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Consistency
Consistency or congruence is a potent persuasion technique that encourages your prospects to take actions that are consistent with what they already believe and what they’ve done in the past.
Numerous psychological experiments have shown that people are inclined to interpret new information in ways that confirm their pre-existing actions and beliefs. What that means… in slightly plainer English is… that we want to feel that the actions we take are consistent with what we believe now and that the actions we take today are consistent with the actions we’ve taken in the past.
No one wants to be thought of as flighty… or as a flip flopper (changing positions can be campaign suicide in politics)… or as someone who is inconsistent.
We referred to Robert Cialdini’s book Influence in a previous lesson. In that book he refers to two studies conducted at Stanford University that helped demonstrate the lengths people will go to stay consistent with their previous beliefs and actions.
Researchers conducted two experiments to show that once someone agrees to a small request they are more likely to agree to a larger request… even a request that seems unreasonable.
Researchers telephoned 156 housewives (this was the 1960s and there weren’t a lot of house husbands around at the time). They said, “We are calling to ask a number of questions about what household projects you use so we could have this information for our public service publication called The Guide. Would you be willing to give us this information for our survey?”
If the subject said yes, they were asked 8 questions about household soaps and cleaners.
About ⅔ of the women who were called agreed to the survey.
Then a few days later, the researchers called again, this time asking if they could send a survey team of 5-6 men to their homes for 2 hours to classify the household products they used.
Over 50% of the respondents who answered the survey on the phone agreed to the much more inconvenient request to have the survey team come into their homes.
None of the people who refused to answer the questions agreed to the larger request.
The second experiment was similar to the first. This time, 112 Palo Alto homeowners were asked to sign a petition supporting safe driving or to put a small, 3-inch square sign in their windows that read: “Be a safe driver.”
Two weeks later, these homeowners were approached again by a different researcher and asked to put a large sign that said, “Drive Safely” in their yards. The homeowners were shown a picture of what it would look like.
The photo showed the sign was poorly lettered and it almost completely obscured the home behind it. Additionally they were told, “Our men will come out and install it and later come and remove it. It makes just a small hole in your lawn but if this is unacceptable to you we have a special mount which will make no hole.” They were asked to put up the sign for a week and a half.
So what happened?
55% of those who agreed to put up the first, small sign also agreed to put up the large unattractive sign, compared to less than 20% of the control group that hadn’t put up the first, smaller sign.
Perhaps even more interesting, homeowners who had been asked to sign a petition about keeping California beautiful—not about safe driving—were also more likely to agree to put up the big ugly sign.
In other words, even when the two requests weren’t related, simply getting an agreement to the first request increased the compliance with the second.
So how do you use this persuasion technique when you sell? One way is to encourage public commitments. Once someone has committed to something publicly, the social pressure they feel to live up to that commitment is powerful.
Smart servers at restaurants around the world know all about this technique. Before dinner is served—even before the menus are passed around the table—they’ll ask the table, “Who’s having a piece of our award-winning cheesecake tonight?”
These servers are priming their audience to think about dessert. And by getting a positive answer to this question when surrounded by family or friends, they get a “first commitment” that many diners will feel the social pressure to keep.
As each person at the table commits, the pressure for the others at the table also increases. Scientists call this “normative social influence” and the result is dessert orders go up and so do our pants sizes.
Consistency requires us to follow through on tasks we’ve started and commitments we’ve made. Check out how Yelp encourages behavioral consistency with microcopy to encourage reviewers to finish writing a review they’ve started. I typed in the first few words of a review, then paused for a moment. Yelp steps in immediately to keep my going with this message: “Don’t leave us hanging – what else you got?”
After I add a few more sentences, I get even more encouragement… “You’re rolling now – got any more to add?”
And finally, after I post my review, Yelp asks for more, saying, “That was fun. Let’s write another!” and shows me a few of the restaurants I’ve searched for on the site.
By the way, if you’re ever in Salt Lake City, check out Chedda Burger. It’s worth it.
This is a bit harder to do in a single piece of copy, but in a marketing campaign or a funnel, you can ask for mini-commitments along the way. These “micro-conversions” begin a pattern of behavior that help prospects feel an obligation to continue.
Okay, how do you use this in a sales funnel or on a sales page?
If you’ve ever seen a Jeff Walker “Sideways Sales Letter” Launch, you’ve gotten a taste of how micro commitments can be used in a sales funnel.
These campaigns generally consist of 4 videos—although you don’t have to do videos… I suppose you could write 4 emails or create webinars that follow the same structure.
Each video provides a lot of value so prospects have an incentive to watch. Even if they don’t buy, they should walk away with ideas or products they can use.
At the end of each video, you may get a small assignment… stuff like completing a short checklist, or writing out a few goals. It may even be as simple as opting into the next video. Each step along the way supports the decision your prospect made to begin watching.
Here’s an example from our friend and mentor Brian Kurtz that shows how these videos are set up. As we watch each one, our system 1 brains feel compelled to finish the series. We want to be consistent and finish what we started.
I believe it was Andre Chaperon who developed the multi-page presell site… which is basically a long sales page broken down into sections. Each section was its own page and at the bottom, to continue reading, you had to “click to continue”. By the time you’ve read 7-10 pages, you’ve made 7-10 different microcommitments to continue. And the next click to buy just seems like the next logical step.
With each click, you are eliminating unqualified prospects who aren’t interested enough to keep going. And those who are left, continue to opt in, staying consistent to their previous actions.
And Ryan Levesque has shared a case study on Crazy Egg’s blog where he broke up a sign up form for a memory tool kit that asked for several bits of information into a multi-step process where he only asked one question at a time… ending with a request for the email address where he could send the tool kit.
Opt-ins went from about 5% to 19%, a 271% increase which led to a 76% drop in the cost per lead.
This isn’t strictly copywriting… but it is the kind of thinking and advice you should be sharing with your clients in your role as a marketing advisor. If you want your copy to be more effective—so you can charge more for your services—you need to be thinking about other elements in a funnel that can affect the conversion rate.
Let’s look at how Michael Zipursky uses the consistency technique in copy to sell his consulting course. Notice the copy is asking several questions that it will be very hard to say “no” to.
Who doesn’t want more time at home… or to take more vacations… or to fire bad clients… or to give to causes they support? And of course, if you could do all of that, you probably would give up 10% of one client fee to get it.
By getting the prospect to nod her head in agreement as she goes through each question, the copy makes it easier for her to say “yes” when the final pitch comes. She’s already said yes nine times… and if she stays consistent to these previous commitments, she’ll say “yes” again, when asked to buy.
To use this technique with your clients, look for opportunities where you can break up big commitments into smaller ones that are easier for your prospects to make, and which lead to making the next commitment in the sales process.
References:
Leeat Yariv, “I’ll See It When I Believe It—A Simple Model of Cognitive Consistency,” Dissertation, 2002.
Jonathan L. Freedman and Scott C. Fraser, “Compliance Without Pressure: The Foot-In-The-Door Technique,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1966, Vol 4, No2, pp 195-202.
