When you’re working to build an online empire as a marketer, you have many skills to learn – from technical steps to strategic ones. When it comes to technical issues, there’s little, if any wriggle room on how to do things.
But with strategy, you’ll find a wide range of views on what works best to do things like build a list, get someone to click a buy button, or follow through on some other call to action you desire.
One thing everyone can agree on, though, is that you need to master the art of persuasion. Whether you’re trying to convince someone to hand over their contact information in exchange for a free gift – or urging a consumer to buy your product before the price goes up, persuasion is what will make the endeavor a success or failure.
There are five primary things you need to understand when working on your ability to persuade your audience. Once you’re capable of grasping these issues, you’ll be able to put forth a formidable campaign that easily and quickly helps you convert your visitor with a specific action step.
Persuasion Starts with Credibility of the Source
The foundation of your ability to convince a stranger to do something with your online business lies in their opinion of the presence you have established on the Internet. If you have failed to create a brand, your visitor may not want to take the risk of spending money or investing in any way with you – even spending their time with you or giving their contact information to you.
If you have done the bare minimum to convince people of your niche expertise, they may decide to go with another leader who shows more commitment and dedication to their needs.
But if you have laid a strong foundation where you have showcased your knowledge, it will be easier for you to persuade your audience in whatever you want them to do. Consumers are always looking for credibility when they are considering spending money with someone.
Your credibility will be built with the things that you share in terms of content. But it’s also made up of other criteria. For example, the accuracy of the information you put out has to be high.
If you are guessing about things or slapping up content that is erroneous, your visitors will flee to another site because they won’t be able to trust your recommendations and advice.
Another thing they will be looking for is whether or not you are honest with them. There are many online marketers who engage in everything from telling little white lies to those who turn out to be complete scammers.
If you are creating a product or working as an affiliate marketer, it’s imperative that you learn how to persuade people without having to lie. Consumers can see through most lies and hype, and it will almost always backfire on you in the long run to be anything less than honest and ethical.
Another thing they will be looking for when trying to determine whether or not you are a credible resource is how well liked you are in the community. While it’s not a popularity contest, social proof gives consumers the peace of mind they need to go through with an action step that supports you.
Convert Visitors with a Targeted Message
One way you can connect with your visitors and persuade them to take action is to have a clear and concise message. Most of you who are reading this report have landed on a website or blog that was confusing, disorganized, and left you bewildered as to what you were supposed to do next.
Whether you are selling your own product or promoting something as an affiliate, you always want to start by conveying the benefits of the product or strategy before you cover the features.
People are almost always in a mindset of, “What’s in it for me?” They are focused on their own needs, and there is nothing wrong with that. So you want to paint the picture of how their life will improve if they take your advice.
When you get to the facts and key points to be made, you want to list them in order of importance to your prospective audience – like an inverted pyramid, with the biggest ones first.
You may even need to casually repeat certain main points that you want them to absorb to make sure the point gets across. If you’re writing sales copy, don’t focus on how long it needs to be, but rather what information your audience needs to know, which will be a mixture of details about a product and the emotional impact it will have on their life.
You always want to tap into the emotional response they will be focused on from the past, present, or future. You can convey empathy with them based on the emotions they have experienced that may include anger, frustration, sadness, confusion, fear, etc., but also where they are right in that moment – the split in the road where they get to possibly carve out a better future
When you are painting a picture for your audience, you want to ensure that you have a mixture of showcasing the pain you know they’re going through and what they will gain if they take your advice and follow through on the next step.
Keep in mind that many consumers can pick up on the tone that you are using in your content, whether it’s a blog post or sales copy. Make sure that your tone matches the goal that you have to persuade them to do something.
For example, if you want them to trust you and feel comfortable enough handing over their contact details to get on your list and be nurtured in their niche, then you don’t want to have a harsh and brutal tone that intimidates them.
There are some instances where a brutal and blunt tone of voice does work well. There are many people who want someone to not coddle them and instead push them toward their goals, such as weight loss.
You always want your content to come across as if you are writing to a friend, the reader. They should never feel that the content is for everyone, even though logically they know that it is.
Consumers Are Often Swayed By One Type of Medium
Persuasion is a strategic tool you can use in a variety of ways. In order to reach your audience, you have to be able to speak their language. In this case, it means conveying your message in a media format that they feel most comfortable with.
Different niche markets and demographics have different preferences, as do individuals within those groups. For example, people who have a short attention span often prefer to watch videos that are under three or 10 minutes in length.
There are some people who hate video, and instead prefer to read text so that they can skim at their own pace. You will also have those who prefer to see messages distilled in a single image, such as an infographic.
And others will turn to audio, such as a podcast or audiobook to hear the message without having to be focused on it visually at that time. Many people like to use audio to absorb information if they are multitasking, such as exercising, cleaning, commuting, or even relaxing in a bath.
Make sure that you take time to investigate the most common media formats for your niche. Not only will the niche itself often reflect a particular preference for video, text, images or audio, but you may find these preferences depend on where they are being placed.
For example, you may find that your target audience prefers and is more easily persuaded by text based content on your blog or on social media, but on sales pages, they convert higher with a video sales letter, or at least a hybrid version that includes text.
You’re going to need to analyze more than just the media format itself. For example, don’t just automatically assume that you can make a 20 minute video sales letter and have it convert as well as a text based sales letter.
It may turn out that your audience only responds positively to the persuasive efforts when the video is no more than 3 minutes total. If you are using text, many things can affect those conversions as well, including the font style that’s used, the size of the font and spacing, the length of your sentences and paragraphs, and more.
Positioning of Your Content Is Key to Conversions
The ability that you have to persuade people may depend on where you are trying to do it. For example, many people don’t like being persuaded to buy something directly in their email inbox.
They see it as spam in some cases. However, they may respond more positively if your email to them directs them to your blog, which is then shown to be a valuable piece of content that ultimately directs them to something for sale.
You’ll want to test the waters and see how your audience responds to your efforts of persuasion in many different places. For example, you’ll want to start by determining which social networking sites house your target audience.
You may find that you are able to create a thriving group on Facebook, and easily convince people on that site to take action on your advice. But when you go to Instagram and try to get the same reaction, it falls flat.
Persuasive content is used everywhere that you will be communicating with your audience online. You can start by practicing on your blog posts. Get in the habit of making sure you have generated a targeted message, as we previously discussed, and end each post with a call to action.
That doesn’t mean you have to be selling something in every blog post. But consumers like it when they walk away with a purpose after reading content that has inspired and motivated them to make changes.
Another place you can go to persuade your audience is on social sites and forums. Both of these platforms allow you to use relevant wording and connect with the audience in an emotional and factual manner.
It also allows you to enjoy what’s known as social proof. If you’re strictly trying to persuade people via email, there is no social proof that they can see that tells them others are following your leadership.
But on social media platforms, you will see like buttons, share buttons, and comments that all work to prove to your audience that others are taking your insight and advice seriously.
Leveling Up with an Analysis of Your Persuasive Efforts
As you begin methodically investing in your ability to persuade your target audience to take action, you want to make sure that you don’t ignore the results or assume you know the outcome.
You want to consistently tweak and alter what you are doing to see if you can improve your persuasion abilities. You may find that initially, everything you tried had a lackluster response.
But by split testing certain styles and strategies, you are able to begin gaining traction and getting the results that you want. You can do this with every aspect of your online communication.
From where you post to the tone of your content, the media format you choose and your own ability to grow your brand as a credible source – all of it will have a direct impact on whether your visitor walks away unimpressed or takes a leap of faith and engages with you as you requested.
You will find some things didn’t work at all, while others had a small, positive effect. You may have to abandon certain strategies, and take those that performed a little and tweak them until they are hitting it out of the ballpark for you.
You will have to track a variety of statistics, including bounce rates or heat maps of where your visitors are exiting your content so that you know what part of your sales copy or site is causing readers to abandon you.
Make sure you are always keeping an eye out for what your competitors are doing in the niche. You may find that some of them are utilizing a strategy, tone or slant that you had not considered yet.
That doesn’t mean you go and copy them. But it does give you insight into understanding what it is your target audience responds better to so that you can craft your own approach that is competitive in the marketplace.
Learning how to persuade people is something that may feel intimidating to newer online marketers. You may feel like an impostor trying to present yourself as a leading expert if you are just getting started.
However, unless you can muster up the confidence to put yourself out there as a competitive brand, and take the action steps needed to strategically improve your efforts, you will be unable to get the results that you want and need.
