Articles About Influence and Persuasion Science and Practice
Follow The Crowd? Or Go It Alone?
By Steve Martin, CMCT
Excepts:
In summary, the study showed that fear can lead to messages using social proof as potentially being more persuasive than messages that use scarcity information. However feelings of romance would cause the opposite to be the case.
There are several implications of this study that could be of importance to marketers, salespeople and managers.
- Imagine for example that your organisation is considering placing advertisements in a series of magazines or perhaps on the internet. As well as asking questions about where your ad will appear in the publication it might also be appropriate to ask what will precede your ad so you can be sure that the effectiveness of your ad won’t backfire due to the emotional status of the reader being influenced by a story or article they have read immediately before seeing your advertisement.
- Similarly managers might consider taking steps to assess the emotional state of their teams before deciding whether to frame their communications or requests in terms of social proof or scarcity. For example if people are uncertain or perhaps fearful of the future they will be more persuaded and guided by messages that employ the social proof heuristic.
- For those working in sales this research suggests that spending a few moments describing a situation, case study or even another customers experience to evoke an emotional response in your target customer might be a worthwhile thing to do providing that a) it is done so ethically and b) the appropriate social proof or scarcity heuristic is then employed in any subsequent message.
Read full article: http://www.insideinfluence.com/article.html
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This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
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