How to Become a Persuasion Master and Attract More Customers
Every brand and consumer is different, but the goal for all business brands and entrepreneurs is to sell more and, for the consumer, to satisfy a need.
The only way the two goals intersect is through clear and persuasive communication.
There have been studies on persuasion for thousands of years, but it wasn’t until the early twentieth century that psychologists began to investigate powerful persuasion techniques. Persuasion’s ultimate goal is to get the target audience to internalize the persuasive argument and adopt the new attitude as part of their belief system.
Here are a few persuasion strategies to help you attract more customers and increase sales.
Different Persuasion Techniques You Can Use to Attract Customers
1. Make an Anchor Point
The anchoring bias is a subtle cognitive bias with significant impacts on negotiations. Marketing and advertising firms understand this and use it to reinforce people’s perceptions of a product.
How does it work? When attempting to make a decision, the first offer made tends to become the anchoring point for all subsequent negotiations. The first number you suggest will serve as the starting point and may result in a higher offer in the end.
Here are a few ways anchoring bias is applied in persuasion:
Using multiple unit pricing
When pricing items, say 4 hygiene wipes for $2 usually perform better than 1 hygiene wipe for $0.5.
Although the price is the same in both cases, multiple pricing performs better. Psychologists Brian Wansink, Robert Kent, and Stephen Hoch’s study on multiple unit pricing found the brain uses the number 4 as an anchor.
Initial price technique
In sales negotiation, the initial offer price always becomes the anchor point. Anything below that appears reasonable regardless of its legitimacy. After this initial anchor, any lower price is a good deal.
Using product range
Pricing two or more similar items on a price range can influence your ability to persuade a customer. For instance, when you place a cotton T-shirt at $45, people will see it as expensive. However, put it alongside another cotton T-shirt labeled as a premium at $99, and people will see the $40 one as cheap. That type of anchoring is super popular with digital marketing solutions pricing, such as web hosting.
Clever marketing uses cognitive biases to persuade.
The anchoring effect happens subliminally on everyone, experts and non-experts- learning about it doesn’t change.
2. Create a Need
Creating a need or increasing the appeal of an already existing one is a powerful method of persuasion.
This type of persuasion appeals to a person’s basic need for love, shelter, self-actualization, and self-esteem. All business startups hinge on meeting a need in the audience or demographic they choose to serve.
That is useful for persuading your customers to buy the product once it hits the market. You can use this strategy to sell your products by telling potential customers that they should buy your product because it will make them happy, loved, safe, and admired.
People go for Uber because it meets the need for safety, household brands like Chanel and Giorgio Armani for fame and class.
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3. Make an Appeal to Social Needs
Another effective persuasion technique that you can use in your business is to appeal to the desire to be popular. A good example is how companies use television commercials to persuade viewers to buy products.
Persuasion using social appeal focuses on motives and customer needs such as status, fame, respect, recognition, etc.
It is a fact that you can convince a person to buy a product if they see that everybody is buying it. That’s why people check reviews before making a purchase.
Influencer marketing is also based on this principle.
Some excellent examples of brands with high sales because of social appeal include WordPress, YouTube, Masterclass’s celebrity endorsements. All these are part of social proof based on popularity.
If you want to understand your target market or audience, you can also read: 8 Keys to Understanding Your Target Market As a Small Business Owner
4. Start With a Foot in the Door
Another effective method for getting people to comply with a request is the “foot in the door” technique. It entails persuading someone to agree to a small request, followed by a much larger one. You can get your foot in the door by convincing them to agree to a small initial favor, making the person more likely to comply with a bigger request later.
How does this work?
When starting with low prices and increasing them gradually. A company like Apple has been increasing its prices over the years despite protests. People use the initial price as a reference point seeing the increase as a small one and accept it.
5. First, Go Big, and Then Go Small
This method is the inverse of the foot in the door approach, which requires you to start with a broad, often unrealistic request. The chances are that the person will refuse, allowing you to respond with a much smaller request, which is more likely to be accepted. People frequently feel obligated to respond to such offers.
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6. Use a Powerful USP
Apart from persuading using emotions and their hearts, you can also reach them using their brains- rational appeal. You can use logic with measurable results indicating statistics, facts, or benefits. That is usually a company’s unique selling proposition.
If someone told you they wanted to sell you a cup of coffee at $5, for instance, you would think it ridiculous. Yet Starbucks does, and thousands pay for it. Starbuck isn’t just selling coffee, it has created a lifestyle and culture around it with its unique flavors and relaxing cafe ambiance- the benefit/USP.
Logical fallacies are not uncommon in customer persuasion, but giving honest, tangible results, nothing can match that in sales.
In Summary
These are just a few effective techniques you can employ to persuade people to buy your products or services. Look for examples of persuasion in your daily life and consider which ones you might be able to apply to your business.
Be knowledgeable, learn more, apply and keep testing what works for your market demographics
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One reply on “How to Become a Persuasion Master and Attract More Customers”
A very informative way to put all those information in one blog! Great job.