Convincing your visitors to be your customers isn’t the easiest thing at hand. The fastest way to get your customers to ignore you is by not standing for anything. Most people are used to liking things in which they can find a semblance of their personalities.
This is important in communicating with customers and convincing them. By knowing their pain points, goals and by finding out what motivates them you’re unlocking the secret to convincing them.
Here are 4 principles that make this easy.
Use the principle of reciprocity
When we do something for others, others like to do something in return. It isn’t charity. And when you do something for your visitors build the expectation that you expect a return in kind from them as well.
Ask something for exchange when you’re giving away something valuable. Highlight the value attached with the receivable and you’re making your proposition more convincing.
The Guardian is a pretty good example. They don’t run ads on their site unlike similar sites like Business Insider. If you run adblocker when visiting BI you get popup asking you to remove the ad blocker to access the site. Neither do they gate their content like some others—say 5 free articles per month and rest for subscription. Guardian favors and runs a subscription business and after each article they ask you for a favor.
Something like this:
Considering the quality of the articles and wanting to read the articles and keep supporting the newspaper many do subscribe.
The perceived value of what you give away has to be equal or apparently equal to what you’re requesting for in return. Only then will people be inclined to do your bidding.
Use the principle of liking by telling the world more about your brand
When a 3 year old girl wrote to Sainsbury asking why their Tiger bread wasn’t called Giraffe bread despite resembling a giraffe, the company promptly wrote a letter back to her in agreement.
She also got a £3 coupon from them.
And the company followed up by changing the name to what was suggested. The letter of the little girl was first posted on her Mother’s blog which shortly went viral on Twitter and later on other social media channels.
When Sainsbury retorted with their letter and rechristening their popular bread the world went wild with the story.
In real world people are influenced by someone they like. This also applies to brands. If people like you they’re going to remain loyal and purchase from you.
We tend to go with people whom we can like. Charming personalities have attracted us from time immemorial
Have you ever thought what makes someone likeable?
Their personality
By giving your business a personality you can give it a life of its own and influence others.
Look at the image of the child. Eye gaze is most concentrated on where the baby is looking at.
Evolution has wired us to follow the human gaze and look for faces. Even in inanimate objects we tend to pry open faces.
By giving your business a human face and attaching a personality to it you would be able to reassure that real humans are running the show.
The first thing on the site you see are the employees who are their greatest resource build trust for anyone visiting the site and so on.
And don’t commit social media blunders that can immediately make you or your brand distasteful.
Use proof
Every product claims to do certain things. But people online don’t have any proof of that. How to make people believe that what you’re saying is true?
Just show them that the product works.
How?
Enter testimonials.
Testimonials are words from customers who’ve used your product in the past and were satisfied with what they got. Given that online reviews are trusted as much as recommendations from friends there’s no reason why they’d doubt you.
Use empathy
Conversions happen when people realize that the product they’re reading about on the page, the one that they read reviews on is for them. They have to want them and realize that it’s specifically for them.
Use copywriting to achieve this. Offer understanding and sympathy and show them you’re in the same boat as they are and understand what you’re going through.
In a related example, if you’ve ever seen Clickbank weight loss products you might have noticed several after and before pictures.
These are shown not just for proof but to elicit empathy.
Why?
When people see that you understand their problem quite well they don’t have any reason not to trust you.
Conclusion
What do you think of these principles as outlined above that persuade people to like and purchase from you? Every act is rooted in psychology that got wired into us tens of thousands of years ago as we evolved. Those hard-baked behavior patterns can’t be erased easily and can be used to persuade, covince and promote.
What do you think?
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George is a marketer and writer who has over 8 years of experience helping startups and big-shot companies deliver stellar marketing campaigns. Read his post on Startups.
