How To Persuade Someone – Predicting who will become President in the Obama vs Romney war to persuade voters is easy. The candidate that will win the election is the person that does the best job at tapping into the dreams of the most Americans and links their ideas or causes to the realization of the dreams of the American people. Sound simple – not in the least.
But this is what is at the heart of persuasion, and there is something for inbound marketers to learn as we watch the drama of the campaign unfold.
Why it’s difficult to persuade people
Persuading people is extremely difficult because to learn how to persuade someone you must learn how to change their mind. For someone to change their mind they must be willing to admit they were wrong. And, admitting that we are wrong is contrary to human nature, so humans avoid it like the plague.
Simply put learning how to persuade someone is so difficult because no one wants to admit they are wrong.
What is persuasion?
Persuasion is getting people to want to do – what you want them to do
How to persuade someone
Aristotle pointed out that in order to persuade someone, to get them to admit they were wrong three variable must exist within a presentation.
Trust – the ability to make a favorable first impression
Logic – does the argument make sense to the listener
Emotion – your ability to link your products, services, or causes to the realizations of your listeners dreams. It’s how you make them hear it, taste it, feel it, want it.
The next time you get to hear the candidates speak (if the election is over watch a Youtube video) pay attention and you’ll notice that everything they say can some how be linked to one of the three elements of successful persuasion.
What can inbound marketers learn from this?
How to persuade someone to buy – Inbound marketers should consider these things about their websites when assessing it’s ability to drive conversion goals.
Trust
Does your website or landing page make a professional first impression. It’s important because what’s true in life is also true on the web, and that is first impressions are lasting ones.
Measuring a websites trust factor
You can measure the trust worthiness of our site by examining your analytics reports. Check for starting pages and pay attention to both the bounce rate and the average time on site.
When considering how to persuade someone remember social media affects trust
Keep in mind that trust worthiness is not only about how your site looks. Content matters and good content drives social media engagement. Social media can have a huge and lasting affect on our sites ability to build trust.
Your site can look like dirt if 400,000 Facebook users have liked it and 500 Twitter users tweet your blog post every day – so Tweet this please 🙂
Equally worth considering is the idea that your site or landing pages can be as pristine as a presidential palace but without people willing to sneeze your ideas you’ll struggle to build trust.
Logic
Most inbound marketers mistake facts for logic. They are not the same. Facts are the technical aspects of your product, service, or idea. To make a logical appeal requires a deeper understanding of target audience;
Concerns – exactly what problem is your audience attempting to solve
Impact – how does the lack of a solution impact them
Solution – how does your product, service, idea, etc address their concerns and eliminate the impact
Benefits – what will be the benefit of implementing your product, service, idea, etc. Note – do not express the benefit as you won’t have this or that concern anymore…..
Emotion
Instead tie benefits to deep seated emotions. Express a benefit as the potential clients ability to either achieve, or avoid something.
For example, potential clients for a web analytic service don’t want data, they want increased sales, venture capital, to take their company public, to avoid losing market share, etc.
When considering how to persuade someone face to face or online keep these principals in mind and you’ll be well on your way.
