How to apply the 6 principles of influence to grow sales
Master psychologist Robert Cialdini has given marketers a reference work to harness the power of neuromarketing. In his book Influence, he describes 6 principles that (should) form the basis of all marketing- or advertising campaigns.
- Reciprocity
- Scarcity
- Authority
- Consistency
- Liking
- Consensus
We dissect all 6 principles and give recommendations on how you can use them on your website. For some of them, there are tools available that play into the neuroscience behind the principles itself. Use them to your advantage.
Reciprocity
This boils down to giving something of value and expecting something in return. For us humans, it is very hard to give without expectation. Even if you try it and you are telling yourself you are not expecting anything back, there is a little trigger in your head that is either slightly disappointed when nothing is received or when zero gratitude is expressed.
An often used offline method of reciprocity is ‘sampling’. Go to any busy shopping street and you’ll find an example of this. Free soda tasting stands or in-store free product samples. And of course, those annoying newspapers where you are given a free newspaper for free provided that you sign up for a subscription right away.
So reciprocity is about giving away a product or service. Or rather a taste of your product. Online there are two main ways to do this.
- Information product in the form of for example an e-book, video, webinar or whitepaper.
- Free-trial
See how the master himself is using reciprocity on his website.
It is debatable whether both these ways fall into the same category in the buyer funnel. From our experience, we see that people are more likely to consume an information product before signing up for a free trial. Ideally, you would make both of these part of your funnel.
Scarcity
This is probably one of the strongest of the six principles. Humans generally place a higher value on objects that are seen as rare or hard to obtain. When a product is rare or only available for a limited time, customers become much more motivated to buy.
Booking.com is expert in applying scarcity on their website. In the example below, they literally tell you the room is in high demand and hint that there are only a couple more rooms available.
Another way to use scarcity is through limited offers. These usually tend to work quite well. In this example of Grammarly, they send out a discount eligible only for 24 hours with a clear call to action to immediately use the discount.
And then there is the “Vault” technique. This technique illustrates how humans adhere to the power of scarcity. There are numerous cases where a product is low to medium in demand. But once it is announced to be ‘retired’ or taken off the shelves so to speak, demand skyrockets. One company that has been harnessing the power of limited availability is Disney. The company locks away blockbusters like Dumbo, Cinderella, and Peter Pan in the “Disney vault”, where they remain unavailable for years at a time. When they are being reintroduced the initial success of these movies is recreated. Another famous example of this is the McRib sandwich. A ground pork patty with barbecue sauce, onions, and pickles. The McRib has been continuously taken off the market and reintroduced, always for a limited amount of time. Consumers have again and again responded with obsession.
Whether you apply scarcity online or offline, the results are similar. Knowing you can’t have access to something all the time may help you appreciate it more when you do.
Authority
Cialdini’s explains that we are more likely to be persuaded by someone who we believe holds more power or knowledge than we do. We are more likely to be persuaded to complete an action if the request comes from a source that is seen as credible. Applied on a website this means that we are more likely to trust something that is said about a product from others than if the company tells us themselves. We are even more likely to trust what is being said if it is seen as coming from someone knowledgeable. This is why influencer marketing is such a huge market. A Youtuber who talks about fitness and health can be seen as a credible source for new products, even though they are not a doctor. ‘Celebrity’ endorsements can help establish huge authority with consumers. But without the right network or wallet, it can be tough to get that endorsement for what you’re selling. There are two other ways you can use to establish authority on your website.
- Expert reviews
- Become the expert
Expert reviews are different than ‘normal reviews’. For normal reviews, the rule applies: the more the better. Expert reviews have to be someone your target audience will see as knowledgeable about the subject or a figure of authority in general. Especially for B2B products, the higher the rank of the person given the review the more valuable the review is perceived. Also the more a company is publicly known, the more the review is worth in the eyes of the target audience.
Below is an example of Leadfeeder where they show reviews of c-suite level employees and a call to action to read more expert reviews.
But probably the strongest way to establish authority is becoming the expert yourself. In order to do this you need to produce content around your business, and do this consistently. This can be a blog, template & checklist downloads, infographics, ebooks, white papers, case studies, videos, guides, book reviews, opinion posts, product reviews, lists, link pages, podcasts, interviews, research and numerous other types of content.
Hubspot, a software company that offers an inbound marketing platform to help companies grow. They have established themselves as an authority by creating valuable content related to what Hubspot is selling.
Consistency
It has proven that once a person makes a certain decision, often that person sticks to it whether that is the smart choice or not. Cialdini explains that humans don’t want to come across as inconsistent in the eyes of other people. The basic premise of consistency is that we act in ways that are consistent with the image we have portrayed to others.
You can apply this concept by ‘nudging’ someone to take a certain standpoint or some kind of assurance. Gently encouraging someone to do something. For example, if you can let someone admit that health is an important aspect of life, it becomes easier to bring your health-related product under the attention of that particular person. Because this person wants to stay consistent with the standpoint he or she just took. So how do you incentivize consistency? There are a few ways to do this.
Asking leads questions that they will answer yes to. When you get potential customers to saying yes (even if it is not out loud) they become much more likely to say yes when it comes to the buying decision. You can add a yes question to your homepage to apply the consistency principle.
Keep in mind to:
- Make sure the answer to the question is a yes
- Make the connection between the question and to what you are selling
But we recommend using a more subtle approach. Rather than only influencing the customer’s state of mind, provide value in return.
The best marketing is when customers don’t know it’s marketing. We are a big fan of interactive marketing where you have the user do something and provide value in return. This can be in the form of a quiz, ultimately answering your customer’s most pressing questions. A tool we are putting to use is Outgrow. It allows you to create high-quality interactive marketing content like quizzes, calculators, assessments, and polls. You should definitely check it out!
Liking
Cialdini explains that we are more likely to comply with requests made by people that we like. We are much more likely to purchase something recommended by people close to us or that we admire. These are 5 factors that underpin the principle of liking:
- Physical attractiveness — Good looks suggest other favorable traits like honesty, humor, and trustworthiness.
- Similarity — We like people similar to us in terms of interests, opinions, personality, and background.
- Compliments — Humans like to be complimented, and tend to like those who give the compliments.
- Contact and cooperation — We feel a sense of commonality when working with others to fulfill a common goal.
- Conditioning and association — When we feel an association with something, that something becomes more attractive to possess.
While it seems the above factors are mostly practiced offline, here’s how the liking principle can be applied on your website.
In terms of physical attractiveness, you have to go further than only the visual part. The website should also be well-designed, functional so that users intuitively understand where to click and that the user flow feels natural to them. From all principles, the liking principle is the one most closely related to branding.
This website of Harry’s looks stunning, displaying their products in a way that is very appealing, yet not too much. The navigation is minimalistic yet functional.
Secondly, as the world becomes more social, brands that behave like corporations feel cold and unrelatable. If your customers feel that you can relate to them, and understand the problems they are facing, they can relate to your brand and create a sense of similarity. We might prefer to purchase from a brand that interacts with their customers, and in doing so becomes more human. One brand that is leveraging social media to do just that is KLM.
Besides resolving customer issues through conversation, KLM does a great job in improving the whole sales experience in social media. The social journey for the KLM passenger begins during the booking process. When purchasing airfare, travelers have the opportunity to connect via social media, including Facebook Messenger and LinkedIn. From there, travelers can opt-in to receive check-in notifications and boarding passes on Facebook while meeting their seatmates with LinkedIn integration.
Besides these practical uses of social media, brands also use it to leverage ‘compliments’. When we share or talk about a brand on social media, and they interact with us it is building a relationship with customers through conversation. A good way to do this is by sharing content of your customers through your brand’s social media outlets. One brand that does this extremely well is GoPro.
By featuring photos and videos of their customers GoPro expresses gratitude and at the same time using social proof of their products.
The fourth factor is contact and cooperation. Humans feel attracted to someone, not always for their personality per se but because of what they stand for. We respect and like them when we know that they are working towards the same goal or ideals as we are. A good example is dopper, one of the best scoring Dutch B-corps. A ‘Benefit Corporation’ holds a renowned certificate that means a company has a positive social and ecological impact and actively contributes to the economy of the future.
By showcasing a high quality visual about their social projects, directly linked to their mission is a very strong application of the liking principle. Though the purchase of a dopper bottle you are contributing to many safe drinking water projects worldwide.
The last factor underpinning the liking principle is conditioning and association. In the ad below, Moët & Chandon tries to associate the champagne brand with Roger Federer, turning it into a “classy”, “stylish”, and “exclusive” brand.
Sport brands are also very good at associating themselves with athletes. Under Armour regularly features famous people from the sporting industry to establish a strong brand, carried by role models.
Their mission: “Under Armour makes you better” is tied strongly together with their first of eight values: “Love athletes”. It all translates to a strong brand that people want to be associated with. This is reflected not just in their clothes, but everything from graphic elements to typefaces used on their website.
Consensus
The final principle. This one is very applicable to the buyer journey of your customers because people tend to look at the actions and behaviors of others to determine their own. They are looking for social proof to back up the decision they are about to make. This can be done thru showing relevant case studies, display reviews and opinions of other people, or go even further by displaying real-time customer activity notification on your website and let your existing customers sell for you.
Look at this example of Airbnb where they show you how many people have reviewed the place, how many stars the place is given on average, and three written reviews. Talking about social proof…
Below is an example of displaying real-time customer activity notification. Notice the small pop-up window in the below-left corner of the page, showing visitors who else has recently opted-in.
So it comes down to show potential customers that lots of people already used, bought or subscribed to your product or service.
We have given lots of examples on how to use Cialdini’s influence principles to increase conversions on your website. Interesting to note is that not all efforts to increase conversions on your website, happen ON your website. While the website is a huge part of converting leads to customers, it is not the whole picture. In this age, there are numerous ways for a potential customer to come across your brand, on or offline. But once they make it to your website, you should do everything you can to get them to the desired outcome. Be it a subscription, a purchase, filled in contact form or something else. If you have something of value to offer, make that value as easy to obtain as you can. Use the principles discussed to do just that.
If you want to read more on increasing website conversions the link below gets you to another great article on how to do just that.
https://storyofams.com/blog/6-tips-to-increase-your-website-conversions-dc2d05efa0fc
