Persuasive psychology is the art and science of influencing people's thoughts, feelings, and actions. It can help you create a brand voice that resonates with your audience, builds trust, and drives conversions. In this article, you'll learn how to apply some of the most effective persuasive psychology techniques to improve your brand voice and tone.
The first step to creating a persuasive brand voice is to understand your audience. Who are they? What are their needs, goals, challenges, and motivations? How do they communicate and what tone do they prefer? By researching and segmenting your audience, you can tailor your brand voice to match their expectations and preferences. You can also use tools like personas, empathy maps, and surveys to get deeper insights into your audience's psychology.
People are wired to mimic others to create bonds. We like what's familiar. When you understand your audience at a deep level, you can speak to them as one of them. Featuring people like them in videos and ads, using language they use in copy and content, and so on makes your audience far more likely to feel positively toward your brand.
The words you choose to communicate your brand voice can have a substantial influence on how your audience perceives and responds to your message. You can employ persuasive words such as 'you', 'because', 'free', 'now', and 'imagine' to trigger emotions, generate curiosity, highlight benefits, and motivate action. For instance, using the word 'you' makes your message more personal and pertinent to your audience; the word 'because' provides a rationale or justification for your message, which can boost compliance and trust; the word 'free' appeals to your audience's desire for value and savings; the word 'now' creates a feeling of urgency and encourages swift action; and the word 'imagine' activates your audience's imagination and helps them envision your message.
A key thing to remember is that words do make or break your content even now! It's incredibly well known that YouTube videos that have the word 'you' in the title tend to perform better. There are great platforms like Coschedule that can help you better understand whether or not you are using the words right in your titles! And you can always use ChatGPT to check the persuasive psychology in captions and other content!
Dr. Robert Cialdini, a renowned expert in the field of persuasive psychology, identified six principles of persuasion; reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking and scarcity. These principles can be used to enhance your brand voice and make it more persuasive. For instance, you could offer free gifts or discounts to trigger reciprocity, ask for small commitments or testimonials to build commitment and consistency, display social proof such as reviews or ratings to boost social proof, showcase your credentials or awards to establish authority, use humor or compliments to increase liking and highlight the uniqueness or availability of your offer to create scarcity.
While being familiar with the principles of persuasion is great, the trick is in the application. For instance, in the context of price anchoring in a comparison article, it's not just about presenting competitor prices alongside your product. A more impactful approach would involve weaving your brand’s unique tone and style into the article while using language that resonates with your audience. This ensures the consistency of your brand's voice while effectively applying the principles of persuasion in context. For example, using the principle of scarcity in a limited-time offer, or leveraging social proof in customer testimonials.
Google did some great research on this as part of their "messy middle" series. Each brand and audience is slightly different however, so these behavioural heuristics should form the starting point of your own AB testing programme. You need to prove what works for you, otherwise you just end up with everythere, everywhere, all at once.
To improve your brand voice, it's important to use simple, direct, and active language that conveys your message without confusion or ambiguity. You can also employ techniques such as chunking (breaking down your message into smaller and manageable pieces), formatting (using headings, subheadings, lists, and white space to organize and highlight your message), editing (removing unnecessary words, jargon, or filler that dilute your message), and proofreading (checking and correcting any errors in spelling, grammar, or punctuation that undermine your credibility).
Communicating with clear and direct language is crucial but context is just as important. Always ensure you write for the person with the least background knowledge. This approach guarantees that your communications are accessible to all your audience segments. However, avoid over-explaining. Instead, provide just enough background information to ensure understanding of your key messages. Always do the heavy, lifting for your readers. In other words, present information clearly, ensuring it's easy to find and understand. Structure your content logically to guide them effortlessly through your message.
Finally, you can improve your brand voice by testing and optimizing it based on feedback and data. A/B testing can compare two versions of your message to see which one performs better, while analytics measure and analyze the results of your message. Additionally, surveys can provide insights into your audience's opinion, preferences, or suggestions on your message. Reviews are also useful for learning from the comments, ratings, or testimonials from your audience. Through testing and optimizing your brand voice, you can learn what works and what doesn't, and make adjustments accordingly.
A/B testing, a brand voice experiment, reveals what resonates best, backed by empirical evidence. Data, the lifeblood of effective communication, measures message performance, guiding informed decisions. Continuous optimization, not a one-time effort, involves systematic experimentation and data analysis, empowering your brand voice to stay relevant in the ever-shifting landscape of audience preferences. It's the compass steering your communication from a static monologue to a responsive dialogue, aligning seamlessly with evolving audience expectations.
When designing your AB testing programme, try to prioritise tests that make a big impact first. By upweighting the scores of hypothesis that test important customer behaviors (as opposed to basic site design elements) you are more likely to run more impactful tests that can give insight in weeks, instead of months. Optimise for people, not pages.
Keep close attention to the audience that is being built by your brand execution. Does the profile of your growing community match the intended audience you want to reach?
It's important to maintain your brand's voice consistently across all touchpoints and marketing activities. This approach creates familiarity and builds trust with your audience. When it comes to measuring the long-term impact of a brand it's important to look beyond immediate metrics like click-through rates. Rather focus on long-term brand health indicators such as brand equity, customer lifetime value, sentiment and advocacy. Better yet, actively engaging your audience through surveys, interviews, and interactive feedback is a direct and effective way to gauge brand impact. These are true measures of a persuasive and effective brand voice.
One of the best things content marketers can do to take full advantage of persuasive psychology is to stop thinking like a marketer. When marketers use only "marketer thinking" in their content strategy, they create content that wouldn't persuade them to take the desired action. Remember, you're also a consumer. Think about the words and content examples that you ignored. Think about the ones that frustrated you or made you feel like they're only trying to persuade you to buy something and benefit them. Thinking about what persuades you as a consumer can help you improve your success as a marketer.