Basically, your online success is highly correlated with convincing: convincing yourself to take action, and convincing others to do something (buying your product, filling a survey, approving your blog comment, etc.).
Convincing can be directly or indirectly. In both situations you want the people in front of you to do something.
Convincing yourself to take action regardless your emotional state is called self-discipline and that’s a whole other subject.
Before we continue, I’ll share with you my experience with convincing, and why this post is essential for every internet marketer.
Since I was a kid, I always knew that my convincing skills were poor, but I never knew that it would affect my internet marketing performance so that :
- My conversion rates were at least 50% less than other marketers I knew in the same niches.
- I failed at selling my own products, no matter how good they were just because I couldn’t convince the buyer to purchase it.
- I failed at networking just because I couldn’t convince other marketers how helpful I could’ve been.
- I couldn’t convince my traffic to come back to my website, just because I didn’t know what words to use in order to convince them to visit us again.
- I can count many other troubles caused by my poor convincing skills.
One day, I was reading some book that included a chapter explaining how important convincing skills are.. that chapter shook something in my head because I knew I had that problem.
So I couldn’t relax till I read many other articles regarding convincing skills. I wrote down all the important points, then read and implemented them. And now I’ve improved my convincing skills so that:
- Compared to my old conversion rates, I have more than 200% improvement. Of course my convincing skills aren’t the only factor for this improvement, but it’s definitely one of them.
- I can get much more of what I want from other people.
- I can now choose the correct text and design on my website to convince the visitor to share my website, come back to my website, and much more.
I think that’s enough, now you know how important convincing skills are. So let’s go straight to the points.
Know your Target Audience
First of all, to convince the person, you need to know who you are actually facing. Before even trying to convince him, you should have the answers for these three questions :
- What kind of person is he? (Is he skeptic? overhasty? skimpy? waster?..etc)
- What is he looking for ? (What he actually wants? Answer here can’t be “my product”, you need to know root demand of the visitor, for example: Happier life or a better look)
- How much does he know about what I’m talking about ? (The more – the harder it’ll be for you to remove that, and plant a different idea.)
After you get in the shoes of the person (or people) you are trying to convince, the whole process will be easier for you.
Talk According to his Personality
If the person is skeptic – provide him with more details, more testimonials and more proves.
If the person is overhasty – make your landing page or w/e as short as possible, and straight to the point.
If the person is skimpy – you don’t need to change your price! Just keep repeating the word “cheap” and explain how cheap your product is. Also, give these kind of people as much details as possible, these people are usually skeptic as well.
If the person is a waster – focus your discussion on how good the thing you are offering is, instead of focusing on how cheap it is.
I think the idea is obvious now, you can face tens of different kinds of people, so just think what different people are looking for, and deal with them according to that. It’s the same when your are talking one-on-one.
Destroy his Defense Army
If you want to plant an idea in someone’s head, you need to make sure there are is no defense army there. In other words, contrary existing thoughts. And if there is, just eliminate it. For example if you are trying to convince your visitors to register to your newsletter, but you know they don’t want that because they hate spam, then remove that idea by telling them that you also hate spam or show guarantees. Just after that ask them to register.
Focus on the Weak Points
Lets say that your are trying to promote an eBook on “How to Have a Successful Relationship”.
Now the person that came to your landing page probably wants to have a better relationship, and just needs to be convinced to buy your eBook.
One of the tactics, is to lighten his mind, or to wake up a deep demand.. which for that, he actually came to your website. The best way to do that is by asking “waking up” questions. For our example of the relationship eBook, you can ask :
“Be honest with your self, are you satisfied with your current relationship? Are you really happy?”.
Believe in what you say
If you don’t really believe in what you are trying to convince, the person in front of you can easily feel that through your movements or even writing. Therefore, you need to convince yourself that what you are offering is true, and just then, do that to the person in front of you.
Provide proves
If you can provide proves, that can destroy your visitor’s doubts. Make sure to provide relevant proves.
For example, don’t provide proves on the number of people who bought your eBook, you need to provide proves that your eBook actually helped these people.
From my experience, the absolute proves can double or even triple your conversion rates. It should work the same in anything in life.
That’s all for today fellas.
Have a wonderful day!
