What are the Techniques of Persuasion

What are the six most common techniques of Persuasion?

1. Liking: It’s much easier to influence someone who likes you. People like people who are like themselves.
2. Social proof. People like to follow one another, so influencers imply the herd is moving the same way.
3. Consistency. Most people prefer to keep their word. If people make a commitment, particularly if it’s out loud or in writing, they are much more likely to keep it. Influencers should try to gain verbal or written commitments.
4. Scarcity. Even when companies have warehouses full of a product, they still advertise using time-limited offers that emphasise scarcity. People want what they can’t have, or at least what might be running short.
5. Authority. People are strongly influenced by experts. Successful influencers flaunt their knowledge to establish their expertise.
6. Reciprocity. Give something to get something. When people feel indebted to you they are more likely to agree to what you want.

There techniques were adapted from how to influence and persuade people (from Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004).  Any marketing program should incorporate these techniques to get the attention of perspective customers.

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Tweeting or Sex?

Do you feel a compulsion to check your phone for activity on Twitter? Tweeting or checking emails may be harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol, according to researchers who tried to measure how well people could resist their desires. They even claim that while sleep and sex may be stronger urges, people are more likely to give in to longings or cravings to use social and other media because it is free!

A team headed by Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University’s Booth Business School say their experiment, using BlackBerrys to gauge the willpower of 205 people aged between 18 and 85 in and around the German city of Würtzburg is the first to monitor responses outside a laboratory.

The participants were signaled seven times a day over 14 hours for seven consecutive days so they could message back whether they were experiencing a desire at that moment or had experienced one within the last 30 minutes, what type it was, the strength (up to irresistible), whether it conflicted with other desires and whether they resisted or went along with it. There were 10,558 responses and 7,827 “desire episodes” reported.

“Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success,” said Hofmann. Sleep and leisure were the most problematic desires, suggesting “pervasive tension between natural inclinations to rest and relax and the multitude of work and other obligations”.

The researchers found that as the day wore on, willpower became lower. Their paper says highest “self-control failure rates” were recorded with media. “Resisting the desire to work was likewise prone to fail. In contrast, people were relatively successful at resisting sports inclinations, sexual urges, and spending impulses, which seems surprising given the salience in modern culture of disastrous failures to control sexual impulses and urges to spend money. Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist.”

Social media is free and hard to resist! We are all hardwired to desire connection.

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The Gentle Art of Persuasion….

Persuasion is often discussed as though changing people’s minds is about using the right arguments, the right tone of voice or the right negotiation tactic. I want to look at persuasion a different way, free from creating buyers remorse. Effective influence and persuasion is about understanding people’s motivations not manipulation. Learning to shift a customer’s perspective the best kind of persuasion. If you can change a customer’s perspective on a trend, for example, you can drive their sales through the roof.

1. Goal of affiliation

For the most part humans are very social, so they want to be liked. Rejection is no fun and we’ll do almost anything to avoid it.  We try to affiliate with other people by behaving in ways we assume will be attractive, like agreeing with them or complimenting them.  Not only do we want approval from specific people, we also want it from society at large  We want the things we do, think and believe to be broadly in line with what others do, think and believe.  Most people are joiners and followers so influencers like to give us something to join and someone to follow.  The current explosion in social media leverages this fact!

2. Goal of accuracy

To achieve our goals in what is a complicated world, we have to be continually trying to work out the best course of action. Finding what works!  People are always striving for the ‘right’ answer.  Influencers understand our need to be right. The techniques of social proof and scarcity both nag at our desire to be accurate because we assume other people are likely to be right and we don’t want to miss out on a bargain or a trend. Understanding social proof when it helps keep a client current and relevant is huge marketing tool.  Use real statistics to let the customer know their strategy is working and valuable. Compare their results to their competitor. It is essential to manage a customer’s expectations to validate their goal of accuracy.

3. Goal of maintaining positive self-concept

People want to protect their view of themselves. We work hard to keep our world-views intact: we want to maintain our self-esteem, to continue believing in the things we believe in and to honour whatever commitments we have espoused in the past. Persuaders and influencers can leverage this goal by invoking our sense of self-consistency.  Designing products and services which help your customer stay consistent with their self image makes selling easy. People will go to surprising lengths to maintain their positive view of themselves.  Make your product or service the smart, highly valued choice. Your job of selling will turn effortless.

Understanding why people do what they do is essential in drafting and executing your brand strategy.  Follow us on Facebook or find us on Twitter.  Call today 713-628-0701 for more ways to build and execute your brand strategy.

Emotional Branding…..the Compelling Why?

Creating an emotional connection between customers and a brand is probably the highest achievement in marketing.  Most often, brands strive for this mark by being the best at something and then reinforcing that position at every opportunity. The bond or connection is forged when you can answer the compelling why? Why should a customer buy your brand?  What compels customers to choose you?  If you have answered the why, you have started the emotional branding process.

Think about Apple and Starbucks as examples of emotional brands.  Have they created a connection with their customers?

The best way is to create a brand connection is for them to experience a difference.  Why are you different? Is your product one of a kind?  If not, then is your service exceptional?  When building emotion into your brand customers go through stages….

Emotional Stage 1 – How you get someone interested? Why should they choose you?

Emotional Stage 2 – How do you get someone to consider a purchase? Do you offer value or experience?

Emotional Stage 3 – How do you continually reinforce that their purchase decision was absolutely the right decision?  Did you create value or experience?

Emotional Stage 4 – How do you create a loyal customer such that they want to continue to buy your product or service? Can you cross or up sell?

Emotional Stage 5 – How do you create a brand connection so that your brand becomes part of your customer’s life?  Do you have a way to communicate to your customers: email, Facebook, twitter or text? Remember, out of sight out of mind.

Emotional Stage 6 – How do you get your audience to be your ambassador?

Getting customers emotionally invested in your brand success is the pinnacle of marketing success.  Find us on Facebook & Twitter @ata2udmedia

Extracted from the web @ http://www.businessesgrow.com/2012/02/01/the-six-stages-of-emotional-branding/

Email or Social Media? Or Both?

A debate continues surrounding the value of email marketing and social networks (social media). Should businesses focus more attention on their social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook or email interactions? Or both?

Why does it matter how, as long as, you are communicating with your existing clients and getting referrals?

According to MediaPost Publications, the majority of costumers view email as the least intrusive way for companies to engage. Customers trust email more than social networks. Period. They believe they know how to avoid being scammed in email but do not fully understand the risks in social networks. Email is also viewed as being a good source for detailed information or when looking for exclusive deals because it goes beyond a post or 140 characters.

ExactTarget, recently released research called “The Meaning of Like.” The report found that consumers tend to view a “like” as a way of bookmarking content and sharing information with friends – not a form of consent for marketing. Also, Facebook engagement is more for entertainment purposes. Although customers can still get information and access to deals it offers a fun, different experience with the company.   Studies of buying habits around Christmas 2011 suggested a very low influence rate for social media.

Twitter by contrast is simple and to the point. It also fosters a relationship between the brand and the customer, which can generate brand loyalty and trust.

So, which is better? There really is one channel that surpasses the other. Facebook, Twitter and Email all have their audience and strengths in getting your brand message out. However, there are channels that are more appropriately suited for delivering different messages to the consumer.  Facebook is more for entertainment, so let loose a little and have fun. Twitter is SEO machine and is perfect for engaging in a conversation with your customers. Get to know them and let them get to know the company on a more personal level. Email should be used when you need to share some updates or detailed information.  An email is private.  Emails are bulk carries of information and offers including links to your website and social networks.1

At Ata2ud Media our experience shows that email is a very essential part of communicating with your clients and driving traffic to your social sites.   Call us today (713-628-0701) to get your brand message integrated across all your customer networks.

Extracted from the web @ http://kylelacy.com/is-email-more-important-than-social-media/

Does Mobile Spell the End of the PC?

Spending more time on your mobile device then your PC? There’s a trend slowly building and it may not be good for the PC industry. I’m not speaking about tablet and smartphone growth — although that’s part of the trend — but virtualization on mobile devices. This solution allows remote PC access from a tablet, for example, and could hurt already slowing PC sales.

I wouldn’t call this a new phenomenon: There have been remote access solutions on mobile devices for several years. Think of Citrix’s GoToMyPC or LogMeIn’s Ignition. These and similar services allow you to use a mobile devices to interact with the desktop of a Windows PC at home, so you could work on a Word document from an Android tablet, for example.

Virtualization is maturing quickly, as are the mobile chips that power smartphones and tablets. This week at CES, I played a graphic-intensive PC game with stunning visuals and fast action on an Android tablet. But the game itself was actually running on a Windows desktop. Using remote access software from Splashtop on the Asus Transformer Prime tablet, you couldn’t tell. See for yourself in the video demo I captured showing the zero-lag.

Connecting a tablet or phone to remotely use your own computer is just one part of the virtualization story. OnLive has a virtualization service that lets you connect a Windows machine in the cloud. That’s not your PC, but a “PC running on the web,” so to speak. I’ve done this myself with EC2 on Amazon’s Web Services and it only cost me a few dollars a month to run an instance of Windows on a PC I can use, but don’t own: Far cheaper than buying, maintaining and powering a physical computer.

Combine cloud streaming of computer applications and improved remote access apps, there’s less incentive to buy a new computer. Instead, you can either get more mileage out of an old computer or check out one that’s available in the cloud.

This is not to suggest the PC industry is dead, but PC dominance is slipping. Sales have started stagnating, and last year smartphones outsold computers.

At Ata2ud Media, we step outside our echo chamber to listen and learn.  Find us on Facebook.com/ata2udmedia or follow us on twitter.com/ata2udmedia. 

Extracted from the web @ http://gigaom.com/mobile/mobile-virtualization-another-nail-in-the-pc-coffin/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom

The Why of Social Media…..

Business owners are always asking, “why should I use social media for my business?” Recently, I found a blog written by Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/active-social-media.htm) that gives a great explanation.

Social media has become a daily part of nearly everyone’s life. According to studies by The Pew Foundation, Nielson Research and others, millions of people are active on at least one social networking site each day.  Numbers alone do not answer the “why” of social media. Here’s why an active social media presence is so important:

Search Engine Optimization
The search engines pay attention to social media data and use it to determine search engine ranking. The search engines view content links that are shared frequently in social media as trusted. Since the search engines want to provide valuable search results, they will consider this as a ranking factor which means that the more frequently content gets shared in social media, the better chances it has of ranking well. Obviously, a search engine presence (or lack thereof) plays a huge role in the success of a website.

Traffic Generation
While it’s great to get social media followers, the ultimate goal of a social media marketing campaign should be to drive traffic to your business website. That’s why it’s so important to have the right social media followers, ones that are actually interested in the products or services that you offer. Thousands upon thousands of followers don’t mean much if they never take action and visit your website or blog to learn more.

Public Relations
Social media provides information in real time and has become a primary source of news. While it shouldn’t necessarily replace traditional PR or submitting online press releases, it’s another avenue to share information about your business and interact with members of the press.

Brand Building
Every industry is competitive online today. The businesses that will find the most success are the ones that are transparent and willing to share information with target audience members in order to become a trusted source. Social media is one avenue to share such information and connect with potential clients or customers in order to give them a positive view of your business and brand.

Referrals
Everything in the social media world revolves around connection.  Connection is your ability to interact with satisfied customers and seek referrals.  If you believe 70-80% of your new business comes from repeat customers and referrals, then using social media to network is a very nature extension of your current business development model.

Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to learn more about using social media to build your brand.