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Principles of Persuasion ... Anchoring and Cognitive Dissonance Theory

how to design fans and welcome back continuing our discussion of anchoring, reciprocal concessions and reciprocity. Um let's quickly jump right back into the slides. So we were talking about this concept of anchoring, where the first piece of information of visitor sees becomes a fixed, heavily weighted item in the person's conscientious mind where all other options get evaluated Within the context and proximity of that of that anchor. So I took the liberty to run a test with 50 respondents throughout us. Canada Australia. Um males and females, no one that I know. And I designed two versions of this page in Photoshop. Obviously very, very primitive, Very, very basic. But the point was to illustrate um this idea. So the page has a headline that says this obviously we're not gonna charge you 895 bucks for our affordable bluetooth headphones dot dot dot There's an image of the actual pair of bluetooth headphones that we're selling, enter your email to get pre order. It's not even grammati...

cally correct. Enter your email to preorder at our discounted rate. Okay. And their email address cr price, Little mistakes, not a live page. The idea behind the Bluetooth headset was because it's pretty much a universal product, right? Most people, especially across 50 different respondents should have a basic ballpark sense of what a pair of headphones like this would cost. So I asked a very simple question right? I asked people how much do you think we're selling these headphones for? What is a reasonable price in your mind that these headphones would cost. We don't give the price on the page. Right. We just have a kind of kind of sort of this cheesy marketing, right? Obviously that, you know, what are we gonna be in the range of like 120 bucks for like this sort of style? Even if it's like the most premiere version, 100 50 bucks um cheaper than that. But you know, obviously nowhere close to 8 95. The point was just to be like, it's a joke, we're obviously not gonna charge you $900. Right? That was designed a right, This was designed b obviously we're not gonna charge you a lot of money for our affordable bluetooth headphones, remember? No one was primed with any other information. This is all they have. They have the picture of the headphones, enter your email to see the price. And I'm just asking them, what do you think a reasonable price would be for these headphones? The thing is, is that in the previous design over here, 895, that number serves as a psychological anchor. Even though it's a joke, even though it's an outlandish number for headphones like this, it's in the brain. It's an anchor. When I ask people how much they think these headphones will cost. They can't disassociate from the fact that they're primed with a higher number. Okay, but let's just take a look at the results. So I asked Um people and these are the results side by side. And remember, it was different respondents for there was not no respondent answered for both designs, it was totally separate people who only saw one of the two designs, right? Pretty incredible, right? $145 average for the primed version with the anchor in it, right? The average response for these for these headphones was $145. The average response When I asked, what do you think a reasonable prices for these headphones was $36, right? The version with the anchor in it had a 302% increase in what people felt were a reasonable price for these headphones, incredible. So that's that's pretty cool stuff. If you if you know how to use an anchor properly and you could suddenly intertwine it inside your landing page design. It could be incredibly, it can be incredibly powerful, You could actually sell your services, you could sell your products, you could charge more per hour than you otherwise could without using that anchor. Right? It's not like people feel like getting ripped off, you're just simply priming people to think differently, Right? This is powerfully proven concepts. This is very similar study to what you know, one of robert Kennedy's landmark studies with anchoring was where he took lots of different salespeople and they did a very similar sort of idea. That's where I got the idea for this test is they had a salesperson selling a service. They would start off the call and they would say, you know, they would discuss the service, whatever it is. And the script went the variable group in this test, took the script and said, You know, obviously we can't charge you $1 million bucks a month um to help you with your accounting or whatever the sale, whatever the software, whatever the service was. Um So again, an outlandish number and then the control group just pitched the price of the monthly service. And the tests showed that the people who the the salespeople who first made that joke and throughout some outlandish number actually closed deals for a higher monthly cost than the other salespeople for the exact same service. Right? So this is not a joke. This is real stuff, this is money, right? This is a cash in your pocket by doing these things properly. Very simple concept of reciprocity, right? That first thing we spoke about engendering indebtedness. Very simple. People want to return good will you do a favor, a token gesture. People want to repay that. It's an innate, universal psychological reaction by giving gifts or extending yourself in any way for your visitors. You're going to engender a sense of goodwill and a desire for your visitors to reciprocate that to you. Another famous study in 2000 and that was done was where experimenters took waiters and over time they experimented by giving the check to the customer either with just the check, right? And recommended gratuities, recommended tips. The check with a little piece of chocolate on the check or a check with a little bag of candies. Right? So simple token gestures. Here's a little chocolate, here's a little bag of candies and this might seem super super intuitive and it might just make so much sense, but it's not done right, It should be done because this is real money. And what the experimenters found was that the average tip left for the same service, right? The same waiter, same restaurant, same food, same service. The tip amount went up. It was there was a greater average tip amount when there was just a little piece of chocolate left. And even a greater amount was the average tip when there was a whole bag of candies left, right. So incredible. One thing that's important to keep in mind when you're engendering indebtedness to your customers is like, don't have strings attached, don't ask for anything in return, right? If you ask for anything in return, then it becomes a manipulative sort of relationship where uh you kind of like you scratch my back, I scratch your back, sort of thing like that. That's not going to create a sense of desire for reciprocity. Just extend yourself to your visitors. And there's many, many simple, easy ways you can do that. This comes in many forms, right? Free advice, free tools. A trial a preview of the content, white papers, free consultations offering somebody to do an account audit. Right, Additional perks with your service. These are all universally applied. Simple ideas that typically we think about, oh it increases engagement, increasing engagement. Yeah, they Yeah, well that's true. It does increase engagement, but what it also does is it creates a deeply powerful drive to reciprocate, right to extend that goodwill. I've gotten something a value from you. I want to give back value to you. Right? So you if you extend yourself when somebody downloads a white paper which is really great and it was free and you didn't harass them with sales calls, they're much more likely to choose your service on the right hand side. Over here we have a picture of Warby Parker, right? This is a, an incredible example of, part of the reason why Warby Parker will be able to, which is an online glasses uh story which is they've been able to grow tremendously over the last few years. They offer this unique home try on, right? Something that no other glasses company on the glasses company has done in the past. It's totally free. Right? You pick out five frames. They send you a beautiful little box with those five frames. Free shipping. Free return shipping. You could try on, you could try on the glasses at home. Now, imagine this is reciprocity at play right? Here is a company that that extended themselves. They sent me. Of course they want to make the sale. There's no question about that. We know that they want to make the sale but they didn't harass me. They sent me the glasses. I can return all five. I do not have to pick one. There is no penalty if I just return all five frames and I don't order from them, but I'm much more likely to order from them. Not only because I've tried on the frames that I like. It's not that's not all it is. It's because they they've extended themselves to me. They've spread goodwill to me and I want to return that I want to spread it back to them. That's the concept of reciprocity. Here's an example of a great tool developed by hubspot called the website Grader. How strong is your website put in your your value email? You get your answer right? It's a free tool. It's not even that related to hot spots core business which is a CRM software marketing automation, but it's a free tool. Again, it's the same sort of thing. Yes, you're engaging. Yes, you're making the brand more memorable but it's more than that. It's a deeply psychological thing. You're engendering that sense of reciprocity once again a really good example from behave I was on the page. I am not ready to register. I'm about to leave and they give me an offer once again, pretty funny key, Baldini's pre suasion supply is limited right entered to win a free copy again. Listen, a great contest will be fun to participate. I might win. I get something. I'm more likely to attend the conference now. I'm more likely to attend the conference, which is a huge commitment of time and energy just on the basis that they that they have engendered goodwill by setting up a contest which has a lot of value. Zero Ho crm Zozo is similar to hubspot in the way they offer lots of different marketing tools, cloud computing software, accounting software meeting tools. And they have this soho meeting, we use it all the time at the agency host a free meeting. It's totally free to use. Right? Again, similar to hot spots. This is a free tool that anybody could use. The more you use Ojo meeting for free and you talk to your clients and you can do screen shares and you could, you know, show presentations, whatever it may be, the more likely you are to use Ocr M s paid products, incredibly powerful. Concept of reciprocity at play here. Don't underestimate the resource library, right? Everyone has a resource library and you might think it's overkill. The Resource library is powerful tool for reciprocity. Once again, people download free ebooks, free white papers as if they're valuable if they if the if the customer could tell that you really put your time into developing the content. Yes, they'll learn and they will be engaging with your brand and you'll have your logo on every page and you'll have links back to your site on every page of your book. Yeah, but what's going on on a more subliminal level is that they feel that they've gotten value from, from you without paying you and when they're ready to make the decision, obviously it's not going to convince them to buy your product or buy your service. But when they are ready to actually buy it right, when they moved through that funnel and they're at the transaction phase there at the action phase of the funnel, there'll be much more likely to buy from you because they want to return that goodwill. Again, another example from from bounce exchange a powerful 12 combo of reciprocity and cognitive dissonance theory. Right, cognitive dissonance very, very simply is that people are inclined to keep their behaviors past, current and future and their beliefs consistent over time, right? If people act in two different ways or people act in a way that's different than the way they feel or think it creates a sense of psychological tension. It creates discomfort in the brain will rationalize our behaviors, will rationalize our choices simply to keep them consistent. Right? This is the classic defense mechanism clear simply to keep them consistent with previous behaviors and previous beliefs, right. Things that we put effort into. Here's just a classic example of cognitive dissonance theory. You guys watching this course right now are more likely to become my client for landing page optimization. Landing page design than somebody else's. If you've made it this far in the course, right? And didn't just jump here, then obviously you find it valuable, right? You didn't, let's just be honest, you didn't pay a huge amount of money to be here. You've gotten I hope you've gotten a lot of value. If you're here hours into it, you definitely feel that it's valuable. You if you're ready to buy landing page design services, if you want someone to create a landing page for you want someone to run a B testing you and you decided in your head to pay a professional. Yeah, you might think of Adventure Media and you might think of me because you just remember me from all the the deathly boring talking that I've been doing for the last few hours, but it's more than that, right? You've and I'm not like I'm not, I'm not saying this to be haughty or anything like that. It's just a simple way we work. We all do. We all work this way. If you feel you've gotten value for me, there's a, there's a kind of a deeper desire that you want fulfilled to give that value back and to hire me or to hire our company for this service. Once you're ready to buy again, I'm not going to convince, you know, this is not going to convince you to buy anything right? It's not gonna convince you that you need Landing Page Design services, that's not what this is about. This is about Once you've decided that you needed, once you've decided that you wanted, you're more likely to want to extend that goodwill back to an entity, a person, a company that has provided you with value and where cognitive dissonance theory comes into it, it says that if you go and hire another company for landing page design, then this might be a little bit of cognitive tension that you might have wasted the last six hours of your life, however long it's been watching these videos. Because if these videos were so great worthwhile spending your six hours, shouldn't you hire that company? Right? So it's, it's, it's subtle tension. So you'll rationalize say, hey, I want to go to that company. I want to go to that person because I've already invested and that kind of it all comes full circle, right? So the more persons engaging with your brand, the more people, the more white papers they're reading, the more time they're investing in engaging in your brand, the more you're playing that cognitive dissonance card. Because if they I want to pay for that service or they want to buy a product and they don't use you, then how do they justify the fact that they've spent eight hours reading your stuff, right? If I watch six movies with brad pitt in it. Like cognitive dissonance theory states that I should feel that brad pitt is a great actor because if I feel that he's a bad actor then how do I justify the fact that I just watched six of his movies? Right? And spend all that time? These are all things that kind of come full circle. And here's an example on the right of a company called bounce exchange. Also again, do you want to convert your bounce traffic into revenue? This is an offer for a free audit. So the free audit is reciprocity right? We're gonna give you a free audit. Well we sell expensive software expensive tools but we'll we'll give you a free complimentary consultation. Right? So it's reciprocity then they have a really good self selection. Yes let's do this. No let's consider it gone, meaning my bounce traffic from my website. I don't care. So answering no is playing the cognitive dissonance card because if you answer no then how does that justify the fact that you spend so hard optimizing your site and that you care so much about your business. So it's it's hard to click that no button. There's it causes cognitive tension and these and these are also the people who run this company bounce exchange. You can check them out, bounce X dot com. These guys are behavioral scientists, they know what they're talking about. Alright so it creates a certain level of cognitive tension when you click No consider it gone and you're much more likely to consider it. Yes you have that one too powerful combo. Reciprocity, cognitive dissonance at play. Another example of reciprocity is where you see a lot of brands offering interactive content like quizzes and puzzles and calculators and assessment tools. And here's a great example from I. F. Sec global dot com. Right? There's a self assessment to see if you'd be a good candidate for their cybersecurity tools and products. It's interactive. There is an element of cognitive dissonance theory here as well because if I truly care about my cyber security, I should take the minute to take this assessment. Right? So because it's interactive You have that element of cognitive distance and this is a powerful way to get people also engaged and more likely from a persuasion from a psychological persuasive perspective to actually buy your stuff by your products when they're ready to make a purchase. And here's another example from 59. Um It's it's contact center solutions, very popular software. Again benchmark assessment. How well is your call center performing? It's a quick, you know assessment. See how you stack up against the average person. Right? So obviously once again cognitive distance at play if I don't invest one minute and taking this assessment and to see how my call center is stacking up against the average call center it's hard for me to justify. I feel I feel uncomfortable like I spent so much of my day working on my call center, working on the effectiveness and the efficiency of my call center. I'm not going to take a minute that it's, it's behaviors that are not consistent and human beings don't like it when their behaviors are inconsistent, so powerful psychological persuasive framework at play over there. Just very quickly. Once again, cognitive distance theory can be applied to headlines, right? Doing good is good business. Where this is a non profit organization, where they're, they're able to convey a message that says doing good is not only good, but it's, it's not good for the people you're doing good for, but it's also good for your business. And if you're not into that, then that creates tension with your belief system because if you believe doing good is a good thing and you know that it could be good for my business. They're kind of tapping into a little bit of that nature and once again, they're not going to convince you to do it. But once you're there, it helps. It could help push you over the edge. Again. Um, cognitive dissonance theory should always be applied with positivity making people feel good about themselves nothing punitive, right? So don't say something like, hey, you suck. You know, you used to really care about your business metrics and obviously if you're not converting on my website, you don't care anymore, right? So that's not gonna work, right? That just turns people off that's punitive. Everything should be framed in positivity, right? Let the psychological components play themselves out. You don't need to call them out by name. Here's another example of a nonprofit inspired by their dreams powered by your generosity. Right? So it's uplifting message here are people who are dreaming your generosity can make a difference. You don't need to you don't need to call it out saying that if I ignore this appeal, I'm gonna somehow have some sort of tension with my belief system of helping other people. You don't need to call that out. You don't need to say it outright. It that subtle feeling will be there in the person. Um, everything should be framed in a sense of positivity, uh, in a sense of uplifting other people with that. Listen, we've covered the last couple of lectures, we've we've covered anchoring, reciprocal concessions, reciprocity, cognitive dissonance theory, um, scarcity. We've done a lot of cool stuff. A lot of these persuasive frameworks again, you know about. But when you apply them to your landing page design, it makes an incredible impact at the point of action when a person is ready to act and transact if you could apply these persuasive framers. Well, they're much more likely to convert with you than with your competition. And with that we will see you very soon in the next election