How to develop truly compelling persuasion

Short Attention Span Summary

I'm about to tell you about a powerful set of techniques, called Persuasion Laboratories, that will allow you to vastly improve the persuasiveness of your salespeople, ads, mailings - in fact all elements of your marketing mix.

Before I do this, I want to open your mind to the surprising degree of improvement that is possible, and its importance to your overall business. Without that, it's impossible to fully appreciate the importance of what follows.

We usually think in terms of 5-10% improvements in most processes. We just don't tend to think in terms of multifold (1-5X+) or order of magnitude (10X, 100X) improvements, because in the physical world these improvements are usually impossible. But marketing, as practiced today, is such an inefficient process that these kinds of improvements are not only possible, they can be achieved routinely with the right approaches. If each ad, brochure, sales presentation, information packet, inquiry call, support system, etc., can be made only twice as effective, and they usually can, the numbers of inquiries, leads, triers, adopters, continuers and recommenders can go up by multiples. It is important to optimize all elements of the marketing mix. It is by getting them all to work together that you can achieve these vast improvements. Conversely, one weak link usually drops the return on your marketing to a fraction of its possible effectiveness.

This makes marketing the most highly leveraged part of your entire business, but it is rarely treated that way. Businesses spend a tremendous amount of time, energy and money on cost cutting and risk reduction, figuring that a penny saved is a penny earned because a saved penny goes right down to the bottom line. Companies are willing to spend high fees for legal services to reduce risks, management and manufacturing consultants to increase efficiency, other resources to increase productivity. But most cost reductions are not leveraged and at best produce only a one for one effect. A penny saved yields a penny on the bottom line, unless it costs you something later, such as reducing R&D causing you to drop behind the competition, or reductions in training, marketing research, or advertising costing poor performance down the road.

But most businesses don't think about the tremendous leverage that marketing has. It is not unusual to change the headline of an ad and increase its effectiveness by a factor of three. It is not unusual to have a tenfold difference between two ads that cost the same price to place. That's real leverage. The same thing is true of every element of the marketing mix: they can be made dramatically more effective for the same expenditure, or often even less expenditure. If you could really get into the heads of prospects and customers, and present exactly what they need to make a decision, in exactly the form they need it, you wouldn't need as many exposures. Think of what it would mean to your product if you could multiply your sales by a factor of three, ten, or even more.

Improving the persuasiveness of your marketing almost certainly represents your most leveraged business opportunity

Not only is marketing the most highly leveraged part of business, there is tremendous room for improvement. You can't easily cut your expenses any more, but I'll bet there is room for a vast improvement in your marketing. This presents a major problem and a major opportunity. You would not tolerate such inefficiencies in manufacturing, or in management. Isn't it worth the effort to increase the efficiency of your persuasion materials, not just a little bit, but a lot?

Persuasive communications - whether they are in the form of ads, mailings, sales presentations, brochures, promotions, events and the like - are rarely anywhere nearly as powerful as they could be.

The old ways of developing persuasive communication no longer work

Why? Because they are developed and tested the wrong way. At worst, the advantages of products are presented to an ad agency, and the agency writes copy and produces art work to capture attention and dramatize these advantages. This approach used to work in the old days, but is reaching diminishing returns today, unless the product is so strong that it succeeds despite the approach. This is because products, the marketplace, and customers are tremendously more perceptive and complex than they used to be.

A slightly better (but only slightly better) approach is to conduct a great deal of marketing research to understand people's knowledge, belief systems, opinions, attitudes, actions and so forth. Instead of looking at just the objective attributes of the product, an attempt is made to understand people's perceptions and motivations. This material is then taken by the various agencies (advertising, sales promotion, packaging, PR, etc.) and worked into material which tries to manipulate people into believing that the product is everything they want. If there is time, the elements are shown to focus groups to ask them if they like the materials and whether they would buy the product.

This approach sometimes works a little better than the preceding, and often bombs badly because the people in the company start believing nonsense like "perception is reality," "sell the sizzle, not the steak," and "throw enough s--- on the wall and some if it will stick." They start talking about intrusiveness, image, creativity and entertainment, instead of how people can be assisted in their efforts to decide on the product. They get caught up in naive pop psychology as they look for hidden motivations through projective tests. The side show takes over the big top.

In a world where people encounter hundreds, even thousands, of attempts to persuade them every day, this does not work. To paraphrase Earnest Hemmingway, today everybody, not just successful journalists, has a "built-in, shockproof crap detector."

Let me blow the whistle: most marketing is a terribly inefficient, hit-or-miss affair. Like most stabs in the dark, some hit, most miss. Many genuinely superior products succeed despite their marketing communications. Of course, their marketers then take the credit for a successful product, although even successful products rarely succeed as fast as they could have if their marketing had been better. In today's world, often the least terrible marketing is the one that wins. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

A different world needs a different approach

Obviously, I wouldn't be writing this way if I didn't believe that there is a better approach. I do and there is.

First of all, as I've explained in a previous article ("The Secret of Why Only Some Marketing Programs Succeed and Most Others Fail"), the key to successful marketing is supporting the customer in making the best decision possible in the easiest possible way. This is a completely different approach to marketing. So, it's not surprising that it requires a completely different approach to the development of marketing elements. The key to doing this is to create a setting in which you can look at the elements of the decisions as they are actually being made, and intervene in the process in real time to see what actually would support and accelerate the customer in his/her decision process. You want to understand both the content and the process that will actually and demonstrably turn a skeptic into an evangelist.

You need an experimental laboratory

Persuasion Laboratories are the best way that I've found to design persuasive communication. A laboratory is a safe place in which to experiment, develop, test, and modify ideas, in this case, communication that is designed to change people's minds. Example: We conduct six rather unconventional focus groups in the following pattern: One group of adopters, one of non-adopters, one of adopters, one of non-adopters and then two groups of mixed adopters and non-adopters. These are often telephone groups so that we can get the right people together without geographical constraints.

(1) In the first group (adopters) we find out why they think they are using your product, what got them to try it, why they are staying with it, what they would be missing without it, and how they would attempt to convince non-adopters to adopt the product. We ask them what objections they have heard about the product, present them with any other objections we have heard (sometimes from a previous focus group of non-adopters), and ask them what they would say to someone who brought up those objections.

(2) In the second group (non-adopters), we find out why people have not tried or adopted the product. We dig out their conscious and unconscious qualms, objections, misconceptions, and negative opinions. We then present them with the answers and arguments that the adopters have given us in the previous group (when appropriate, we play tape-recorded excerpts from that group). In other words, we present the best case for the product that we can come up with, especially those of real product evangelists. We then hear the next level of objections and concerns.

(3) In the next group (adopters), we present them with the deeper level of objections and concerns that were uncovered in the previous group. We get their answers and experiences that would counter the negatives.

(4) In the next group (non-adopters), we present the product in a way which incorporates what we have learned, particularly from group three. We find out what is persuasive and what needs more work. Some of the reasons and arguments that have been developed will make the non-adopters stop and think, or ask questions, or even change their minds. We monitor and analyze what peaks their interest. Some participants will even say that they want to try the product. Others will bring up another level of objections.

What we are doing here is building the compelling case(s), conclusive arguments and decisive clinchers from both the input of the groups and a creative collaboration between my clients, their agencies, my staff and myself.

I then conduct mixed groups of customers and prospects, in which the customers sell the prospects, carefully guided by what I have learned in the previous groups and what we have developed as a result

(5 and 6) In the next two groups of combined adopters and non-adopters, we ask the adopters to convince the non-adopters to use the product, and ask the non-adopters to resist, or try to convince the adopters to drop the product. We get to hear peers selling peers (word of mouth), which is the most powerful selling force in the marketplace. We hear actual persuasion and opinion change. These can be refined into powerful marketing communications.

In subsequent groups, fully or partially executed persuasion elements, or even salesperson presentations, based upon the preceding, can be presented and refined.

The Persuasion Development Laboratory takes persuasion out of the hit-or-miss category, and through a combination of the word of mouth from your enthusiasts and the creative input from marketers, allows you to refine communication into powerful statements that you know will predictably and demonstrably change people's minds and lead them to action.

Persuasion Labs work because they are the best way of matching your persuasion to the customers' actual decision process. They are the best way of figuring out how to support the customer by making the decision easier.

This focus group design has an interesting history, which illustrates its power. I have been using it for about 24 years. After doing it a few years, in 1972 my partner at the time, Ron Richards, and I realized that the persuasion in these groups was so powerful that we had inadvertently harnessed word of mouth. Two or three people who were using a product successfully would predictably sway a whole group. Instead of viewing this phenomenon as the often-stated weakness of focus groups ("one person can easily sway a whole group"), we realized that whenever this happened, we had a major finding. We would figure out why the group was swayed, and how to do it predictably. We also realized that we had a perfect vehicle for spreading word of mouth for superior products. But market research ethics would not allow us to conduct large numbers of focus groups for persuasion purposes, so we got Roche to try a series of sessions which were explicitly billed as seminars on L-dopa, for promotional purposes. This was the first documented use of the peer sessions that were later to become such a widely accepted and significant advance in pharmaceutical marketing. In fact they have repeatedly been measured as the most powerful marketing element, resulting in more measured sales than advertising, salespeople or any other marketing method. So, it was out of Persuasion Laboratories that peer selling sessions were born.

Persuasion Laboratories can be used to develop and test promotional themes, indeed virtually any persuasion strategy and tactic. They uncover the fundamental logical and emotional appeals of your product, help you validate a USP that works, and help you develop a conclusive case that will actually convince people. It is a much more effective method than so-called iterative groups, because it not only repeats and refines, but you have the stimulation of adopters actually selling non-adopters.

What do you do when there are no adopters, as in the case of a product that has not been launched yet? There are several approaches. Basically, instead of adopters vs. non-adopters, you want to get people who are excited about the product and say that they are extremely likely to adopt, vs. people who are qualified prospects but who say that they definitely would not adopt the product. You can do this through the screener, or re-inviting back participants from the concept development focus groups.

I have conducted Persuasion Development Laboratories with users of products vs. non-users, users of services vs. non-users, and people on opposite sides of political and social issues. In every case but a couple, it has dramatically improved the clarity of communication and persuasiveness of the messages. In the two cases where it didn't work, it became clear that changes were needed in the product itself before people would embrace it.

Persuasion Development Laboratories need a different level of skill on the part of the moderator. They are much more difficult to moderate than conventional focus groups. I find myself being much more of a provocateur than an investigator. I want people arguing with and challenging each other. I find myself operating at the extremes in such groups: at times holding back until the group gets almost out of control, and at other times being far more active, provocative, even "salesy" than with any other kind of group. I often think up approaches, arguments, reasons for buying on the spot that are triggered by something a participant said, that neither the client nor I had thought of before the group. In one sense, I am writing the ads, brochures, sales aids and sales presentation on the fly, interactively, in real time. It isn't easy. It's the one thing that I haven't yet been able to train other people to do.

While "leading" is the cardinal sin in most other kinds of focus groups, it is the main skill in these, because the main set of findings that you are after is how to lead prospects to believe, and act on, the true superiority of the product. In fact there are those who would argue that these are not really focus groups at all, and I wouldn't disagree. That's why I call them Labs.

This approach works best with, but is not restricted to, sleeper products. A sleeper product is one which is superior and could do much better than it is. You just have not found a way to communicate the conclusive arguments and compelling reasons for purchase.

If you want to strengthen your persuasion, feel free to give me a call and we'll discuss how Persuasion Development Laboratories can help your specific product.