6 Scientific Principles of Persuasion

Winning people over requires learning the universal factors that go into how they make decisions

To influence and persuade people are the core of marketing activity. How does it really work? Are we throwing things out into the universe and hoping that someone, somewhere will find our content influential and persuasive? Straylight likes new, and easily understood, ways of explaining the basics and at the end of this post Larry Kim has made an entertaining infographic about it.

In Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion six universal factors that guides decision making are identified and used by Larry Kim.

Customers are heavily influenced by authority, for example. We’re hardwired to follow the lead of people who demonstrate credibility and a depth and breadth of knowledge. Simply possessing these qualities does not an authority make; we have to be able to convey authority to the people we want to influence.

Employing the consistency principle is another fantastic tactic for building persuasion. If we ask a customer to take one big leap of faith and complete an action, they are far less likely to be persuaded than if we’d started small. Asking customers to show their support in a series of smaller actions increases the likelihood they will be consistent in showing support as the requested action increases in size and/or scope.

Learn more about the science of influence and persuasion and how you can use this knowledge to build your business in the infographic below:

PersuasionInfographic

The post was originally posted on Inc.com, click here to find the article