In his excellent book, “Influence, The Psychology Of Persuasion” the social psychologist Robert Cialdini identified 6 principles of persuasion and influence. They are deeply rooted behavioural traits that govern our behaviour and decision making, either consciously or unconsciously.
They can be ethically used to influence people and enable us to predict with a high degree of certainty how people will react in certain situations and conditions where these factors are present.
Harnessing the science of persuasion becomes easy when you understand these principles. Robert Cialdini called them the “6 weapons of influence.” They are:
1. Social Proof
2. Likeability
3. Authority
4. Reciprocity
5. Commitment & Consistency
6. Scarcity
Understanding these principles of influence can dramatically enhance your powers of persuasion. By correctly applying them to your sales copy or advertising campaigns they can have significant results on your business.
You’ll be able to:
- Improve your customer acquisition and retention rates
- Turn prospects into loyal customers for life
- Make your target market prefer you over your competitors
- Position your products as the market leader in your industry
- Boost your sales
- Make your products or service more desirable
- Improve your marketing ROI
Let has a deeper look at each one of the Cialdini principles in order:
1. Social Proof
Humans have a deep psychological need to belong. We want to feel a part of something bigger than ourselves. This helps to shape and share our identity with the world and gives us a sense of our place in it.
We express this need to belong in different ways – we may dress a certain way, listen to a certain type of music, wear the jersey of our favourite football team etc.
We feel pressure to belong, and this expresses itself in our need to conform to certain behaviours. But how do we know what behaviours are acceptable or correct? One way we do this is the principle of Social Proof.
The principle of social proof states that one of the means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct.
The more we see other people act or behave in a certain way, the more that reinforces our beliefs that this behaviour is correct for us to adopt also. When a lot of people are doing something it naturally seems like the right thing to do. This human tendency to assume an action is more correct if others are also doing it is exploited in many ways.
Buskers exploit this by putting their own money in their hats before they start performing to make it seem that other passersby have been tipping. Bartenders exploit this by filling their tip cups up with a few of their own dollar bills to simulate the appearance that other customers have also tipped paper money rather than coins.
How can you use the principle of social proof?
Testimonials are powerful examples of social proof. Showcasing testimonials from satisfied customers is a great way to influence prospects and convince them that your product or service is worth buying.
To make this even more powerful, include testimonials by customers who are exactly like your target audience. We are influenced by the behaviour of others, but we are even more influenced by the behaviour of people whom we consider to be like us.
Sharing testimonials in the form of customer success stories is a great way to influence your target market. Storytelling is one of the most effective ways to create an emotional connection between your product and your target audience. Sharing your customers’ positive experiences in story form is a powerful way of using social proof in your sales copy. They help your prospects relate to your existing happy customers, and make them think “If it worked for them, it can work for me!”
Reviews and star ratings are also great way to use this principle. The more reviews you have the better – they show your prospects that lots of people are buying your product, and anything that lots of people are buying must be something that we should buy too, right?
Highlight your TrustPilot and review site scores on your website – seeing those 4 or 5 star symbols has a powerful influence over your prospects because they represent quality, good service, and value.
2. Likeability
You may have heard the saying – “people buy from people that they like and trust”. Likeability is a powerful factor that makes people want to interact with us, do business with us, and buy from us.
This liking doesn’t have to just apply to you personally. The liking cue can work if your prospects like you, the salesperson or representative of your company, the personalities in your adverts, your advertisement jingle, or even the customers who use your products. This is why celebrity endorsements are so effective. If you see an advert of a celebrity that you like using and recommending a particular product or brand, you will have an affinity and liking for that brand and product even though you may have never used it or heard of it.
If someone you like and trust recommends a product or service or service to you, it automatically gives it credibility. When people like you, you are able to more easily influence them. Your words will hold more weight and they will be more likely to listen to your recommendations.
This is why as a marketer, salesperson, or business owner it is important to be likeable.
How can you become more likeable?
You can make people like you more by paying attention to them. Listen to your customers, ask questions about them, put their needs before yours, and go the extra mile to serve them.
By offering tremendous value upfront in the form of useful content, a free ebook, a free sample, and a free delivery and returns service, you will increase your likeability.
Be honest and transparent, add value to your target market and build trust with them. They’ll like you more for it and will want to do more business with you or spend more money on your products as a result.
3. Authority
Authority works as a powerful influencer because we have a tendency to trust and believe people in positions of authority or power. This may stem back to our childhood where we have been taught from a young age to respect authority figures – our parents, teachers, doctors, police officers etc.
People in positions of authority seem to have an uncanny ability to influence us without much difficulty. We don’t tend to question someone in authority as much as someone who is not an authority figure. The thing about this is that the person in question doesn’t even have to be a real authority figure, they just have to look and sound like one. Don’t believe that?
Think back to all those adverts by healthcare companies that featured actors who played well-known television doctors. They would have these actors in the role of their on-screen doctor wearing a white lab coat endorsing their product….and it worked! Despite the fact that the majority of people knew these people were just TV actors who were only acting in the role of a medical professional, they still succumbed to the influence of the authority principle.
Even when the advertising regulators started clamping down on this and began to enforce that the actors in these ads declare that they were not real doctors and only played one on TV, the ads were still effective!
Why does authority work?
It works because like most of these principles of influence, it acts as a mental shortcut. Human beings love mental shortcuts which enable us to come to conclusions, gather knowledge, or make decisions without having to do too much deep thinking.
As mentioned above when we see an advert for a medical product which features an authority figure dressed in a white lab coat and wearing a stethoscope, we unconsciously transfer the credibility we attribute to doctors to the product being advertised…..sounds far-fetched and irrational, but it’s true!
The authority principle is exactly how Milgram was able to do his famous “obedience to authority experiment” where he got real participants to go along with administering electric shocks to someone else, just on the say-so of an authority figure in a lab coat.
How can you harness the principle of authority?
Determine who the respected authority figures in your market are. If you can get them to endorse your product in some way or give it the seal of approval you will transfer their credibility to your product, company, or brand.
If you operate in an industry where there are regulatory bodies like the FDA, make sure your product meets its standard and get permission to use its seals or approval marks on your product, website, or sales copy. Perhaps you can send them your product and get them to review it if they are impressed by it. By getting someone who is a respected and well liked authority in your market to recommend your goods, products, or services you will have hit a sweet spot of persuasion with your prospects.
4. Reciprocity
The reciprocity principle states that when someone gives you something, you feel an irresistible obligation to give them something back.
If someone gives you a compliment, a free sample, or a gift, you feel indebted to them. You then feel the desire or need to clear this debt by reciprocating in kind. If someone invites you to dinner or to a party, you naturally feel obligated to invite them to dinner or to the next party you throw. If someone gives you a compliment you feel obligated to say thank you and do something nice for them.
This rule of reciprocity seems to exist among all cultures and societies. It seems to be a fundamental part of human society and interaction – so much so that when someone doesn’t follow the rule we tend to label them as misers, greedy, selfish…or worse.
Think about a time when you did something for someone and they didn’t reciprocate. Have you ever been driving and given someone way and then got upset that they didn’t even acknowledge your gesture? Perhaps you brought someone a birthday card or present, and they didn’t even remember your birthday!
We tend to dislike it when people don’t reciprocate, and we form negative opinions of those people. We dislike it so much that we make an effort to avoid being one of those people by always reciprocating in like fashion whenever someone does something for us or gives us something.
Following on from the likeability principle we mentioned above, we tend to reciprocate more with people that we like. But the amazing thing about the rule of reciprocity is that it also applies to people we don’t like! If someone we don’t like gives us a compliment or does something nice for us we feel the same indebtedness to them as we would towards someone we like.
That’s what makes the rule of reciprocity such a powerful and effective influencing technique.
How can you use the principle of reciprocity?
To effectively use this principle you have to start the ball rolling by giving your prospects or target customers something. Giving away free samples is a great way to allow customers to try your product and see if they like it without them having to spend any money.
The free sample also acts as a gift and therefore engages the rule of reciprocity. This is why you’ll see magazine publications give away free samples on the front cover, or why large companies will send you free samples of new products they have launched.
Giving free samples of your product works especially well when done in person. Have you ever been to the supermarket and encountered a smiling sales attendant who hands you a free sample of chocolate? When you accept the sample it’s hard to just walk away without feeling the urge to buy something from them.
A tactic that is frequently used by many door to door salespeople and multi-level marketing companies is to give their prospects a small sample selection of their products to try. After a few days, the sales rep comes back to collect any unused samples, get their feedback, or take their orders.
Once a prospect has accepted this offer and used the products for a number of days, the chances they will place an order increases dramatically. Even if they didn’t particularly like the products they may still end up buying because they feel obligated to you – after all you did go out of your way to drop them the products, let them use them for free, and come back to collect them.
If you’re a consultant you can give away a free 45min consultation. Personal trainers can give away free sessions, gym owners can give away free 2-day membership passes, mechanics can give away free car air fresheners, and dentists can give free tooth whitening sessions.
Think about your target market and the products you sell – what can you give them in order to activate the law of reciprocity? There are literally hundreds of ways you can put the reciprocity principle into action, but it starts by giving.
5. Commitment & Consistency
This principle states that we have a deep need to be consistent with our beliefs and previous actions. Why is this the case? Consistency is seen to be a valued and admirable character trait, and being inconsistent is largely viewed as an undesirable character trait.
People that are inconsistent in their words, beliefs and actions are deemed as flaky, indecisive, hypocrites, two-faced etc. On the other hand, people that demonstrate consistency in their words, beliefs and behaviours are considered to be honest, stable, trustworthy individuals who “keep it real”. Commitment and consistency go hand in hand.
When we make a commitment to something we have an innate tendency to be consistent with that commitment. The commitment can be to a political party, a promise we make to our kids, supporting a charity etc. Once we take a stand on something we will stubbornly commit to that stand because of the need to be consistent.
If charities want to increase their donations they can start to get people to commit to small acts first – like volunteering for a few hours each week, sticking a charity bumper sticker on their car, or wearing a pin with the charity logo.
Once people have committed to these small actions, the desire to appear consistent with this behaviour increases the likelihood that they will donate money to the charity when asked further down the line.
How can you use the principle of commitment and consistency?
Get your prospects to commit to a small act first before asking them to commit to a larger one. You can get them to make a small low-value purchase, sign up for a free trial, or subscribe to your social media channel.
Once they have committed to taking this small initial action, it increases the chances they will remain consistent with this behaviour by following up with further actions you want them to take down the line – such as making larger purchases or committing to your products or services long-term.
Amazon does this well by offering their free Amazon Prime 30 day membership trials. When people commit to using the Prime service, enjoy its benefits, and start identifying as Prime customers, it increases the likelihood that they will continue their memberships once the free trial period is over.
You can also create this effect in your sales copy by asking questions which elicit an agreement or “yes” response from your prospect.
Example:
“Are you tired of working for someone else? Do you want more money and freedom? Do you want to fire your boss and escape the 9-5 rat race?
Then join my one week workshop which will teach you everything you need to know…..”
Once you have made your prospect say yes a few times, it dramatically increases the chances that they will say yes when you present your offer or product. This is known in NLP as a “yes set”, and is a subtle yet powerful way to use the power of consistency to influence your prospects.
Having strong brand values is also another way to use this principle. Your customers will align with your brand and organisation if you have strong brand or organisational values that are shared by your target audience. They’ll proudly buy your products, display your company logo or slogan, follow you on social media, like and share your posts, and become brand advocates.
As long as your brand and organisation remain true to those values, your customers will also remain committed to you, because of the powerful need to be consistent with their words, beliefs and actions.
6. Scarcity
The scarcity principle states that opportunities or items seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited.
We want what we can’t have, and our attractiveness for an item increases if we think it is in limited supply. It seems that people, in general, are more motivated by the thought of missing out or losing something than they are by the thought of gaining something. Things that are rare or are becoming rare increase in value and this increases our desire to have them.
Scarcity work because of two main reasons:
1. We believe that things that are easy to obtain and plentiful in number are less valuable, and things that are hard to obtain and scarce in supply are more valuable.
This is exactly why collectors value items that are rare or limited in number. Anything that is limited in supply or availability automatically becomes more attractive to us and triggers the fear of missing out.
2. The idea that something we want is scarce and that our access to it is limited as a result triggers what is known as Psychological Reactance.
Psychological reactance is the tendency to react against anything that restricts our sense of freedom. This is exactly why forbidden fruit always seems more attractive, or why if someone tells us not to do something it increases our desire to do it as an act of rebellion and re-exerting our sense of freedom.
Scarcity triggers psychological reactance because if an opportunity or something we desire is scarce or we have limited access to it, our freedom also feels restricted. Whenever our free choice or sense of freedom is limited or threatened we will react against this interference by wanting or desiring our freedom (or the products and items associated with it) even more intensely.
How to use the principle of scarcity?
Using scarcity in sales and marketing is a very well known and widely used tactic. You can make use of it in various ways.
Here are some examples:
- Create limited editions of your products: these will be regarded as more valuable
- Have one day sales: time-limited offers force your prospect to make a buying decision or miss out
- Put deadlines on your offers: countdown clocks on sales pages still work very well
- Offer one-time offers at the point of sale: your customer either buys or misses out forever!
- Make special prices or bonuses available only for the first 50/100 customers who buy
Harnessing the science of persuasion
So there you have it, 6 principles of persuasion and influence. Robert Cialdini spent a great deal of time researching these principles and discovering how and why they work.
If you’re a serious marketer or salesperson or just someone interested in behavioural economics or psychology, I highly recommend you check out his landmark book “Influence, The Psychology Of Persuasion.”
Now that you know these principles of influence, you can incorporate them into all aspects of your communications, including your sales copy, offers, sales funnels, landing pages, social media channels, email marketing etc.
You should also try to become aware of when they are being used on you, or notice when you are acting in a manner consistent with these principles.
Like me, you may find yourself laughing out loud whenever you catch yourself being influenced and persuaded by someone….at least you’ll know how they’re doing it!
