The Persuasion Slide

by Roger Dooley

  Opposing Forces

  Gravity and friction square off against each other on a slide. Too much friction, and gravity doesn’t work. You could make the slide steeper, of course – even a rough-surfaced slide can be navigated if the angle of the incline gets steep enough.

  Even on a smooth slide, gravity has to have a chance to work. If the slide isn’t steep enough, just a little bit of friction will stall the child before the bottom.

  Getting Launched

  While the slide’s angle and its surface smoothness are the major components of whether a child can go from top to bottom easily, there’s one other part of the process that can be missed: the initial nudge.

  As the child sits at the top, usually on a little horizontal platform, he has to use his arms to launch himself onto the slope. Sometimes, smaller children will get a push from mom or dad.

  Either way, a little nudge is necessary to break the inertia of sitting at the top and begin the sliding process.

  After that little nudge, gravity and the angle of the slide will take over. Friction will slow down the child. One of two things will result. If the combination of the slide surface and child’s bottom are slippery enough, he’ll glide to the bottom, leap off, and perhaps run back to repeat the process.

  If there’s too much friction – say, a rough spot halfway down – the child will get stuck and never reach the bottom.

  G – A – N – F

  So, in our simple slide, the four things that determine whether one gets from the top to the bottom can be summed up with these letters:

  G for Gravity.

  A for the Angle, or slope, of the slide; steeper is better.

  N for the initial Nudge.

  F for Friction, the resistance to motion where one contacts the slide; less friction is better.

  This is all we need to know. We may not be equipped to build the kind of multistory corkscrew water-slide you find at water parks, but even those complex structures still embody the G-A-N-F elements.

  In the coming chapters, we’ll see how these four components of the slide embody four key elements of the persuasion process.

  [For notes, updates, contact info, and a free Persuasion Slide workbook visit rogerdooley.com/ps]

  Chapter 2: Two Kinds of Thinking

  Our slide is designed to incorporate human psychology. Philosophers, then psychologists, and, more recently, neuroscientists have been trying to explain how people think and make decisions for centuries.

  From all of this work, there’s one key concept we need to understand. People aren’t always rational, and that’s because, in large part, we all have at least two ways of thinking and making decisions.

  As marketers, our natural tendency is often to focus purely on rational argument – features, specifications, pricing, discounts, company capability, and so on. This ignores that most of our decision-making that is non-conscious – according to Harvard scientist Gerald Zaltman, as much as 95%.3

  Scientists have divided our thought processes in various ways. Let’s take a brief look at some common ones.

  Right Brain vs. Left Brain

  Work by another Nobel Prize winner, Roger Sperry, and other neuroscientists showed that our brain hemispheres have somewhat distinct roles. The initial research was done with subjects whose hemispheres had been surgically separated.

  The left hemisphere, they found, tends to be associated with logic, math, and verbal skills.

  The right hemisphere tends to be associated with emotion, music, and art.

  Pop psychologists seized on this research and launched a thousand books about “tapping into your right brain” and similar topics that over-simplified how our brain hemispheres interact.

  In reality, most thought and decision processes involve multiple brain areas in both hemispheres. One never sees an fMRI brain scan or EEG brain wave display in which one hemisphere is lit up while the other is completely dark.

  Furthermore, our brains are highly adaptable. If we suffer a brain injury, our brains can often redistribute responsibility for key functions to other areas.

  Neuroscientists tend to downplay the popular left brain/right brain stereotype, but I include it here because it’s the most familiar dual brain concept for many of us.

  Lizards and Lemurs

  Another approach that you may have heard of divides the brain into three parts. The “triune brain” theory refers to the reptilian, old mammal, and new mammal brains.

  The highest level of thinking takes place in the new mammal brain, with the reptilian brain handling things like aggression and sexual desire.

  The triune brain theory is mostly out of favor among scientists today, but it surfaces often in marketing and sales discussions due to its emphasis on non-conscious behaviors and decision-making.

  When people about “selling to the lizard brain,” (or, sometimes, the “dinosaur brain”), they are referring to this theory and suggesting that to be persuasive you need to appeal to very basic human instincts.

  System 1 vs. System 2

  The most widely accepted division of thinking and decision-making today comes from the aforementioned Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. His bifurcation of human thought isn’t rooted in brain structures, but rather how we think.

  System 1 is a thought process that is fast, intuitive, and often based on emotion. It may also rely on rules developed in previous experiences. These rules are called heuristics, and are mental shortcuts that avoid consciously re-evaluating something.

  System 2 is what most of us think about when we think about thinking. (Got that?) It’s the rational process where we look at pros and cons, evaluate alternatives, analyze specifications, and think about consequences.

  If you are choosing a restaurant, and say, “I feel like Mexican!” you are using System 1. If you start narrowing your choices based on what you know about the preferences of other members in your group, how much money is in your wallet, how much time you have, and so on, you are using System 2.

  Our Lazy Brains Like Shortcuts

  One of Kahneman’s key insights is that our brains are lazy.

  That isn’t an entirely bad thing. Our brains already consume an outsized portion of our body’s total energy, and we unconsciously strive to conserve that energy.

  One result of this drive for energy efficiency is that our brains look for shortcuts when presented with the need to make decisions.

  Marketers need to understand this preference and adjust their strategies as needed.

  System 1 is quick and energy efficient. If we can make a decision based on past experience, emotion, heuristics, or any other built-in “programs,” we’ll do that.

  System 2 is hard work and consumes precious energy. We are capable of making mental spreadsheets of pluses and minuses. We can compare probable outcomes and consequences. But, if we don’t have to do that work, we won’t.

  Conscious vs. Non-Conscious

  This is my preferred split, and one used by much of the consumer neuroscience industry. Conscious and non-conscious map, more or less, to Kahneman’s System 2 and 1.

  People almost always have multiple influences when they make a decision. Some are conscious. For example, a product has to work for the intended purpose. It has to fit within the available budget. We may want it to have better reviews and expert ratings than other products.

  Non-conscious influences are those we can’t or won’t articulate. They may be based on emotion. They may be due to one or more of the dozens of cognitive biases scientists have uncovered. They may be the basic impulses that evolutionary psychologists talk about.

  For example, if asked why a brand of beer is our favorite, we will probably say we like its taste. In reality, we choose it over similar-tasting beers because its brand image is consistent with our self-image or aspirations.

  We probably won’t admit to being influenced by a celebrity endorsement or a sexy model promoting the product, but these are typical non-conscious influences that do, in fact, af
fect our behavior.

  Both Kinds of Thinking Are Important

  It’s tempting to think we can focus on one type of decision-making process. The most common error is to emphasize logical points of persuasion, like features, benefits, and price.

  A few products, like fragrances, rightly design their ads to appeal entirely to emotions and non-conscious processes. When was the last time you saw a perfume ad that claimed it was “rated as better-smelling by 72% of fragrance wearers?” Or pointed out that it “costs 25% less than the leading brand?”

  Most purchasing decisions, whether business-to-consumer or business-to-business, have both conscious and non-conscious components. Products have to work, but when multiple products can satisfy the basic criteria, non-conscious factors come into play.

  Even when a decision is made based on non-conscious factors, conscious factors can play an important role in justifying the decision.

  For example, I may buy the red convertible because my brain thinks it will make me more attractive, but I’ll need to tell my friends about its resale value, its fuel economy, and other features my conscious mind relies on.

  Enough thinking about thinking… let’s start building your slide!

  [For notes, updates, contact info, and a free Persuasion Slide workbook visit persuasionslide.com]

  Chapter 3: The Persuasion Slide

  The playground slide we learned about in the first chapter is a near-perfect analogy to the persuasion process we go through on our websites, in stores, and in person.

  In the text that follows, I’ll talk about “customers,” but depending on the situation, you can substitute “donors,” “employees,” or other target for your persuasive efforts.

  Here’s how The Persuasion Slide works:

  Figure 3 - The four elements of The Persuasion Slide

  Gravity is the customer’s initial motivation. This motivation includes the needs, wants, and desires they bring with them before they see your offer. They may want to look better, meet new people, make more money, solve a problem, entertain themselves, and so on. If your customer has no initial motivation, your persuasion task will be difficult, if not impossible.

  The Angle is the motivation you provide to your customer. This is your advertising copy, your sales pitch, your imagery, and so on.

  These motivators can be conscious, like the features and benefits of your product. They can be gifts or discounts, like a free e-book or a 25% off coupon.

  The motivators you provide can also be non-conscious, including emotional appeals, sexy imagery, social proof, and hundreds of other things that affect our behavior and decision-making without being consciously processed and evaluated.

  The Nudge is what you do to get the customer’s attention and begin the persuasion process. It could be an email, a magazine advertisement, a popup ad, a block of text on your website, a paid search ad, a phone call, or anything else that the customer sees, hears, or otherwise experiences.

  Just as on a playground slide, Friction is the enemy. It’s the difficulty that the customer faces in getting to the end of the process. This can be real difficulty, as in a form with many fields, confusing instructions, or a hard-to-find action button.

  Friction can also be perceived difficulty, a non-conscious barrier based on factors that make completing the process seem more difficult to the customer’s brain.

  A Simple Example

  In a typical online conversion scenario, a visitor comes to a website and the website operator wants the visitor to take some action – place an order, request information, etc.

  In this case, gravity represents what the visitor wants to get from the website. If it’s a diet site, the visitor may be hoping to become slender and more attractive. Even more fundamentally, they may want to improve their social or romantic life.

  The angle of the slide is the mix of motivators used by the website. This includes headlines, copy, imagery that appeal to the visitor in some combination of conscious and non-conscious ways.

  The nudge is the visible way the site gets the visitors attention and directs it to the desired action. It could be a popup, a big “free trial” button, or any other creative element. Multiple nudges can be used.

  Lastly, friction includes anything likely to get in the way of the desired result. Common friction elements include long forms, confusing instructions, complicated security measures, and many others. Many friction elements fall under the general heading of user experience (UX).

  Imagine we have a blog or newsletter, and we’d like to get people who visit our website to subscribe to updates by email. For most websites, subscribers are highly desirable. We can let them know when we have new content, so they can stay engaged with us. We can communicate with them about other things, like a new book we wrote or, as some sites do, offer them things we want to sell.

  The most common way websites offer subscriptions is with some kind of a “subscribe by email” link, often in a sidebar that also has navigation links, social media buttons, and other content.

  Speaking from experience, this is a very slow way to build subscriptions. Perhaps just one visitor in a thousand will see the link, click it, enter whatever information is required, and click “submit.”

  [A quick note: Throughout this book, I’ll use examples taken from real, live websites captured at the time of writing. I’ll provide links to these sites, but of course their designs may change. What is there when you read this may not match my picture or text. Any commentary or critique, e.g., “This design is a complete failure,” is an editorial opinion and not a statement of fact. Clearly, the owners of the site like it. So do their mothers.]

  Just about all of the marketing blogs I read do a reasonably good job of soliciting subscriptions, so I had to find a category with a little less pressure to perform.

  Here’s a cat blog that features a tiny subscribe link, and, to make the nudge even smaller, the link appears way below the fold. You’ll only find it if you scroll down the page:

  Figure 4 - http://www.wayofcats.com/blog/

  Here’s another cat blog that relies purely on an envelope icon to encourage you to subscribe by email. The placement is good, but it requires conscious effort by the visitor to realize they can get updates in their inbox if the click it.

  Figure 5 - http://www.pawesome.net/

  Indeed, it’s entirely possible that some of the few visitors who notice it will assume that it means “email the blogger” or has some other purpose.

  A Terrible Slide - Deconstructed

  That oft-ignored subscription link is part of a poorly designed slide. If only one in a thousand visitors actually completes the process, we’ve built a slide in which almost nobody reaches the bottom.

  In short, we’ve built a terrible slide. Let’s break it down…

  Figure 6 - A Terrible Slide

  Bad Nudge. First, the “nudge” is completely inadequate. Almost nobody sees the small link, or pays attention to it. This is almost no nudge at all.

  No Gravity, Bad Angle. If a visitor actually pauses to look at the “subscribe by email” link, they are likely to stop right there. We have given them no particular reason to subscribe. So, like a child on a slide that has insufficient slope, they’ll never get moving.

  When the only text in the area uses a call to action like “subscribe,” “sign up,” or similar words, we have done nothing to align our offer with the visitor’s motivation (gravity), nor have we motivated them (angle).

  Bad Friction. Clicking that link is easy enough, but friction can enter in when the visitor is asked to fill in a form with too many boxes, read complex opt-in text, wait for a verification email and then click a link to confirm the subscription, and so on.

  Every additional step in that process adds friction and increases the probability that the visitor won’t make it to the end of the process.

  Wasted Gravity. The visitor probably did arrive with some needs or desires related to the site’s topic. But, the site did nothing
to take advantage of gravity, and the visitor took no action.

  Building a Better Slide

  To continue our slide metaphor with the blogger example, there are several things we can do to increase the probability that a visitor will sign up for a subscription. Creative bloggers address this issue in many ways.

  The next few chapters will focus on how to optimize each element of The Persuasion Slide to get the best possible results.

  [For notes, updates, contact info, and a free Persuasion Slide workbook visit persuasionslide.com]

  Chapter 4: Work With Gravity, Not Against It

  Salesmanship has often been defined as the ability to persuade people to do anything. “He could sell ice to Eskimos!” is a common way of describing the ultimate salesperson. Indeed, selling a product by using intense, hard-sell techniques used to be a popular business model.

  The ability to sell people things they don’t need may be indicative of great persuasive skill, but it’s not a good way to build a sustainable business.

  For one thing, selling that way is really hard work. For another, it suggests rather fluid ethics. Do you want to be the guy or gal who brags about convincing someone to buy something that they could have had for free, or that they won’t ever use?

  Before we build our better slide, we need to be sure we are pointed the right way.