Great products should come with an exceptional marketing message. When you have identified your target market along with the problems, come up with the solution, wrapping it in the product or service, all meant to solve your target market’s problems. The next part will then be the moment of truth, whether your product or service is or will be accepted in the predetermined market. Now it is time to convince your target markets that you really are solving their problem or pain points and that you and your product or service will help make their life easier.
The challenge, however, lies in how you compete within the market. Knowing that there are tons of companies available that are solving similar problems or can be the alternative to your product or service, you will have to stand out by crafting a comprehensive marketing strategy. One of the core elements in delivering a marketing message is persuasion, in which it all depends on the way you inform the market about your product or service. In this day and age however, much more things are needed other than good persuasion in order to win the attention and the heart of your target audiences.
WIth Dr. Robert Cialdini’s widely accepted Six Principle of Persuasion in the marketing field, this will help guide you in successfully conveying your marketing message. Below shows the core persuasion principles you should be identifying and looking into:
Authority
While people often do not enjoy being under the control of an authority, yet most of the time we still do as we’re told. A man in uniform would approach us asking for a donation and most often, we’d do so. A teacher asking you to do the pile of homework they assigned. Therefore, the first persuasion principle is authority, it involves experts in their field asking you to purchase something because they said so.
Commitment
Ideally, being inconsistent is an attribute most people would rather not have associated to themselves. Humans would much rather choose one option and then later, stick to it. With bombardments of products and services, people tend to make further future purchases based on their previous experiences and purchases. Fanatics of brands such as Apple often always stick to using products only from that brand, this is most likely due to the type of persuasion that is applied to them, commitment.
Liking
People are more likely to submit decisions based on their peer references. Socially, people often trust the decisions of their close ones. Whether it be friends or family. We have all been in a common situation where we’ve made a decision based on our peer references.
Reciprocity
The principle of reciprocity lies in giving back to people in result of them seeking out your product or service more often. Human nature has wired us to repay a good deed with another good deed. In this case, the goods deeds of your consumers come in the form of them buying your products or services. We give back to them through freebies, free-trials, free e-books or any form of reciprocity imaginable to your business. However, we must make sure to give our consumers something relevant in order to make them feel special for receiving them.
Scarcity
It is true that us humans often crave for things we cannot have. By creating some form of illusion that your product is limited and only those who are lucky enough can have your product do we attract the market and their likeliness to purchase your products. It is a common strategy as many companies can be seen doing so, often resulting in frenzies and hysteria. This can be seen with the H&M collaboration with Balmain, or Adidas’ collaboration with Kanye west, YEEZY.
Social Proof
It is no secret that having a common agreement can affect the decision making process of people as we are more likely to have positive feelings about a certain product, leading us to purchase it when we see millions of other people doing so over other alternatives. Social proof can come in any form, whether it be the sum of people that have bought your product, or the exposure of it from influencers such as celebrities and experts.
In online marketing, we do not necessarily communicate directly with the audience. We execute strategies to persuade our target audience. However, online marketing persuasion has a rule of thumb we should take into account:
Less Is More
You can employ all six persuasion principles in your marketing messages, yet it still won’t be as effective. Not every principle of persuasion will work as well together with some of the market. Instead, what we can do is to find the perfect formula by identifying and learning what kind of persuasion suits best for catering certain audiences to your product and service.
Persuade Individuals Rather Than Groups
Growing assertiveness and individuality across the globe challenges the social proof persuasion, making it less and less effective by the day. We can instead try to personalize our offerings and persuasion to a different kind of audience. Bring out emerging technologies such as VR and AR, location-based targeting, alongside mass-data gathering to further better understand each of your customers on a much more individualistic and personal level.
Learning Beats Testing
You can test out several campaigns at once to see which one proves successful, but in order to find your perfect formula for your target audiences, you need to keep in mind that A/B testing is only for learning. Not only that, learning involves getting continuous feedback from your customers and having to track their behaviours and attitudes towards your marketing message.