An ode to Robert Cialdini... and another tool to print out & tape to your wall (or clip to your fridge at home)

"Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" is one of my favorite business books of all time.  As someone who has always been fascinated by those factors that most influence behavior & decision-making, I'm naturally interested in the "art of persuasion".  Not to mention the little fact that persuasion, done well and through an ethical prism, is a key success factor for developing effective, sustainable marketing programs.

Cialdini HestonIn expressing my reverence for Mr. Cialdini while still (hopefully) providing readers with valuable marketing nuggets, I've put together a little cheat sheet of his famed laws of persuasion.  For each "commandment", I've included examples of how it is commonly employed within marketing.  However, each of these laws can be leveraged across many of life's little domains - from getting your child into that perfect school to getting bumped up to first class en route from Dallas to San Francisco.  

Enjoy, and please share your experiences with these laws - the good, the bad and the ugly.  Be they related to marketing or how you've employed them in other facets of your life.


CIALDINI LAW OF INFLUENCE MARKETING EXAMPLE
Reciprocity
You giving to me makes me really want to give back to you – I feel indebted. I owe you! Call it a form of closed-loop Karma if you like.
  • The free trial, an unexpected free gift with your purchase
  • A free whitepaper, free e-newsletter
  • Telling customers you’ve donated $15 to the charity of their choice before they’ve even completed a purchase (there are many ways to engineer this)
Scarcity
People hate to miss out on something, even if it’s something they don’t like! Human evolution made us into hoarders, and we can't seem to shake the habit.
  • The “closing window” – “last chance”, “only one week left!” “Act now while supplies last!” “Here today, gone tomorrow – don’t delay!”
  • “Limited-edition” products – art prints, coins, Barbies, Star Wars figures
Likability
We want to do nice things for people we like. We’re also more likely to trust & listen to them.

So whom do we tend to like? 1) People we have lots in common with 2) people who love to tell us how great & good-looking we are! (We just can’t get enough praise)
  • Celebrity & athlete endorsements
  • “Our product is for smart, attractive people, just like YOU!” (Oh, how I blush… keep talking!)
  • Why car salespeople try to learn early on what you both have in common. The closer you feel to her, the more you like her and are liable to trust her.
Authority
People wearing nice suits. Police officers. Firefighters. Doctors. We become zombies in the presence of such authority figures in their domains of expertise. “I’ll do whatever you say…”
  • Power of “Opinion Leaders” – featuring Consumer Reports’ positive review of your product, including an endorsement from Seth Godin on the back of your book (although he has been kind of spreading the wealth lately…)
  • Getting H&R Block to endorse your new tax software or Suze Orman to endorse your new no-load mutual fund)
Social Proof
They seem to like it, so there must be something good about it. Aka, “the bandwagon effect”, “wisdom of the crowds”.
  • Testimonials (especially from people like yourself)
  • Power of word-of-mouth, customer reviews
  • Long lines outside a night club (even though the club is often half-empty).
Consistency / Commitment
My current actions must align with my prior actions & commitments. Contradictory behavior makes me very uneasy.
  • “Foot-in-the-door” technique - getting someone to make small commitments to lead up to much bigger commitment.
  • Getting user to register for free e-newsletter or to become “fan” on Facebook before offering user fee-based offerings.
Contrast
We always evaluate our situations using some type of reference point – whether we’re evaluating the “goodness” of our incomes, spouses, children, education, etc.

Marketers & salespeople engineer reference points for you for certain purchase settings. E.g., when you’re buying a new car, the salesperson wants you to think about the $1k “option” to install heated tush warmers relative to the $40k you’re already spending for the car, and not the 3% interest you’d earn by instead putting the $1k into your savings account.
  • For only $19 you can get 6 more inches of legroom for your flight from NYC to LA! The flight’s already $450 – what’s $19 more for 5-hours of comfort?
  • “How about this nice $200 tie to go with your new $2k suit? You’re already spending $2k, why not spend a mere 10% more and make the suit perfect!”



How can I start using this information today?
  • Clarify your goal or objective.  For example, "I want to increase the ROI on my email acquisition spend" 
  • Go through each Cialdini law one-by-one and ask, "How might I use it to improve my email acquisition efforts?"  For example, for "social proof", you may decide to test the inclusion of testimonials or "seals of approval" from leading authorities within the body of your email.  For "likability", you may test emails with imagery of people who closely resemble your target market - from the clothes they wear to the surroundings in which they live.   


No Moral Judgments
A quick side note to those who feel "persuasion" is a four-letter word. To be clear, I'm not looking to generate a forum for moral soap-boxing. These laws exist whether we like it or not; a consequence of human evolution, and without their development we'd likely have gone the way of dinosaurs.  Like Cialdini, I believe these laws can be used for good, for bad, and for everything in between.  At a minimum we should all be aware of them since they do have such a profound impact on our daily lives.  Now that I got that off my chest... enjoy!

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More from R. Cialdini plus other great persuasion content 
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    Another framework to print out and put on your wall at work

    Akin Arikan, author of Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline SuccessMultichannel Metrics book, did a beautiful job grafting a digital/web 2.0 layer onto my strategic marketing framework. (His terrific framework is just below)

     


    Also, I highly recommend you read his post describing his digital marketing framework so you can get a better understand of the concepts behind it. Powerful, useful stuff.  Very nicely done, Akin!






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    Strategic Marketing Framework to print out & hang on your wall at work

    I've found this framework to be immensely helpful to me throughout my career.  Particularly during those fire-fighting, short-term focused periods of work that we all experience from time to time, this framework has always helped me to reorient myself & recalibrate.     

    There's a lot more to come with the framework - I'll be drilling down into the different dimensions in more detail so you can have a richer understanding for how to use it to develop robust new marketing strategies and to improve existing ones.

    Please feel free to email me if you have any questions about how to put the framework to use within your business.

    strategic marketing framework


    download framework (pdf)



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    Using segmentation to develop your marketing strategy

    While there are many ways to harness the power of segmentation, one of the broadest and most valuable applications is for designing your marketing strategy – a strategy that clearly defines who you’re targeting, what you’re going to offer them, where you’re going to reach them, and how you’re going to sell them on your product & brand.

    The key “superpower” of segmentation is that it enables you to take a population of consumers and group them based upon similarities they share with respect to the very attributes that you use to define your marketing strategy (i.e., who to target, what to offer them, etc.). What this means is that the segments you derive from the segmentation process will have their preferred marketing mixes already “baked into them”. Powerful stuff.


    Segmentation for designing marketing strategies is a 2-step jig

    Step 1: Identify “the who”
    In the first step you identify “the who”. Who are those consumers in the population who have expressed interest in your product category or who have needs addressed by your product category? In this step you’re simply separating out those interested consumers from the rest of the general population.


    Step 2: Identify your target segments
    The second step is where things really get cooking. In step 2 you take the population of interested consumers and group them based upon their similarities with respect to “the what, why, where & how” of your product category.

    In this step your goal is to identify the most attractive segments for your business to target – segments for which the following are true:
    • One or more of your products meet the segment’s functional & emotional needs
    • Your existing channels for selling, servicing & awareness-building align with the segment’s channel preferences and media-consumption habits
    • Your product & brand positioning align with the segment’s “reasons for buying” from both a functional and emotional perspective
    • You can identify the segment in a cost-effective manner
    • The segment is large enough in size and profit-potential to merit investment in a distinct marketing mix
    By the end of step 2, you will have identified one or more segments that:
    • Are interested in one of more of your products
    • Are most effectively targeted using a distinct marketing mix
    • AND, are large enough to merit your investment in this distinct marketing mix

    These segments will become your target segments and along with their distinct marketing mixes represent your marketing strategy. To reiterate from the intro, the beauty of this approach is that by basing part of your segmentation on similarities shared by consumers across key components of your marketing mix, the segments you derive come with their “marketing instructions” already included.



    What about segments you choose not to target?
    So what about segments that don’t meet enough of your targeting criteria? What should you do about them? The answer is that it depends.

    For those segments large enough in size & profit potential you may consider developing new products, building out new channels, or creating communication strategies that better meet their needs and more effectively “speak to them”.

    On the other hand, for those segments that are very small or that would require major retooling of your operations, extensive employee training, or significant stretching of your brand, you would likely leave to other companies to pursue.





    More posts on segmentation & marketing strategy:


    Great books & articles on segmentation:
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    Snapshot of some of my favorite business books

    So I was in my office today and my Droid was nudging me to take a quick snapshot of a stunning view of some of my favorite business books... it's so hard to say no to a Droid...











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