uristjack
Junior Member
- Feb 26, 2015
- 169
- 98
I'VE BEEN TRIGGERED: 6 Psychological Buttons to Push for $$$
Let me tell you a story.
You're writing copy for your newest website, BrandableNonsense.com. You're making some sweet, sweet SEO + Affiliate Marketing money. It's nice. But not enough. So what do you do? You hop onto BHW, hoping to tune that copy so you can squeeze more money out of BrandableNonsense.com. And then you find this. Six proven psychological triggers that are almost guaranteed to supercharge your copy-writing.
Enjoy.
Reciprocity
We have an obligation to repay gifts.
Gifts are an important part of many cultures - take Christmas (or assorted winter holidays) or birthdays, for example. This creates an element of trust. In addition, the tension between receiving a gift and giving one in return is highly powerful - so powerful, in fact, that you can use it to sell products. People (most people, anyway) have a sense of fairness, and obligation. Due to this rigid inner compass, people like to return favors.
How do you apply this? Simple. Build up a bank of favors. This sense of reciprocity is like a bookkeeping system, in that it automatically tallies up favors into scores. And, since it accumulates, you can turn many of your small favors into one big favor on their part.
What sort of favors? Have a list:
- Physical things. Many religious groups give out some form of physical product, and use it to persuade you to donate.
- Information. I'm doing this right now (as does every other BHW member who contributes well). Why? Because I hope that you will return my favor of information with a favor of praise - or in other words, those sugary sweet internet points!
- Praise. Just talked about this one, but you can dish it out as well. Don't do it too much, though - it can seem fishy. This also helps with another trigger, that of liking.
- Time. Pretty ephemeral, but still very useful. Usually coincides with the gifts of information and praise.
Consistency / Commitment
We have a need to be internally consistent.
Cognitive dissonance is what happens when we are internally inconsistent. And we don't like when this happens.
When we make promises, we feel obliged to fulfill them. When we are committed to a decision, we convince ourselves it was the right one. Why? Humans have internal models. We have belief systems, comprising of values, moralities, choices, schemas, and personal self-images. If we do something that is out of sync with our belief system, we will rationalize the action. We will intentionally remake our belief systems so that we are once again in sync. Pretty interesting, actually, how we feel that need of alignments.
How can you apply this? It's fairly simple. By slowly getting your prospects, leads, or customers to take small actions - baby steps - you can get them to agree more and more with you. This is the whole point of call-to-actions - they help you to convert leads into prospects into customers.
Social Proof
Herd mentality, exploited for fun and profit.
Humans are political animals, says Aristotle. Unlike our concepts of politics nowadays, however, Aristotle does not mean that we are all interested in elections. He means that we are all by nature part of the polis, or city-state. He means that by our very nature society is a part of humans just as humans are a part of society. He means that a human raised entirely outside of the boundaries of society can never fully partake in what it means to be human.
What we learn from this, is that people copy each other when they are unsure of what to do. After all, what is society but a set of rules we all agree to follow?
The concept of social proof is why we use testimonials to sell products, and why TV producers use laugh-tracks on their sitcoms.
How do we use this? Well, like I just said, use testimonials. In any way you can, use customers (or made-up ones) to create a social proof around your website or business. This is the whole point of fake likes on FB and fake comments on blogs. It's to create a sense of popularity and to further enforce how great all your stuff is.
Liking
We are obliged to help friends. Become a friend.
Like I said, people are political animals. We are part of a tribe. What is the basis of the tribe? Social relationships between people - some positive, some negative, some neutral - and how these relationships change. People are motivated to do cruel things to their enemies, nothing to neutral acquaintances (or positive things to encourage the formation of new friendships), and good things for their friends.
How may we use this? Become a friend, so that people help you. This is easier said than done, however. Countless books have been written about this, such as the fantastic How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, and there are too many to read. Instead, have a quick list - the 7 F's of getting people to like you.
- Flattery. Build on people's sense of identity by complementing them. Be careful about your application of this - too much is a big no-no, as they will see through your duplicitous behavior and hate you.
- Fawning. Build on people's sense of identity by acting inferior. By acting inferior (and thus putting them in a superior position) you make them superior. Again, be careful - this can seem excessive, and eventually you may make yourself so inferior that they ignore you.
- Favors. We discussed this earlier. Doing favors for people builds social capital - which is the basis of the book-keeping system mentioned above.
- Facilitation. Help them help themselves. Most products revolve around this. You can do this in many ways - guiding them, giving them advice, and so on.
- Face-Saving. Help them avoid embarrassment. This tends to be a more personal thing, so I won't cover it.
- Feather-Bedding. Making life luxurious for them. Make things easy for people. They like easy things - hell, it's the basis of the hundreds of noobs on here begging for spoon-feeding.
- Following Requests. Doing what you are told. Again, more in-person, so I won't cover it.
Authority
We listen to the people in charge.
We are brought up to obey authority figures as part of our childhood. Parents and teachers fulfill this role early on in our life. Later, it's politicians, religious figures, police, and so on. People listen to people in positions of authority - or people they think are in positions of authority. We also listen to people who are experts - we do not obey them, but we accept their beliefs and opinions as our own.
How can we use this? There are two kinds of authority - command authority (think "obey me") and informational authority (think "believe me"). It is best to position yourself in both a command authority position and an informational authority one. When do we accept people as authorities? Here's how:
- Their role grants them authority
- They speak assertively and confidently
- Other people tell us they are authorities
- We find information that confirms they are authorities.
Scarcity
If something is scarce, it becomes valuable.
If we can get something now but not in the future, we will go for it. This is the very basis behind the idea of "supply and demand" in economics. Summarized simply, sales shoot up for scarce stuff. The principle behind scarcity as a motivational factor is anticipated regret. In other words, when we anticipate the future, we also anticipate the emotions linked to it. Amusingly, these pseudo-emotions - in the sense that they don't really exist, and are instead anticipated and created in a self-fulfilling prophecy - are quite powerful in shaping people's decisions.
How does one use this principle? Simple. Make your offerings have a sense of scarcity. There are many ways of doing this, such as waiting lists, or "(x) Copies Left" type counters on your webpages. By artificially limiting supply, you artificially increase demand.
Conclusion
These six triggers are useful in increasing your copy-writing prowess. I would personally recommend that instead of only using these, you do other research and mix and match them with other persuasion methods and frameworks to greater effect. To finish, a quick summary of what we've looked at:
- Reciprocity
- Consistency / Commitment
- Social Proof
- Liking
- Authority
- Scarcity
