point and honed to our specific personas. If we see a particular campaign, CTA or content piece isn't performing as well as it should, we need to go back to the drawing board, reassess our assumptions and come back with something more appropriate.
Being a persuasive marketer might mean something different today than it did 60 years ago, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep working on our skills of persuasion and use them to boost our inbound marketing efforts.
