Last Updated on April 27, 2017 by Martin
Are you started to get tired of your websites, that despite having great high-quality content and offers are not converting that well?
If so, it is time to learn about the 6 persuasion principles that will increase your conversions and sales!
In fact, using these powerful triggers will also make you more popular among your audience, meaning you will be able to establish connections and repeated sales on a whole new leve.
Before we get started, I want to give you a real life example, of how powerful these 6 persuasion principles can be.
A Real Life Scenario
I live in Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, the timeshare capital of the world!
Here, I often wonder how come tourists end up buying a $100.000 timeshare, from a visit to a restaurant where they were about to order Tacos, the beach, or from buying at the local Walmart?
What makes it interesting is that the same people probably would put a lot of considerations into buying if they were about to spend $100.000 back home. But when on vacation the decision is made in a matter of minutes.
The Truth!
It all boils down to 6 persuasion principles that set the scenario just right. To make people make a decision, they probably should have thought about a little bit more.
But still, they leave Cabo with a big smile on their face and with a good feeling of buying their timeshare. No one can shake their decision.
You Don’t Have to Be in Timeshare
You don’t have to be in timeshare to take advantage of these principles, and you don’t have to live in a tourist place either.
The fact is, that every entrepreneur, marketer, sales person, or whatever can benefit from using these principles.
But in our case let’s stick to how you can use the 6 persuasion principles to make your website more powerful so that it will convert better.
The 6 Persuasion Principles
The 6 principles of persuasion are not something created by smart affiliate marketers to make better conversations online.
Dr. Robert B Cialdini has spent his entire career researching the science of influence.
In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion he comes up with 6 persuasion principles that literally everyone can use when they want to influence someone and get it their way.
In this post, you are going to get my view on how you can use these 6 persuasion principles on your websites and marketing methods.
Reciprocity
Said as simple as possible, if someone is doing you a favor, you should return the favor.
Like when someone remembers your birthday on Facebook, you should remember the person and send a greeting card back to the person on his or hers birthday as well.
So how do you use the power of reciprocation and your persuasion principles in your marketing and on your website?
Your visitors
Value each of your visitors visiting your site. Value the time they are spending on your site, in your universe.
First, make sure you provide valuable and learning full content to your visitors and not thin affiliate stuff.
Make sure to fulfill your guest’s needs, having the answer your visitors are looking for. To be more specific, you can use tools like Google Analytics, Blomberry, and Quora to look what people are asking for and give them the answers on your site.
Second, you can also offer them a free report, a newsletter, or something else when they are on your site or are about to leave.
Make sure to do it in a very respectful way with no selling what so ever. Use a discreet popup they can see but easy to get rid of as well.
Whatever extras you give them, make sure it has a high value and make sure they appreciate the time they spend on your site.
Your Customers
You better say thank you in a very personal way for the time they spent on your site and for their purchase, or sign up or for whatever action you wanted them to take.
The more personal you can make your Thank You, the better. Remember the most powerful word in the world for people is their name. So if you can say thank you directly to the customer using their name is a big plus.
If what you are selling is valued $100 make sure to give them at least $110.
What Not To Do
Recently I bought a stand for my microphone and in the package was a folder with a Thank You note from the CEO of the company, written in 6 different languages.
Getting a note like that doesn’t provide a lot of value, it is very nonpersonal and will for sure not create any connection between me at the company where I bought the stand.
It is almost like it would have been better for that company not to have written any Thank You note at all. Just leave a note on how to contact customer service and how to get my money back if my stand doesn’t work.
Ways to Say Thank You to Your Customers
According to Joey Coleman who specializes in creating unique, attention-grabbing customer experiences, it is vital that you connect to your clients within the 100 days, after they made their purchase.
He mentions a couple of ways you should connect to your customer when saying thank you for their purchase.
In Person
Showing up to your customer’s doorstep with a big bouquet of flowers is always a nice move to do.
You can also send them a personal handwritten letter, which is easier to do.
Video
A video is good, as long as you are on the video, saying their name and thank you. Stay away from $5 videos made on Fiverr with an actor
Is probably not the best idea, because we get spammed with emails every day, so we are getting overexposed, and it becomes difficult to push your message thru.
Phone
A phone call is good too, as long as you are not disturbing them in their dinner.
Present
Gifts are always nice; everybody loves getting gifts. Just make sure it truly is a gift. Don’t put your company logo or your picture on the gift.
It All Sounds Good But, It is a Lot of Work
It is, and it is why you kind of have to figure this out yourself how you can implement it the best possible way.
However, the marketing value you can get from using the principle of reciprocity in your marketing can be astonishing.
Recently a Tesla customer complained about the charging station in San Mateo always was packed with Teslas just parking there and not charging. Elon Musk personally replied to the tweet and told the customer that they wanted to fix the problem.
As a result, it all went viral and appeared on sites like Inc.com, FoxNews.com, and on Facebook, and Twitter.
All because of the CEO of not only one but three companies, took the time to respond to a customer. The value of reciprocity can be very powerful.
Social Proof
The more social proof you have, there more people will blindly follow you.
We often see it on social media, someone screwed up, and now there is a heat going on towards this person or company. Like the United Airlines incident where one customer got beaten up by airport security, just because he refused to leave the plane.
Often when social proof appears, we blindly follow what everyone else is doing without asking questions. The book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion describes how TV-Show uses canned laughter to make people believe it is funny what they are watching without asking any questions.
The best way you can build up social proof for your marketing is to use social media. Here you will have a platform where you can interact with your audience and build up anticipation for future product releases, reviews, and blog posts you are releasing.
When you interact with your audience you can create a positive hype around your business and establish social proof.
Using social media to create social proof is not about getting a lot of likes. You need your audience to comment on your posts and share them.
Liking
You may think liking have something to do with Facebook? It goes a little deeper than that. Besides that, I do not believe that getting a bunch of likes is going to benefit your business a lot. The Facebook audience spend a split second on deciding whether they like a kitty cat picture or not. Two seconds later it is all forgotten.
Two seconds later it is all forgotten, and they are on to the next post.
Putting customer testimonials on your pages, and on your social media is way more powerful. Make sure to add real names, photos, and address.
You don’t have to achieve perfection, having less positive testimonials on your site as well, makes you more real, and people will believe you more.
Make sure to proof in your articles and copywriting that guys like you and what you are promoting. It will get you far in your marketing efforts.
Commitment and Consistency
The worse thing you can do is to leave your audience and customers in uncertainty, giving them a feeling of making a wrong decision.
So, no matter what action you want them to take, they have to feel good about it. Else they will see you as a scam artist.
As soon as your audience enters your site, you are committed to taking good care of them. Make sure your site is easy to find out and that everything they need is available to them.
Also, make sure your visitors can find plenty of information about you and who you are. It can be a difficult task if you are an introvert marketer and for sure a learning curve. But transparency is crucial here.
If your audience takes the next step and buys something from you, make sure that you follow them all the way. Ensure that there are plenty of tutorials available if needed.
Also, make sure to send them Thank You emails, offering all the help they require.
Overall, create an excellent customer experience for them so they feel good about themselves and what they just bought.
If you can help them to create a self-image saying they did the right thing, they will stick with that image for a long time.
When you have built trust and commitment, it is a lot easier to create consistency, meaning returning audience and customers.
Authority
So how do you create authority around your website that can trigger your audience to perform an action?
It is important to notice that here we seek to build authority in the eye of your audience and not search engines, which also uses authority in their algorithms.
Testimonials
Getting a leading figure in your niche is always a good way to create authority. Especially if the figure mentions you personally in the testimonial and that you can link be to the person website.
A lot of affiliate marketing product creators uses leading marketing personas as testimonials to make you buy software to help you with your marketing business.
Colors
For many years Microsoft.com used a dark blue color on their website. They used it to establish trust, authority, power, and loyalty. Now they are more similar to apple.com which uses a white and gray colors, to show innovation, design and new thinking.
For me, blue and dark blue colors are the ultimate trust and authority colors. Most US Government sites are in a dark blue color; the same goes for presidential candidates when running for election.
A good example of a US Government site. See how a dark blue is used to create authority and trust!
You will also often find medical sites in the blue color area with the purpose to create trust.
So blue is a great color to use for many websites.
Black Works Too
Addidas.com uses black on their website to create not only trust, and authority, but also to create power, and mystery.
In my opinion, it works pretty well if you have a lot of product pictures on your website. However, I will probably avoid black if I have a lot of text because your site easily can end up as a two color website.
Connection Your Colors With Your Audience
It is important to stress out, that it is often more important to match your colors to either the product you are promoting or your audience.
For example, you have a teenage site for girls promoting accessories for their clothing. Here using blue is evident not the right decision because it does not connect to your audience. Pink is a better choice.
The same goes for all-natural health products like green or organic teas. Here a green color is a better choice.
Scarcity
“Act Now And Get 70% Off” Or “Act Fast Because We Only Have 5 Left in Stock” or “This Offer Will Expire at 12 O’ Clock Tonight” are all example of using scarcity in your marketing efforts. You create a demand by making an offer limited!
Psychological it triggers people to act, because what happens if they missed out on something crucial?
Using scarcity is a very effective marketing method because it can your audience perform the action you want them before they change their mind.
A classic example of using the scarcity principle. If you want to get 70% Off, You will have to act within 15 hours. This specific counter can be purchased at MyThemeShop
Imagine if you did the opposite? Like “No Worry This Offer Will Be Here Tomorrow” or “Remember! We Always Have Low Prices On This Offer” You ROI will go down the drain.
Be Careful
In my post Are You a Number or a Heart-Based Marketer? I describe the importance of truly love your audience and help them out with a particular issue, which happens to be the niche you are in. It means you will become a heart-based marketer and not so much a number based marketer.
It means you will become a heart-based marketer and not so much a number based marketer. Using the scarcity model too much and you will start to break down the trust and love you has build with your audience.
An Example:
Let’s say you have an offer will expire counter on your website! Your audience have to act before midnight in order to get 70% off on a particular off you have.
If your counter just doesn’t expire but just reset itself day after day, you will start to break down the trust that you have created with your audience. They don’t believe you anymore.
So be careful with the Scarcity Model when it comes to the persuasion principles.
Getting Started
So now it is all about getting started.
Try to think about how you can implement some of the principles of persuasion on your website. It will help you to increase your conversion.
You are probably not able to use all them of them, but as few of them will work magic as well.
These Persuasion Principles Does Not Come Out of Blue Air
The 6 Principles of Persuasion is not something I have made up, or have taken from various sites online.
They come from the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini and describes the 6 principles of persuasion in better details.
This book teaches you how to use the persuasion principles. You can use them with your business, private, and social life. The book also tells you how to stop if someone uses these principles on you.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a classic must read book if you want to get better sales and are serious about your business.
It is the top recommendation book of many business people, entrepreneurs, and marketers such as Guy Kawasaki, Warren Buffet, Derek Sivers, and Timm Ferris.
If you have to choose one book to read for your affiliate marketing, The Psychology of Persuasion is the one to read.
