My 11th week in the CXL Institute Mini Degree of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) — A Review

So I started with Peep Laja’s course on “People and Psychology” a few weeks back and this week was the fourth week of the course where I completed some part of another BIG lesson. This big lesson is called “A Big List of Persuasion Techniques”.

This blog is about what I learned this week in the lesson. This is the 5th course of the “Foundations” section in the Conversion Optimization Mini Degree from CXL Institute.

In this lesson, Peep talks about key persuasion techniques that have scientific studies to back them. For each persuasion technique, Peep has used explanation, examples, a scientific use case, and application tips (telling us how to apply the science).

Indeed, these persuasion techniques were something new and exciting for me to learn.

Lesson 4: A Big List of Persuasion Techniques (Continuation from last week)

Forer Effect

The Forer effect, discovered by Psychologist Dr. Betram Forer, states that when we are given mostly vague, generally positive statements about ourselves (like in horoscopes), we tend to inject our meaning into it and therefore, it feels like it personally applies to us.

So when someone does say such generalized positive affirmations about us, it gives us the feeling of “oh finally someone said it”. Therefore, we end up accepting it without too much critical thinking.

This principle can be particularly useful when selling “life transformation” packages, products, or services.

Cognitive Dissonance

When our actions or situations don’t align with our beliefs, we either:

• Downgrade the importance of elements in the dissonant situation/action
• Change our thoughts that cause our beliefs
• Change our beliefs altogether and create a new belief system

We do this to maintain “self-consistency”, which is often also called “adaptive preference formation” or simply changing the way we form our preferences (not just adapting our preferences).

I personally believe that some amount of cognitive dissonance is essential in our lives if we have to grow as human beings.

Peep also talks about the story of “Fox and Sour Grapes” where a fox tries to climb and get grapes but when he is unable to get those grapes, he changes his complete belief system that “he didn’t want those grapes because they were not ripe yet”.

Choice-supportive bias

Our memory helps us feel good about the choices we make. When we make a choice, we attribute it with superior features which may or may not have been a part of the item we chose.

From this we can conclude that we have a bias in support of our choices; we see the items we chose more favorably than the items we rejected.

Ambiguity aversion

When something is unclear or uncertain (or “ambiguous”), we tend to interpret it as “risky”. In purchase transactions in real life, uncertain terms are often interpreted to favor the supplier/seller. So we are averse (avoidant) towards such unclear terms and interpret them as risky.

However, we must also note that curiosity increases attention. Tiny doses of uncertainty can help build curiosity, but this curiosity may turn into doubt pretty quickly if you keep them curious for a long time.

A great example Peep gives here is a statistic behind URL shorteners. Because URL shorteners use an unreadable string, they pose uncertainty. In contrast, full URLs post no uncertainty of where the link leads the user and therefore are 3 times more likely to be clicked.

We can combine the two by creating branded short URLs with tools like Bit.ly

Online persuasion tips

• Actively look for and eliminate any vague information from your offer and communication style during the editing phase of your copy.
• When creating a copy for a call to action (CTA) button, keep in mind that being specific while writing this copy will make it less ambiguous and increase chances of conversion on that CTA.
• Tell them what comes next (lay out the next step of the process)
• Provide specific discounts and avoid generic “range-based” discounts.
• Find ambiguities among your competitors’ assets and make yourself unique by clarifying those ambiguities in your offer.

Belonging & Conformity

As humans, we all have an innate desire to belong to a group. Being a part of the group promotes our survival through nurturing and stable relationships.

We all crave social approval from that group.

We often only prefer taking actions that the group approves of or we see them commonly in our accepted group. We may even act with hostility and/or show strong disapproval toward other groups that are not our own “home” group or those that are in opposition to our “home” group.

We don’t just use products in isolation; humans are social animals. We often seek the opinion of our friends in different groups we belong to, before making a decision. For example, before buying a CRM, a B2B SaaS owner is more likely to buy the CRM that’s recommended by other B2B SaaS owners around them.

We might not always follow what the group says or does, but more often than not, it’s likely that we will find it hard to make a choice that goes against our groups.

This is literally how “Influencer Marketing” has grown to where it is today. We don’t always notice a brand instantly even if they aggressively display their ads in the majority of forms of media we consume. Once an influencer talks about it, we are likely to form a strong opinion for or against it.

In this section, Peep cites an important study from 2011 by Paul Rose and JongHan Kim. This study found out that the higher someone’s need to belong in the group is, the more he seeks out others’ opinion in the group before taking a decision (so his approval by the group doesn’t decline). If someone in the group is high “self-monitoring”, the more likely they are to become an “opinion leader”.

Online persuasion tips:

• Build a community around your product that allows people to come together and form genuine connections. Make sure you keep them strictly moderated as unmoderated social media groups tend to quickly turn to chaos.
• Find influencers from multiple social groups around your product/in your niche.
• Showing a prospect that their social/peer group trusts you is a great of building trust with them. Keep the focus on the prospect and research in groups that the prospect belongs to.