Dominate B2B Marketing Persuasion With This Psychological Toolbox

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Demographics, defining prospective customers by observable characteristics such as age, sex, and location have been the soup du jour for marketing forever. That means there are billions of dollars behind this strategy.

However, as effective as demographics might have been for businesses in the past, they are rightly under threat by the power of a new interest in consumer psychology and psychographics, the unobservable preferences, feelings, and identifications that make people who they are.

This shift to focusing on customer psychology comes at a critical juncture in the current business timeline. With the ubiquity of mobile technology and connected devices added with the rise of the location-agnostic laptop professional, the old model on which demographics relied, static people in static places having static experiences, no longer demonstrates the complexity of the world we live in.

As researchers explained in the report “Targeting or Tailoring? Maximizing Resources to Create Effective Health Communications” published in the journal ”Marketing Health Services,”

Where there is complexity, being able to leverage psychographics and consumer psychology is an obvious benefit, as it is more likely to accurately describe a person.

But harnessing the power of psychology to benefit your business does not have to be difficult, as there are proven persuasion tools you can use today to boost your B2B lead generation and marketing efforts.

Psychological Persuasion Tools For Dominating Your B2B Lead Generation and Marketing

The secret to shifting your marketing and lead generation is to supercharge your copy with triggers shown to influence human behavior.Thankfully, Robert Cialdini, author of the marketing classic “Influence,” endured the pains of research so we could list them here.

They are:
1) Reciprocity
2) Scarcity
3) Friendship & Liking
4) Authority
5) Consensus
6) Commitment & Consistency

Let’s look at these more closely.

Reciprocity

This is triggered when you give first. Because we as people are generally conditioned to give to those who give to us. An example: a realtor gives a free housing report in return for a lead’s contact information.

Scarcity

Ever watched late night or Saturday morning infomercials and notice that each offer seems limited and features a big countdown clock that continues ticking down until the exclusive price offer expires? That’s scarcity—and it works. People want what is less accessible. An example: a limited edition book signed by the author.

Friendship and liking

We like to help out people that we like and respect. But you knew that, didn’t you friend?

Authority

This trigger goes off when we choose to be associated with something or someone trusted. The effect makes the person using it the de facto expert. An example: a business person will place logos of trusted companies they’ve worked with alongside their headshot. Authority results from the connection.

Consensus

There’s a story commonly shared about researchers who placed one university test subject in a rigged experiment with actors posing as his peers. With this student thinking he’d been invited to participate in a simple exercise put on by the psychology department he agreed.

The task: count how many lines were presented at the front of the exam room.
There were four lines although all the plants reported seeing five. Researchers were perhaps amused or surprised to find the subject going with the crowd seven times out of ten, regardless of what they clearly saw.

Consensus is that urge we have to do what the cool kids are doing. An example: a membership site proclaims the millions of members who’ve joined their site on the front page.

Commitment and consistency

If you can show someone they have pre-committed to a task and they are part way done with it, you can harness the powerful triggers of commitment and consistency.

Often times, people will go against their better judgment just to look consistent with their proclaimed beliefs. An example: internet forms with a progress bar at the top showing you’re 50% completed with the process.

Jean-Marc Saint Laurent
Jean-Marc Saint Laurent is the Founder of Saint313, a B2B Lead Generation Consulting firm helping companies get on the phone with future clients. He’s gotten people valuable sales calls and opportunities with decision-makers at top companies such as Zillow, Hyundai, AT&T, Wells Fargo and more using LinkedIn.

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