If you want to drive plenty of conversions to your website, you have to keep in mind that effective marketing goes beyond value propositions and product feature sets.
While it’s true that potential customers ultimately want to receive value out of their transactions, you’ll have to dig deeper to find out which marketing methods will prompt them to take the desired action that turns them into actual customers.
In other words, you need to tap into the motivations that drive their purchasing behavior.
All psychological principles as applied to marketing boil down to one thing: enhancing user experience. Striving for clarity, reducing website latency through CDNs, meeting your clientele’s needs, etc. — all these lead towards relationship building, and ultimately, conversions.
Using psychological triggers, however, will give your clientele the nudge needed to seal the deal.
Let’s go over some powerful psychological triggers that can turn your website visitors into actual customers.
1. Drive More Conversions to Your Website: Tell Stories
These days, nearly everyone has something to sell. It is for this reason why ad fatigue is all too common among consumers. The market has become so noisy and crowded that customers are more inclined to cynicism every time they’re presented with a value proposition.
But amidst all that white noise, there’s one thing you can always count on: our love of stories.
Our brains thrive on interconnectedness. The moment something incredible or interesting catches our attention, our brain becomes fully engaged. Before you know it, you want to see what happens next or find out why certain things are the way they are.
The same holds true in storytelling as applied to marketing. By employing the art of storytelling in your marketing efforts, you can engage your target audience in a way that affects them on a deeper level. That’s customer engagement for you!
Nike is one brand that has continually leveraged the power of storytelling in its campaigns. Most notable is the Michael Jordan Retirement video they released in 1999 to commemorate the iconic NBA player’s legendary career following his second retirement.
It bears noting that the brand name did not appear in the video until its closing seconds, in which, the brand’s famous logo appeared over a school photo of Jordan.
There’s a score of channels you can use to leverage the power of brand storytelling, including blogs, videos, social media, multimedia, and their combinations thereof. If you don’t know where to start, the following tactics are safe bets:
- Write an entire story on a Facebook or Instagram post and insert a visually striking photo that will catch your audience’s attention.
- Create engaging narratives via Instagram Stories.
- Go on Twitter and publish a “tweetstorm” (a series of related tweets that can be read as one thread)
- Use infographics
- Create Slideshare presentations
- And so on
2. Drive More Conversions to Your Website: Convey Novelty
We will always like shiny new things. There are even scientific studies to back this up. According to one such study, there’s a “novelty center” in the brain that prompts us to respond to novel stimuli.
This goes to show that our novelty-seeking habits are closely linked to our motivation to seek rewards. In other words, when we detect or see something “novel,” we are motivated to make a decision because our brains are anticipating a form of reward.
That probably explains why there are long lines at Apple Stores every time there’s a new iPhone release (never mind the fact that those gizmos are so expensive).
So if you want your conversions and sales numbers to “blow up,” you can’t go wrong with leveraging novelty triggers in your branding or marketing campaigns.
There are many ways to convey novelty. You can make tweaks to your content every once in a while, make updates to old articles, or deliver value to your audience in new, exciting ways.
Releasing new products on a regular basis can also go a long way to getting on your audience’s radar.
You can also try to release a specific product once every few months so that you can create a perception of novelty each time it’s released. This is especially helpful for information products, which can be made available for just a week every few months. However, this technique may not be that effective if you’re new to the industry or you lack credibility or experience. If this is the case, it’s best to combine this trigger with the others suggested below.
3. Drive More Conversions to Your Website: Make People Curious
Everyone is familiar with the quote, “Curiosity killed the cat.”
Unbeknownst to many, there’s another version of that quote. And we happen to prefer this version on account of its more optimistic bent.
The other version is: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
It does have a nice ring to it. Better yet, the principle behind it holds true when applied to selling or marketing.
As explained in a scientific study published by PubMed Central, curiosity is a basic component of our cognitive functions. Moreover, it was described as a “motivator for learning, influential in decision-making, and crucial for healthy development.”
That probably explains why, Alice, who got “curiouser and curiouser,” was willing to go so far down that mysterious rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland.
So remember, your website visitors are Alice. And you have to make them curious enough so they’ll be willing to sit down at the table of the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
Activating curiosity will help ensure that your visitors will promote your content, open and read your emails, and purchase your products to seal the gap between the teasers you give them and the possible experience they could have. When there’s a gap between what a person knows and what they want to know, they’ll take action to fill this gap. Curiosity not just leads to actions, but it’ll also enhance the parts of the brain linked to pleasure. According to Andrew Viera, when using ads, for example, you should maintain your prospect’s curiosity by introducing only relevant ones. This way, your visitor’s curiosity will make him click on it and check it. Visit this page for more info on how to do this.
An effective way to inspire curiosity is to drop some knowledge without giving away too much. By withholding key information, you can highlight the gap between what your audience knows and what they want to know.
Here are a few key strategies that will help you instill curiosity among your target audience:
- Make the information relevant to their wants and needs
- Provide “teasers” that are interesting
- Promise that the payoff will be worthwhile
- Don’t withhold information that’s given freely elsewhere
- Use visuals or words that convey an air of mystery
Purple’s “How to Use a Raw Egg to Determine if Your Mattress is Awful” video is a perfect example of an ad that leverages the power of curiosity to drive more sales.
As you can tell from the example above, Purple is a business establishment that sells mattresses. The ad is telling you that you can use a raw egg to determine if your mattress is awful. What it does NOT tell you from the outset is how. Doesn’t that make you a little bit curious?
4. Drive More Conversions to Your Website: Play the Scarcity Card
One other thing that compels a person to make a purchase as if his life depended on it is the fear of missing out.
This falls in line with the principle of supply and demand. The more difficult it is to obtain a product, the more valuable it becomes.
And what do consumers want when buying products or services? That’s value. With a capital V.
Is it any wonder why there are always over-packed crowds storming through the doors of Walmart in every Black Friday sale?
Udemy, an online learning service, has been using the scarcity principle in marketing their online courses for quite a while now. By offering courses with great discounts within a specific time frame (e.g. “12 hours left at this price!”), Udemy has been leaving thousands of users scrambling to make a purchase the moment they see an ad from the “online university.”
To take advantage of scarcity in marketing, you should keep the scarcity or slowly increase its level of abundance without giving it away to your prospects ahead of time. You can do this by creating a limited number of products in a given time or providing a limited level of access.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that the psychological triggers discussed above will work wonders for your conversions. For even better impact, you’d do well to combine these methods in your ad campaigns as you deem fit.
Are there any other psychological triggers that you think are effective in driving more conversions to any website? Feel free to share them below!
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I’m a tech enthusiast, entrepreneur, digital marketer and professional blogger equipped with skills in Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, SMM, and lead generation. My objective is to simplify technology for you through detailed guides and reviews. I discovered WordPress while setting up my first business site and instantly became enamored. When not crafting websites, making content, or helping clients enhance their online ventures, I usually take care of my health and spend time with family, and explore the world. Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or read my complete biography.