📂 Persuasion mental models for marketing

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As a marketer, you can boil your job down into essentially getting people to say yes enough times until they make a purchase.

So that begs the question, what makes someone say yes?

See, marketing is much more psychology than most realize.

Google defines psychology as "the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context."

Sounds a lot like marketing, right?

So then what makes someone say yes? Is there a science to persuasion?

Today, we have a tough job because both the internet and television has made everyone hyper skeptical and sensitive to marketing. So it's harder than ever to get someone to a "yes."

So learning the psychology of what gets someone to a yes can help you stand apart from the crowd and use proven methods for getting the results you want.

Here are two persuasion mental models you can start implementing today:

Loss Aversion

When I was 16, there was a talent show at my church that we called Christmas On The Patio. Basically, you'd perform in front of a few hundred people and compete against 8-10 other people. The performance with the highest votes got $250.

And I decided that I wanted to do it. So I practiced tirelessly. I brought my guitar everywhere with me — to school, to church, to friends houses, and everywhere in between.

Well, about a month before the performance, I was riding with a friend and we made a stop at Starbucks. He had a little two door pickup truck and so my guitar was sitting back there, and I figured it'd be fine while we were inside to get drinks to go.

Two minutes later I come back out and my guitar is gone. It wasn't the best guitar. It wasn't expensive. But it was my guitar. And I was devastated.

My dad was generous and kind enough to buy me a new guitar, in fact, a much nicer guitar, for the performance. But when I think back on it, losing my first guitar felt much worse than how good it felt to get a new guitar.

The reality was that I lost a rather cheap guitar and it's not a big deal. But the lesson is: We tend to overestimate and dwell on negative experiences.

People feel losses more deeply than gains of the same value. In other words, it’s more painful to lose something than to get that same thing.

So what does that mean for marketing?

• Lead with what someone is losing out on in your value prop
• Be generous upfront so people won't want to lose out on what they've been using
• Use lazy registration so visitors won't want to lose their progress
• Leverage FOMO with media or exclusive content
• Pre-fill the shopping cart with add-ons

Social proof

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation.

According to Robert Cialdini, who studied the principle of social proof in-depth in his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, “we view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it”.

The idea stems from the idea of normative social influence, which states that people will conform in order to be liked by, similar to, or accepted by others.

“When you say it, it’s marketing. When your customer says it, it’s social proof.” Andy Crestodina

We are pack animals. We are more likely to do something when presented with evidence that others have done it, more than we are willing to admit. This behavior applies in particular when we are unsure of what to do.

How can you apply this?

• Use testimonials as often as you can
• Show how many people have shared a piece of content
• Boast how many subscribers, followers, or customers you have
• Get endorsements from influential people
• Display media mentions, case studies, and user activity

Simply doing an audit of all your marketing to check for how you're integrating persuasion mental models can make all your marketing doubly as effective.

—Corey

p.s. I’m working on a new course, Marketing Like A Media Company. Coming soon 👀

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