“We want them to type in their email and click on the “Join” button”, was the response from my client as I asked him what was the one action he wanted people to take on his landing page. Good. That was clear. But now the question was what else should be on the landing page to persuade people to click.
Like most of my clients the landing page was filled with lots of reasons why the visitor should click and join, but almost all of those reasons were “logical”, and most were about price. The people coming to the landing page didn’t have a relationship with this company yet — it was unlikely they would click and join based on a few weak logical arguments.
I started asking questions:
“What are your potential customers afraid of?”
“What makes them mad or frustrated?”
“Do they feel taken advantage of?”
“How could they feel like they were a hero?”
Silence. My client was ready to tell me all the features and benefits that his service would provide, but he didn’t really know about the emotional state of his potential customers.
That’s not uncommon. In my experience, many teams bringing new products and services to market know only the barest of information about their customers and potential customers, and rarely have done actual audience research on the unconscious needs, emotions, and feelings of their target audience.
Which means that their landing pages, marketing campaigns and advertising are hit and miss at best.
Research in psychology over the past several years shows us clearly that most mental processing occurs unconsciously. Most of the decisions we make are fueled by our unconscious. It is only after we’ve decided to act that we figure out a conscious, logical reason for why we did what we did. We use that conscious logical reason to explain our decisions and actions to ourselves and others, so it’s important to provide those logical reasons. But if you really want to persuade and motivate someone to take action you have to talk to the unconscious. The unconscious understands things like:
- fear
- loss
- sex
- food
- love
- belonging
- being a hero
- danger
- challenge
- mastery
The unconscious pays attention to words if they are short and evoke feelings. But it pays much more attention to pictures, music, and moving images (i.e. video).
If you want to persuade and motivate people to take action you need to know what they are afraid of, afraid of losing, how they feel they can “save” the day, and/or what will make them feel loved or part of the group. Then you need to use some of those ideas in your words, headlines, and have pictures, video, and music that matches. If you want to persuade and motivate people you have to talk to the unconscious.
What do you think? Do you know the unconscious factors and messages that persuade and motivate your target audience?
If you would like to learn more about the research on unconscious mental processing, I recommend:
Strangers to Ourselves: The Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy Wilson
or my book, How To Get People To Do Stuff
and consider attending my seminar on The Science of Persuasion.
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