Persuasion is more of a science than an art. In this video, I break down the basic prinicples of persuasion popularized by Robert Cialdini and how you can apply those same principles to PPC and digital advertising.
Hey everybody. Chris Raines here with Bullhorn media coming at you with some more digital advertising talk. Today I want to talk about persuasion and the art of persuasion and I read a good book years ago by Robert Cialdini called influence. And if you, if you’re in sales and marketing in general, any, any field that deals with persuading people to do something or take some action. This is an incredible book to read. Robert CLD any influence, and today I want to talk about specifically the principles of this book. There’s six different principles of influence and it’s basically these the six reasons that anyone takes any action or is persuaded to do anything and it’s boiled down to these six reasons according to rubber Cialdini’s book. And I want to, I want to share with you how to use each one of these in your digital advertising. And these are things that I look at.
Every time I launch a Facebook campaign, a Google campaign, I look to these principles and I go back and and read these principles and see how can I change my ad copy? How can I change my landing page? How can I position things in such a way to tap into these six reasons? And so let’s get into it. I want to share it, six of these with you on how to use them in your digital advertising. So let’s get started. Okay, so the first principle in Robert Cialdini’s book is reciprocity. And so basically this means people are more likely to give you something if you’ve already given them something first. And this is essentially the whole platform that content marketing is based on, right? So you share content, share content, add value. If you follow Gary Vaynerchuk, it’s the jab, jab, jab, right hook.
The giving is in the jab, jab, jab, jab. And so people, or if you’ve already helped people accomplish something or taught them how to do something, then they’re more likely to respond to you when you ask them to do something. It’s reciprocity. If you’ve if you’re old enough to have lived through the what, what’s it Arbitron ratings. Radio ratings. Arbitron was the big, and I think it’s they were bought by Nielsen, but they are Arbitron was the top ratings organization that determined how many people were watching specific radio programs. And they used to do this thing where they would mail out mailers that would ask you to literally fill out a time log for what radio stations you listened to and when you listened to them. And the interesting thing is that within their little envelope they would include like I think two $1 bills, right?
Just free money for you. And the idea there is, you know, it takes time to fill this stuff out. And so the idea here is that when you, if you give people money upfront, they’re more likely to fill it out. So so that’s the whole principle reciprocity. So here’s how you can use that in your digital advertising. And it’s basically using education upfront literally in your ads. And I’ve seen this a lot in especially high ticket sales where you want to show people that, you know what you’re talking about a, but you want to add value up front. So I’ve seen long form ads on Facebook where you’re going out there with a huge amount of value for free upfront. And then on the back of that you’re asking them to maybe attend a webinar where there’s more free content. So you’re giving value, value, value in.
And of course at the end of the webinar you’re probably going to ask them to participate in your program or sign up for a sales call or a strategy call or something like that. But there’s a reason why a lot of people do this and this because of this principle of reciprocity. The more that you can add value to people to get in front of them and solve their problems and give them new knowledge, new perspective, things that they hadn’t thought about before, the more likely they’re going to be to respond to you when you ask them to buy whatever it is that you want them to buy. So that first principle, reciprocity is just in general aim for helping people first aim for helping first. And if you go out there with with that first, they’re going to be more likely to come back to you when you ask them to buy.
All right? Number two is scarcity. So the idea here is people are, people want more of things that they can have less of, right? So you can leverage this by anytime you’re selling something that is a, let’s say, so let’s say you’re going out there with a 25% off discount. So rather than making it a a, rather than just kind of making an open ended offer of 25% put a time limit on it, right? So say 25% off for the next six days. And so when people see that time limit on there, they’re going to be more motivated to take action because they know that that period of discount is ending and they need to take action. You can do the same thing if you’re, if you are giving away, let’s say it’s a free offer. So let’s say you’re a med spa and you’re giving away free Botox.
So it’s much more powerful to go out there and say, we’re giving away 15 free Botox treatments for the next 15 people that sign up. Go do that. And just watch people line up, watch people line up because they’re afraid. They know that there is a limit on it and they know that there’s scarcity in the offer. Now you have to make an actual real scarcity. A lot of people will abuse this and they say there’s a time limit and then they extended an extended sentence. So don’t do that. Cause that will that will train people actually to just wait it out and maybe not take action because they know you’re faking it. But you know, if you’re giving away something, put a number on it. Say we’re giving away 15 of these 20 of these 30. There’s whatever makes sense. And putting that limit on it will cause people to take action.
You can do, and you can reinforce this on your landing page. If say it’s a time-based offer, go on your landing page and set the end date and develop a countdown timer that counts down to the end and people see that. They see the seconds going by, the minutes going by, they’re going to be more, more likely to take action when they see that time is scarce. And if they don’t take action now, they might not get it if they wait, if they don’t take action by the end. So that’s how you can use scarcity to reinforce your marketing and cause people to take action. All right, number three, authority. People are more likely to follow the lead of credible and knowledgeable experts. So how do you put this forward in your digital advertising, in your marketing? Well, you can do that in a few ways.
You can highlight the number of years experience that you’ve had. If you are a home remodeler, how many homes have you remodeled over the years? If you’re a advertising agency, have you won any awards or any accolades throughout the years? How can you bring that in to establish that authority in the side of others? In a way that makes you more credible. Businesses do this all the time with especially homebased businesses. With badges like better business Bureau badges or this could be the case with any field where association with another entity or another certification entity that can lavish on you their authority by their badge of trust. So bringing those badges in, better business Bureau or whatever, whatever organization is relevant to your industry, bringing those in can make people feel at ease cause because they think if this company, if this offer is, is blessed by these other organizations with whom I grant, I accept their authority, then I know that I can trust this company as well.
So that’s one way you can use authority to increase your persuasion in your marketing. All right? Number four, commitment and consistency. Or I call this the momentum of yes. So if people say, the basic principle here is that if people say yes once, they’re more likely to say yes again. And if they say yes a second time, they’re more likely to say yes a third time. And so the one way you can implement this is, this is especially true for eCommerce businesses and this is, this is something that a lot of people do. This is no secret, but there’s a reason why a lot of people do it because it works. This is one, this is what one click upsells do, right? So if you’ve got a shopping cart, people have put in their credit card info and they’re ready to checkout, they’ve already said yes to the point of giving you their payment information.
If you at that point in time put a onetime offer in front of them and offer them to upgrade their order at that moment of time, the power of that previous yes is going to be way more likely to carry over and caused them to say yes again. And this is why this stuff works so well in a while. Why a lot of eCommerce businesses use this is because this, this commitment and consistency, people feel the need to say yes if they’ve already said yes. If they’ve already committed, they’re more likely to commit again. And so that’s one way to do it. And another way to do this, and this is what you see a lot of times with longer funnels that will offer a free download, a free checklist, a free ebook at the beginning, and then follow up with those people with more offers that are paid.
If they’ve already said yes to a free offer, a download, a checklist, an ebook, they’re going to be more likely to say yes to the next thing. And this is why people go out there with free content. It’s this power of commitment and consistency. So wherever you can try to leverage people’s previous yeses with future yeses. All right, number five is liking or likeability. So what this says, what this principle says from rubber seal Deni is we are more likely to comply with requests made by people who we like. Okay? So one very basic way to use this in your digital advertising, and this is really simple, is to use human faces in your landing page and your advertising and your videos and your images wherever possible. Why? Because people connect more with human faces. This is, this seems really simple, but a lot of times people don’t implement this.
So if you’ve got a product for instance, that is used by people, go ahead and show a person using it in your ad rather than just showing the product. And when people see that, they’re going to connect more with how that product enhances and enriches the life of that human. People connect with other humans way more than they connect with objects or ideas or anything else. So anytime you can bring a human or human face in to your advertising or your communication on your landing page, do that. Do that. People connect with humans. And another way you can do that is to show that you are like your customers. So an example might be if you find that the values of your company or the goals or maybe causes that you support, things that you want to see in the world, align with your customers, communicate that with them.
And, and only do this if it really aligns. So don’t be cynical and you know, figure out what your customers love and say, Oh I guess I should love that too. Only do it if it’s natural and organic and it actually aligns. But if it does align, if you are similar in that way to to your customers, lead with that because it’s going to establish with your customer, this isn’t just an, this isn’t just a company, this is a company that is like me, is filled with people like me that care about the things that I care about. That’s going to establish likability between you and your potential customers. And people are more likely to submit to requests that are made by people who they like. So anything you can do to establish that like ability do it, it’s going to enhance your marketing, enhance your persuasion.
All right, and the sixth and final one is consensus. So what this is is people look to the actions and behaviors of others in order to determine what their own actions and behaviors should be. And so this is particularly why things like testimonials, especially video testimonials are so powerful in marketing. People are looking to determine, you know, this is good for, I know this is good in general, this product, the features are good, but I need to see that other people are experiencing this. I need it in particularly other people that are like me. So this is why people do customer testimonial videos. And in a really simple trick, you can do this, and this is specific to Facebook ads, is priming your ads with social proof. And what I mean by social proof is anytime you see a, like a comment or a share on a post, that’s social proof, that’s things that other people see on a post that enhance this idea of consensus.
So try this next time you go out and do Facebook ads before you launch your ad to your general audience. Let’s say it’s a a conversion objective audience, go ahead and launch those ads as an engagement goal to your audience. And what that engagement goal is gonna do, it’s gonna, it’s gonna vastly increase the likelihood of people liking, commenting, sharing, and so on. And so what you do is you spend a portion of your budget upfront to get those likes, comments, and shares, and then you end that campaign and use that same post with all the likes, comments and shares, and then port that over to your cold audience for conversions. And what you’ll find is when that goes into the, that when that goes into people’s news feeds, they’re going to see all of this social proof, these likes, comments and shares, and they’re gonna see that as consensus.
They’re going to see that other people are liking other people are liking this, loving this, or laughing at this or whatever it is. And this is something that I should check out and it’s going to lower your CPMs, lower your cost per click, and so on. So that’s kind of one way to sort of hack this idea of consensus, this principle of persuasion to push forward your ads. And it’s particularly true on Facebook because it’s such a social platform when people, people can see that social proof or that proof of consensus. All right, so that’s all I have for now. I hope this was really helpful. These are things that I look to every time I launch an advertising campaign on Google, Facebook, or any other platform. And this is really a complete list. These six principles are why anyone takes any action that they take or persuaded to do anything. And that book again is Robert Cialdini’s Influence. And if you’re in sales or marketing, I highly, highly recommend this book. Go out and read it, and you’ll come away with really valuable tools on how people think, how people operate, and how to get them to do what you want them to do. So I hope this was helpful. Thanks so much.