5 Invisible Psychological Triggers For Webinars That Sell More While Selling Less
If you want to make your marketing more effective, you have to tap into the psychology of your prospects.
Why?
Because if you can tap into the same psychological triggers happening inside your prospect’s mind, you can effectively slip in “under the radar” and persuade them without sounding like you’re trying to persuade them.
Pretty cool right?
The best part is – it boosts sales too!
Marketing psychologically allows you to sell more while selling less.
It’s a beautiful thing.
That’s why I’d like to introduce you to five invisible psychological triggers you can implement into an existing webinar you have, or one you’re thinking of putting together, for higher conversions without sounding pushy or aggressive.
Let’s start with…
#1: Build Trust By Admitting A Flaw
Most people have a hard time admitting their flaws. When you run a business, it becomes even harder. After all, don’t weaknesses hurt your chances of getting that new client?
Actually – the opposite is true.
If you do it right.
Psychologist Fiona Lee put together a study showing that owning up to failures or flaws can actually be a good thing.
I’ll show you HOW to do this in just a second. First, the study…
In the research study, looking at stock prices from 14 corporations over 21 years, they found that those companies who took responsibility for not achieving predicted revenue growth actually outperformed (in terms of stock price) those who didn’t.
And it makes sense, doesn’t it?
We all subconsciously trust and admire those who are able to take responsibility and own up to their mistakes.
Here’s how you put this into practice…
Think about everything your company does for your clients. Make a list of the positive and negative attributes your company has.
For example, I write sales copy for my clients. Mine might look something like this…
[twocol_one]Pros
Incredible results
Highly reliable
Easy to work with
100% done for you
Trustworthy
[/twocol_one][twocol_one_last]Cons
Takes 4-6 weeks
High fees
[/twocol_one_last]Looking at that list, taking 4-6 weeks to complete a project, along with high fees, sounds like a turn-off.
But what if I explained that the reason it took so long and was so expensive was because, while other copywriters were content on just banging out “quick copy”, we take 1-2 weeks alone just to understand your market?
Then, we have a 77-point checklist we use to make sure every project contains every psychological persuasion element we know of…
Then, we have a 6-step editing process to make sure every single piece of the project comes out perfectly every time…
Etc. etc.
See the difference?
By explaining the weakness, you not only gain trust (by admitting the weakness), you also have an opportunity to turn that weakness into a strength.
Key Takeaway
If you’re already NOT doing these things… by explaining WHY you don’t, you turn that negative into a positive and gain instant trust and credibility!
[box type=”note” style=”rounded”]Loving this article? Click here to register for my FREE training workshop showing you the ONLY sales funnel you’ll need to attract, qualify and close as many clients as you can handle. (Opens in a new window)[/box]#2:Â Commitment & Consistency
Remember science class when you learned about Newton’s law of motion? In short, it states that an object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.
In other words, getting momentum is hard, but KEEPING momentum is easy.
In Robert Cialdini’s incredible book Influence, he introduces a similar notion of commitment and consistency. In it, he states that getting agreeance to a small request increases the likelihood of agreeing to a second, larger request.
In fact, in 1980 a study was conducted where researchers split up residents in Indiana into two separate groups.
- In the first group, they asked if they would (hypothetically) volunteer to spend 3 hours collecting for the American Cancer Society.
- In the second group, they did not ask them anything upfront
Three days later, they called each group and asked if they would ACTUALLY help the organization.
The results were absolutely shocking.
In group #1 (where they already agreed to hypothetically help), 31% agreed to actually help.
In group #2 (where they weren’t asked anything upfront), only 4% agreed to actually help.
That’s a 675% increase in compliance!
So the question is… why?
The average person doesn’t like to lose face. We like to stay consistent with what we say we’ll do, because if we don’t, we think others will think poorly of us. It’s a simple mechanism to protect our ego.
It’s a simple mechanism to protect our ego.
If you classify yourself (internally) as an honest person, not staying consistent with your actions breaks down your self-worth.
And our brains don’t like when that happens.
Here’s how you can use it in your marketing…
After a person registers for a webinar, repeat back to them what they just committed to.
If you have a survey, ask them something like “What’s the #1 thing you’re most excited to learn during this webinar?”
In your pre-webinar emails, boost their ego by telling them they did something many other people weren’t willing to do. Spend their own time trying to improve themselves.
See how easy it is?
Just remember, people like to stay consistent to the actions they take. Remind them of the actions they took and watch your conversions go up.
And then you can…
#3: Brain Hijacking
Ever wonder why you seem to feel good every time you buy something, have something good happen to you, or feel that incessant need to check your email or Facebook feed every 10 seconds?
It’s all because of a neurochemical in your brain called dopamine.
Dopamine is part of your body’s natural reward system. It causes us to seek pleasure and reward so we can feel better.
The important part to understand as a marketer, though, is its secondary function of creating frustration and anxiety. Unfortunately, it also causes frustration and anxiety. This is why
- Ever feel like you HAD to check your email?
- Or that you HAD to check your Facebook feed?Unfortunately, it also causes frustration and anxiety. This is why
- Or that you HAD to buy that new pair of shoes before the discount expired?
Dopamine is the chemical causing that anxiety. Your brain doesn’t like the anxiety, so it finds a way to reduce that anxiety.
It does that by essentially “giving in”.
We KNOW we shouldn’t be checking our email or Facebook so often, but what happens is each time you relinquish the anxiety (by checking it), it reinforces that neural pathway.
Eventually, it becomes an addiction.
Dopamine is the #1 cause of addiction, whether it be to drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, or more passive addictions such as checking your email or Facebook.
Here’s the fun part, though…
You can manipulate dopamine production for your benefit!
[highlight]Quick note: PLEASE do this ethically. It’s very powerful. Your intentions need to aligned with what your audience wants and needs. [/highlight]The fact is this…
If you can successfully stimulate dopamine production enough times in the brains of your prospects, they will subconsciously connect each experience with you as positive.
That means each time they hear or see you, they get happy, and when they’re happy, they’re much more likely to buy.
So how do you do this?
An entire book can be written about this. However here are a few quick ways…
- Add more (REAL – please) scarcity to your offers…
- Take advantage of instant gratification by giving instant access to downloads, purchases, etc…
- Introduce surprise rewards and gifts throughout your sales funnel…
- Tease your audience about something you have for them (it fires up dopamine production because of the anticipation of the surprise)…
- Introduce new/novel concepts into the marketplace (this is one reason why people who explain concepts in new ways tend to rise to the top much faster. Read this study if you’re interested in learning more about novelty.)
Again, I’d like to reiterate to make sure you only do this for good purposes.
[box type=”note” style=”rounded”]Loving this article? Click here to register for my FREE training workshop showing you the ONLY sales funnel you’ll need to attract, qualify and close as many clients as you can handle. (Opens in a new window)[/box]#4:Â Illogical Reasoning
Have you ever had someone tell you they would do or give you something incredible, something that sounded too good to be true, and you thought “bullshit!” in your head?
That’s because humans are hard-wired to search for meaning.
We need to know WHY.
WHY are we here…
WHY
And when it comes to marketing your service, your prospects want to know WHY you’re doing everything as well.
Let me explain with a quick study…
Now-famous psychologist Ellen Langer ran a Xerox experiment way back in 1978. In it, she discovered that people are much more open to complying if you tell them why.
In the experiment, 3 different groups went up to people waiting in line to make copies at a Xerox machine. Each group said something slightly different to those standing in line…
- Group 1: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” (no reason)
- Group 2: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I have to make copies?” (lame reason)
- Group 3: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?” (good reason)
The results are pretty amazing.
- In group 1 (no reason), only 60% of people complied and allowed them to skip ahead of them
- In group 2 (lame reason), an astonishing 93% complied
- In group 3 (good reason), 94% complied
The results clearly show that just have SOME kind of reason dramatically boosts your willingness to get that person to act.
Now personally, I’ve found that having a great reason tends to do significantly better than having a lame reason (for a promotion, for example). However, the main point is that if you want to elicit more action from your audience, you need to give them reasons why for doing so.
That means you should tell them…
- WHY you’re running a new webinar…
- WHY you’re having a limited-time promotion…
- WHY they need to fill out your application before doing a discovery call/strategy session…
This phenomenon works amazingly well with webinars, but also in ANY circumstance where you’re trying to convince someone else to do something. Use it all throughout your marketing, as well as in your personal life!
And finally we have…
#5: Picture Superiority Effect
Remember the phrase “a picture is worth 1,000 words”.
That statement is 100% correct – and it’s proven by science.
When most people create their slideshows for a webinar, they tend to pay far less attention to the actual slideshow presentation. That’s why you’ll see many people with boring slideshows FILLED with bullet points. skip the slideshow presentation
If you’re doing that – STOP!
It’s killing your conversions.
Researchers have discovered that bullet points simply aren’t effective. According to John Medina, your brain sees each individual letter as a picture. Considering the average slide has around 40 words on it, and let’s just say 5 letters per word (for sake of simplicity)…
… your brain is trying to interpret 200 images per slide!
Yikes.
Maybe now we know why people tend to drown out during slideshow presentations 😉
So what should you do instead?
Replace bullet-filled slides with images.
Researchers have discovered that ideas are much more likely to be remembered when presented as images, instead of just images, or even images plus words.
They’ve even come up with a fancy name for it… “picture superiority effect”.
According to picture superiority effect, using pictures in place of text when doing presentations is much, much more effective.
How much more effective?
Some studies show that if information is presented orally, people remember about 10% of the content 72 hours later.
If you add a picture, that 10% increases to 65%.
WHOA!
My simple question to you is this…
Think your webinars might do better if your attendees remember 65% of what you say, versus 10%.
I’d sure say so.
The key takeaway here is very simple…
When appropriate, replace sentences, paragraphs or bullet points with emotion-based images.
Want To Go Even Deeper?
In case you’re interested, I’ve put together a FREE workshop training showing service providers how to put together automated, highly converting webinars using these (and MANY more) psychological principles of persuasion.
It’s a 6-step process I’ve been tweaking and perfecting for YEARS, having created roughly $50 million in results for my clients.
