PRE-SUASION
Pre-Suasion:
Selling Into The
Ideal Moment
BY: DR ROBERT CIALDINI
WHAT HAPPENS in the brains of consumers during the milliseconds
before they make a purchase decision? A lot, actually, and that precious
moment can become key real estate for your next marketing or sales
campaign. In fact, most businesses are so focused on the message
they are trying to convey that they forget to “set the table” in the best
possible way for their message to resonate with consumers.
I researched this phenomenon extensively in preparation for my new
book, Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Infl uence and Persuade,
and my results just may change the way you think about your message
and the context in which it is delivered. The good news is that making
this simple change to break through the clutt er is usually fairly
straightforward, simple and inexpensive.
The theory behind my research is this: if we focus our audience
on a particular idea or concept, they will prioritize all subsequent
information related to that idea or concept. Once they are oriented in
the right direction, they will want to learn more, value the information
more and be more likely to take positive action.
Your website—essentially your company’s “calling card”—is the fi rst
place consumers go to learn about your business. If you sell furniture,
for example, consider which landing page image might have a more
positive eff ect on sofa sales: a photo of puff y clouds or of pennies. In
this example, our research showed that the group viewing the clouds
prior to entering the site were more likely to search and purchase
furniture based on comfort while the group viewing the pennies
focused primarily on price, and therefore spent less on the site overall.
We found, essentially, that consumers focused their att ention on items
that were congruent with their very fi rst impression of the site—either
the comfort of soft clouds or the frugality of literally “watching the
pennies.”
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