Part [6/12] Review of CXL’s Digital Psychology and Persuasion

“When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.” — Stephen R. Covey

This weeks lesson was all about trust and credibility. Everything that you do, everything that you say is interpreted by someone. Marketers have a bad rap when it comes to trust from the public. Advertising professionals are some of the least trusted professionals in America today. As marketers, we need to peel back some of the layers of mystification and be as transparent as possible. Roger Dooley joins us again to teach us practical ways that we can build trust.

Symbolism and Photos

Our brains are always on. Our “subconscious” systems are working non stop to give our conscious brain more slack time to concentrate on the things that matter most, like survival or checking our Instagram feed. To do this efficiently we’ve evolved to recognize patterns so that we can take “short-cuts”. This doesn’t always work out best interest. As marketers, we can use instincts such as our need for pattern recognition to build trust with our customers.

Roger Dooley talks about how trust can be built by improving your photos. These are not universal rules, although, if you use them strategically they can be applied to bolster your campaigns and build trust with your audience:

• Studies have shown that the left side of someones face is generally seen to be the “more attractive” side
• For men, a photo of the right side of their face makes them appear more dominant
• When the model has larger pupils it increased engagement.
• The Limbal ring is that black border around our iris. For some reason when we see models with a thicker limbal ring, we see them as more attractive.
• The theorized reason behind this is that when we are younger we have thicker limbal rings. So a thick limbal ring may symbolize youth and therefore attractiveness.

• When it comes to smiles. A smaller smile has shown to reflect intelligence and trustworthiness. While a bigger smile was shown to represent dominance and friendliness.
• Now, what if you’re in dating mode? Well for women, happiness was shown to be the most attractive look, while for men, a more serious look was seen to be more attractive. For both, looking directly at the camera has shown to increase attractiveness as well.

The importance of communications role is to ‘trust’

It’s difficult to have trust without communication. As marketers, one of our most important tasks is to build trust with our audience. To illustrate the importance of communication in trust, Roger discussed “The Ultimatum Game”

The goal of the ultimatum game is to observe how pairs of strangers interacted with one another, wherein one scenario they were allowed to communicate and in another where there was no communication.

One of the two people were given 10 dollars and were told to split the money in any way that they’d like too. if the second person agreed to the split than they walked away with their money, if they did not agree, they walked away with nothing — which would be considered a failure.

In the no talking scenario, 50% of the trials resulted in fair deals. When the participants were allowed to talk with one another the amount of fair deals rose to 83%.

The role that communication while building trust is significant and as marketers building a relationship with our audience based on trust, must take precedence.

BJ Foggs Credibility Factors

We’ve previously covered BJ Fogg and his Behaviour model. Now we’ll take a look at his credibility factors. Essentially these factors are used to help marketers and designers create products and campaigns that people love, trust and want to use/buy.

Use Appropriate design

We don’t mean to keep it PG-13. In different industries, there are different standards of design. This usually has to do with the overlapping of audiences and their preferences. When your target customers find your brand, you have to have the UI and UX features that are expected for someone in your vertical. Now I’m not saying that you can’t be ‘different. But perhaps try to only be 10% different.

Easy Verification

Simply put. If you and you’re company are making claims, they need to be easily verified or else people won’t believe it or worse they’ll think you’re purposely being misleading.

Show that you’re real

Nobody wants to get catfished and it’s a straight-up scam when a firm is involved. Showing your audience that you’re a real company is usually the first step in proving that you are a real company. Telling your founding story and showing off your service capacity is usually a good start to establish credibility.

Pro Tip: Displaying that you have a real location also helps.

Prove Expertise

If you have the experiential and or educational background you need to put them on display to prove that you can execute on your claims.

CV’s, Portfolios, Degree’s and Certifications go a long way in proving your expertise.

Be Real Humans

People trust people. We may all be working for our faceless Ai overlords one day, but until then you want to show off that your enterprise is run by people.

Show your team, add their backgrounds. Make yourselves as available and transparent as possible.

Easy to contact

I don’t want to work with you if I can’t contact you if something goes wrong. For each layer of bureaucracy that customers have to go through to reach you is one more reason why they wouldn’t trust you.

Make yourselves available and people will feel more at ease to give you their initial business.

Easy to use

To order: please set up an account, add a backup address, tell us your 3 most ‘secretive secrets’ and then find the lost city of Atlantis.

It’s simple, you and your team need to go thought usability testing on your site and you need to eliminate every source of friction that you find.

Update Often

As with bread, nobody likes stale content. Even though I’m well aware of it, I still get caught up in recency biases.

Keep your content as fresh as possible. If you haven’t updated since 2012 then it’s probably time for a face-lift

Limit the promotion of ads

People don’t like to be sold, and any ads that are in your face can end up reducing sales. Keep the ads to a minimum/what is necessary and you’ll maintain credibility with your audience

Avoid ALL Errors

If you make an error on your site, you’ll probably make an error while you’re working with me.

Make it easy on your self and measure twice, cut once.

Final Thoughts

Great lessons this week. I really appreciated how we went back and repurposed some of our previous learnings. It made the practical applications taught this week that much easier to grasp. I give this week 4/5 stars.

See you next week!