by Roger Dooley
To add to the friction of that process, a unique financial aid form might be a requirement as well. Recommendations from teachers and counselors, also unique, might have to be collected. Preparing an application for just one college could easily take many hours of effort by both the student and others like parents, counselors, and teachers.
Not long ago, one institution noted for its particularly brutal application process was the University of Chicago. Multiple unique essays and a variety of short questions, none of which could be recycled from other applications, made applicants dread applying to Chicago.
The extreme friction of Chicago’s application impacted their statistics. They accepted a greater percentage of applicants than schools of similar academic reputation, impacting their rating for “selectivity.”
While a cursory look at the statistics might suggest it was easier to get into Chicago than its academic peers, in reality the challenging application served to weed out (or scare off) many applicants who weren’t serious about the school or feared its academic rigor.
Cutting Application Friction
As the competition for students increased in the last few years, colleges realized that their application process was reducing the number of applicants they received. This was a serious issue. Not only did a smaller applicant pool make it more difficult to maintain academic standards, it also had a negative impact on their rankings.
So, schools looked for ways to take friction out of the process. After all, if you were on a student’s short list of possibilities, an easy application process would make completion of this slide far more likely.
While no U.S. university has made applying quite as simple as Amazon’s One-Click ordering, they have made great strides in that direction.
Now, the Common Application allows students to complete just one form and apply to many schools. While some colleges still have a few unique add-on requirements, the process is vastly simpler.
And what about the University of Chicago? They finally decided to minimize friction and adopted the Common App, resulting in a huge surge in applications.
Slide 3 – Enrollment
Once a student applies, the ball is back in the school’s court. The process varies – some schools accept only a tiny fraction of their applicants, others take almost anyone who can find the money to pay tuition. Some schools provide prompt notification of acceptance, while others wait until spring (typically the final day in March).
When the decisions are finally made, applicants are notified and must decide. Most often, the deadline is about a month later. Students can review their acceptances, compare financial aid packages, and make a final decision.
This slide is perhaps the most difficult stage for the college.
Getting on a student’s list can be challenging, but there can be multiple winners. A good nudge and a little motivation can make the application happen, too, in today’s low friction environment.
In the decision phase, though, there is only one winner. A student will choose one school and reject the others.
So, schools often work hard to add more motivation to this slide – they may send still more persuasive information, have current students phone the applicant, hold on-campus events, and so on. All are of these activities are intended to motivate the student to choose that school.
Friction isn’t much of a factor in this phase – compared to the application process, the forms to begin the enrollment process are simple.
One element that could be considered friction, though, is the cost of attendance. This amount often varies from school to school, even for each individual student. Except for truly wealthy students, the cost is a “difficulty” that can’t be avoided. Schools that reduce friction with lower cost to attend have a better chance of enrolling students compared to similar schools with higher price tags.
Of course, most colleges find ways to reduce this friction for the most desirable candidates. Recruited athletes get full scholarships at some schools. Academic stars may get awarded merit aid packages.
All but a few colleges enroll fewer than half of the students whom they accept, and many colleges succeed in enrolling only a small fraction. Hence, most schools devote considerable attention to making this slide as steep and smooth as they can.
Sub-Slides
It’s possible to create even smaller slides. For example, in the final decision phase a school might find that students who attend an “accepted students weekend” event are far more likely to enroll than those who don’t.
So, that school might establish a key objective of getting as many accepted students as possible to visit the campus for one of these events.
In this case, getting students to the event could become its own little persuasion process, with one or more nudges, motivation, etc.
[For notes, updates, contact info, and a free Persuasion Slide workbook visit persuasionslide.com]
End Notes
1 Sugarman, Joseph (2009-05-18). The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters (p. 45). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
2 Dan Kennedy Live: The Greased Chute, October 29, 2007, https://youtu.be/N2ffGAQanuI
3 Zaltman, G., & Zaltman, L. H. (2008). Marketing metaphoria, what seven deep metaphors reveal about the minds of consumers. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.
4 A Pretty Woman Beats a Good Loan Deal, http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/pretty-woman-better.htm
5 Shampanier, K., Mazar, N., & Ariely, D. (2007). Zero as a Special Price: The True Value of Free Products. Marketing Science, 26(6), 742-757. DOI: 10.1287/mksc.1060.0254
6 Unconscious Branding by Douglas Van Praet, http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/unconscious-branding-van-praet.htm
7 See my post, Convince With Simple Fonts - http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/simple-fonts.htm
8 Iyengar, Sheena, When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? - http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/articles/Choice_is_Demotivating.pdf
9 See my post, Decoy Marketing - http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/decoy-marketing.htm
10 See my post, More Decoys: Compromise Marketing - http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/compromise-marketing.htm
11 22 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics, http://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate
12 Excellent Analytics Tip #13: Measure Macro AND Micro Conversions. http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-13-measure-macro-and-micro-conversions/ Updated Dec 27, 2013
13 Ryan Levesque, Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy…Create a Mass of Raving Fans…and Take Any Business to the Next Level, Dunham Books, 2015
14 The Science of Micro-Commitments: Transform Prospects into Buyers with 5 Small Steps, The Daily Egg, Ryan Levesque, http://blog.crazyegg.com/2015/08/04/science-of-micro-commitments/
15 Reminder Packaging Helps Patients Take Medications as Directed. Health Behavior News Service - http://www.cfah.org/hbns/2011/reminder-packaging-helps-patients-take-medications-as-directed
16 Smartphone medication adherence apps: Potential benefits to patients and providers, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3919626/
17 The effectiveness of interventions using electronic reminders to improve adherence to chronic medication: a systematic review of the literature www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3422829/
18 Manley, Andrew - Processing fluency effects: Can the content and presentation of participant information sheets influence recruitment and participation for an antenatal intervention?, Patient Education and Counseling, March, 2015, http://www.pec-journal.com/article/S0738-3991(14)00478-9/abstract
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
About The Author
Praise for Brainfluence
Introduction: Why Marketers Need a New Persuasion Mode
l
Sad Truth: We Are Lousy at Persuasion
“Don’t Confuse Me With Facts”
Science to the Rescue?
The Divide Between Business and Academia
Our Goal
The Paradox of (Marketing) Choice
Chapter 1: Slide-Ology 101
The Origin of The Persuasion Slide
Inclined to Slide
And, in the Other Corner, Friction
Opposing Forces
Getting Launched
G – A – N – F
Chapter 2: Two Kinds of Thinking
Right Brain vs. Left Brain
Lizards and Lemurs
System 1 vs. System 2
Our Lazy Brains Like Shortcuts
Conscious vs. Non-Conscious
Both Kinds of Thinking Are Important
Chapter 3: The Persuasion Slide
A Simple Example
A Terrible Slide - Deconstructed
Building a Better Slide
Chapter 4: Work With Gravity, Not Against It
Align Your Message
You vs. We
Got Gravity?
Chapter 5: The Nudge
Overcoming Inertia
The Motivation Component of the Nudge
Two Nudge Extremes
Chapter 6: Making A Steeper Slide
Initial Motivation
Death of the Hard-Selling Salesman
Go with Gravity
Conscious Motivation Boosters
Gifts and Bribes
Non-conscious Motivators
Cialdini’s Six Principles
More Non-Conscious Motivation: Evolutionary Psychology
Non-Conscious Motivator Example: FREE!
Many More Non-Conscious Motivators
Chapter 7: Fighting Friction
Types of Real Friction
Blockers
Difficulty and Effort Increase Friction
Form Friction
Confusion and Uncertainty
Other Kinds of Real Friction
Perceived Friction: “Imaginary” Difficulty
Choice Friction
Abandoned Shopping Carts
Low Conversion
The Frictionless Order
Chapter 8: If It’s Not Motivation, It’s Friction
The Friction Hunt
Landing Pages – Pure Conversion
Other Website Pages
Chapter 9: Small Slides
My Not-So-Simple Luggage Buy
Micro Conversions
Micro-Commitments
Truly Complex Slides
Chapter 10: Final Takeaway
Free Resources
Appendix: Real-World Slides
Example: Compliance With Medical Instructions
Getting a Patient to Take An Entire Course of Antibiotics
The Typical Scenario
Gravity – The Patient’s Motivation
The Nudge
Enhanced Nudging
Better Nudges, Better Results
The Angle – Motivation from Health Care Professionals
Conscious Motivators
Non-Conscious and Emotional Motivators
Reducing Friction
Multi-stage Slide Example: College Enrollment
Slide 1 – Making the “List”
Slide 2 – The Application
Cutting Application Friction
Slide 3 – Enrollment
Sub-Slides
End Notes
