People & Psychology: A Short List of Persuasion Techniques: CXL Institute Review
A Short List of Persuasion Techniques
Welcome back to Article number 2 on digital psychology and persuasion; if you haven’t read the introduction to this course by CXL and Cialdini’s 7 Principles of Persuasion, go to my first article here (Part 1).
Note these articles are not the entirety of the course, There are way too many materials to cover, and these would just be a summary of them.
Focusing Effect (Anchoring bias)
As humans, we have limited attention, and our capacity for attention is limited. This causes us to recall only a few details, and these details are weighted unequally in our decision making, often cause us to overvalue or undervalue our judgment.
Here is an example from Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and Schkade.
Do you think Californians are happier than Midwesterners?
Most people would say Californians. This is because we overweight the facts that come to our mind the first — warmer weather, easy-going nature of Californians. In reality, there is no difference in happiness between Californians and Midwesterners because there are often other essential facts that are overlooked: the crime rate, air quality, time in traffic being a few of them.
So if you want people to remember what you are selling, remember to keep whatever you want to say:
- Short
- Simple
- In threes
Online Persuasion tips:
- Reduce the number of unique selling points within your marketing (Three is best)
- Showcase your most unique selling points first, and make it salient, so it catches the viewers attention first.
- Focus on both the best unique selling points and your differentiators
- Highlight the change that your customer will receive when they buy your product. (Focusing on selling results instead of selling the product)
Context-Dependent Memory
It is our nature to forget things that are out of context, and it is easier for us to remember things when the original context cues are present. Context cues are ideas that are related to what you are trying to remember. For example, think about tropical places, monkeys, and fruits.
How does this translate to digital persuasion? You want to have your logo, organic content, and paid marketing to have a common theme across all media. These themes are made up of coloring, content, pictures, which are the foundations of the contextual cues, so no matter where you retarget your audience, they will remember who you are.
Online Persuasion tips:
Create a consistent presence in all your communication channels. Think about the Golden Arch, and you will know I am talking about Macdonald’s. The color Yellow and Red is present in all of their marketings.
Self-generation affect effect
This is also known as the IKEA effect. We become attached to the things that we put effort into. We also tend to overvalue ideas that we came ourselves or contributed to, and according to the self-generation memory effect, we also remember them better.
Online Persuasion tips:
- Make the customer part of the solution process. Get them to participate and buy in the solution that you are presenting.
- Ask them productive questions such as “Why are you buying this product?” “How could this product help them make their life better or solve their problems.”
- Give the customer the ability to tailor your product to their own liking. An example would be NIKE allows you to design your own shoes.
Affect Heuristic
It should be no surprise to us that our emotions affect our decision making. There has been researching done on when we are reminded of our own death. We tend to become more conservative in our decision-making. If we happen to be part of the juries, we would caste harsher punishment in our decision-making.
According to the Affect Infusion Model (AIM by Joseph Forgas), AIM’s effects become stronger when we are faced with decisions that demand higher cognitive load. The more complicated and unprepared we are towards a decision, the more we are likely to rely on the affect heuristic. A similar phenomenon has been shown in daily choices as well, our brain is developed to be energy conserving, and we often come to solutions that seem the easiest.
In Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking: Fast and Slow, the idea of system one and system two brains are presented. Remember that the brain isn’t really sectioned as two different systems. This analogy is only used to help us better understand the concept of how we process information.
In the famous problem of
“A baseball bat and a ball cost $1.10 together, and the bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?”
People often get it wrong and come to the conclusion that the bat cost $1.00 and the ball cost $0.10.
The correct answer is the ball only costs $0.05, or 5 cents.
Here is why people get it wrong:
If the ball costs $0.10 and the bat has to be $1.00 more than the ball, then the bat = $1 + $0.10 (Price of the ball). The Bat would equal $1.10.
The problem also stated that the bat + the ball = $1.10, and if the bat already cost $1.10, then the ball would cost $0.
But this can’t be because the bat has to be $1 more than the ball, so if the ball is free, then the bat has to be $1. $1 (bat) + 0(ball) = $1. This is not the $1.10 total that the question asked for.
So what if the ball is only $0.05?
If the ball is $0.05 and the bat is $1.00 more than the bat costs = $1.00 + $0.05 = $1.05.
If the ball is $0.05 and the bat costs $1.05, then the total is $1.10.
The correct amount that the question asked for!
Here is the math to prove it:
Set x as the price of the ball.
X + ($1.00 + X) = $1.10 (The price of the ball + The price of the bat ($1 + the price of the ball)) = $1.10
= $1.00 + 2X = $1.10
= 2X = $0.10
= X = $0.05
Our brain makes this mistake because we are short-cutting the cognitive load and relying on the system of one brain. Until system two brain kicks in after we intentionally direct focus and cognitive load to it, we were able to come to the correct conclusion.
Now back to the Affect Heuristic. What are some of the Online persuasion tips that you could use in your digital persuasion?
Online Persuasion tips:
- If you want the viewer to be more conservative in their decision making, try testing them with something more depressing and melancholy.
- When people are in a negative mood, you can then present the USPs (Unique selling points) that comfort and reassures them that your product will protect them from risk and danger. An example of this product would be insurance.
Facial Distraction
As social creatures, we are drawn to faces, and our brain takes an enormous amount of processing power to analyze and detect emotions in the faces that we see. Research has shown that the more familiar and recognizable a face is, the more we are drawn to it. Why are we like this? This can be directly linked to our survival. As we live near other humans, we need to quickly analyze people’s faces to know if they are safe or harm us. This can also contribute to the familiarity effect; the more times we see something or someone in a positive light, the more likely we are to trust them over a stranger.
Online Persuasion tips:
- Avoid using faces when the written message is the thing you most want people to remember the most.
- If you are using a face, you can make the eyes pointing at the section where you want the people to look.
- Place your CTA on the opposite side of the face, and have the faces look in that direction.
This is just a shortlist of Persuasion Techniques from the CXL Course. If you see any digital persuasion techniques as you surf the web, be sure to share them in the comment selection!
