Neuromarketing Hacks: Convert Website Visitors Into Fans In 4 Easy Steps | Review
This series is part of a 12-week review of the mini-degree program in Digital Psychology and Persuasion by CXL. As a scholarship awardee, I’ll be sharing a brief review of some of the topics covered which have had the most impact on me each week.
Daniel Kahneman in his book ‘Thinking Fast And Slow’ illustrates the brain as a two-part system, and as two distinct characters with two specific purposes. System 1 is the emotional brain, responsible for all of our actions, intuition and subconscious learning. System 2, the logical partner, is focused on bringing sense to action. While we might think that we are always aware of the reasons we hold prior to acting, studies have proven this to be the opposite. It is in fact the emotional brain that drives us to act, and the logical brain that creates a justification for why we acted in a particular way.
If you’re doing any type of business in 2021, you need to have a website. And no, social media pages do not count.
As brands, businesses and business owners, the main goal of your website should be to drive a specific type of action by the leads you attract. Whether the goal is to build an email list to reach your ideal customer on a more intimate level, or to create authority that translates into sales, when a visitor lands on your website, two things should happen:
- The lead should confirm that they are in the right place. That is, they can find what they came in search of without risk of cognitive overload.
- Your website should make it easy for them to leave with more that they came for. Appropriately placed triggers and seamless checkout processes are two ways to reduce the perceived obstacles to the lead being successful.
Leads visit your website not to see what you can do, but what you can do for them.
According to Donald Miller’s ‘Building A Storybrand’, prospects are looking for a guide to deliver them from a particular challenge they may be facing. This may be a conscious or subconscious threat they hope to eliminate. Their first concern is not how great you claim to be, but how your greatness can benefit them.
With the evolution of marketing and sales, there is a continuous movement from the outdated transactional selling process towards the creation of mutually beneficial relationships with ideal customers. It’s why more and more companies are developing brand personalities as a strategy to reach and communicate with their audience, especially on social media. And while this might have been effective for those brands who were the first to jump on the trend, or with greater market authority, newer businesses now have a harder time competing with the noise of every other business trying to do the same as them — Get their share of the customer’s attention.
Your prospect’s brain is looking for a reason to stay, while doing the least amount of work possible. Your business goal should be to keep them actively engaged over a long term period.
So we come back to your website as an authority builder, relationship developer, lead generator and sales facilitator. All businesses should have a digital presence on the web that achieves these four goals. And while there are many ways to achieve them, here’s a useful concept and four easy steps you can use neuromarketing to convert visitors to raving fans.
Neuromarketing Expert Robery Dooley, author of Brainfluence, released another title called The Persuasion Slide in 2015. Using the mechanics of a slide, he illustrates how businesses can effectively move leads along to completing their intended action on websites in four areas. This week’s class at CXL in digital psychology and persuasion included teachings by Robert Dooley on this topic.
The Persuasion Slide
Gravity
According to Dooley, gravity represents the motivation of the prospect. Why are they here? What are they trying to achieve? What do they need to get from you to make it happen? The motivation of the client drives their initial actions. This also lines up with Miller’s Storybrand philosophy. The lead has come to you to see what you can do for them. answering this first question is crucial to creating a reason for the lead to stick around. Without gravity, no one goes down a slide. So too, without motivation, leads do not seek you out on the web.
Nudge
Nudges are the attention grabbers that propel your lead into action. Dooley gives the example of a young child at the top of the slide who would need a hand to be pushed, or an older child that that pull themselves forward to get going. Similarly, leads need a gentle nudge to accomplish their goals. In my previous article, I spoke about BJ Fogg’s model for creating action. Where desired action can only take place when the motivation to act is high, the effort to complete the action is low, and the appropriate trigger is in place. Here, Dooley references nudges to Fogg’s triggers suggesting a variety of forms they could take including:
- Calls to action
- Sales Calls
- Popups
- Phone Calls
- Alarm
Angle
This is where you start to provide motivation of your own, appealing to the prospect’s brain why they should complete the intended action. While gravity provides the direction and nudging puts them in motion, without the slide at an angle, the child doesn’t get far and neither will your prospect. At this stage, you should be appealing to the prospect’s emotional brain using unconscious motivators such as cognitive biases and emotional appeals. And the logical brain using conscious motivators such as price, gifts and discounts and features.
Friction
Friction can be both real and perceived, but either one can stop your lead in their tracks and make them abandon the process. Since the brain is always looking for the easiest way to achieve a goal, when tasks appear too complicated, the brain goes into flight mode leaving you with an incomplete process and the lead dissatisfied.
Here’s how you can use the persuasion slide to hack your customer experience.
Step 1. Ask yourself why you lead is looking for you and what problem you can solve for them. Answer this question with crisp, clear copy, on a well-designed website that seamlessly leads them to what they are searching for.
Step 2. Nudge them at the right time. Don’t bombard your visitor with actions they are not yet ready to take such as popups that appear as soon as the visitor lands on your website. Instead, create well-timed opportunities with simple effort required, to get them moving towards the finish line.
Step 3. Tell them what’s in it for them when they act. Create a connection with the emotional brain such as by conveying achieved status, or success in the quest, and satisfying the needs of the logical brain with evidence that supports a no-brainer decision.
Step 4. Keep the process as simple as possible. From start to end, remove all possible hindrances that would cause friction in the lead conversion process. Create opportunities for easy opt ins and purchase processes where possible.
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