How loyal are your customers?
Understanding consumer behaviour is a critical aspect of increasing your sales and revenue. While most sales techniques involve hard-coded marketing strategies, let’s delve into the psychology behind getting better sales and building strong brand loyalty.
Here are the 7 key principles under the “art of persuasion” that you as a business could leverage.
#1 – Reciprocity
Remember trying a sample cookie at the supermarket before buying them? That’s reciprocity, in play. When someone gives you something, you subconsciously want to give back something in return too. This is one of the most common sales techniques used today.
An ideal way of incorporating this into your sales techniques is to provide free samples and provide compelling content for your customers. Free samples also help your customers to get a sneak peek into your new products, thereby encouraging multiple spends. These complementary services help address customer queries and needs thereby making you the go-to person for everything related to your sector.
#2 – Commitment and consistency
Start with encouraging your customers to commit to you in small amounts. These techniques may not always translate in terms of money, but help the customers know more about you.
Other ways of increasing engagement could be easing return policies, immediate refunds, and an active customer support for post-sales support.
Maintaining the tonality of speech, colour codes, fonts, logos, and their placement plays a major role in building a strong brand image. Maintaining consistency helps create a strong brand identity and brand recall with your customers. Too many inconsistencies create confusion, resulting in loss of potential customers.
#3 – Authority
Rightly said by Chaplain Ronnie Melancon, “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future,” shows how far your association can impact your business. Having celebrities, industry experts, and mentors in the form of brand ambassadors is an important sales technique you should employ. This can be done in the following ways:
- Expert creations – Having hand-picked, hand-crafted products or services which are customized for your users.
- Expert curation – Curated items by industry experts help increase the credibility of your company’s standing.
- Endorsements – Endorsements from known names in the industry act as a stamp of approval for your products and services.
#4 – Liking
This is one of the most important sales techniques you need to employ as a business. Customers are more likely to buy from you if they like what they are seeing, who is wearing/ showcasing it and who is talking about it.
Having a neat website, easy font, language preferences, and easy check-out processes all help in building the usability and likability factor for your business.
Most businesses also have an “About Us” page or an “Our Story” page. This is an easy way of sharing a more humane experience to help customers like you on a more emotional level. Make sure you have a compelling and engaging story to tell, in order to peek your customer interest.
#5 – Social Proof
Social proof is similar to the concept of likability and is one of the easiest sales techniques you can use. It is the subconscious liking a customer gets towards your brand based on how other customers positively represent it. Popularity is a strong and often undermined tenet of increasing sales and revenue. Encourage your customers to write reviews, testimonials, and product recommendations.
The other way of imbibing this on your website is by adding tags such as “Best Sellers”, “Most Popular” and pop-ups of recently bought items on your website. Often times, many reputed brands use “influencers” to market their brand. This is when you leverage the social media popularity of celebrities for your own brand. When potential customers see their preferred celebrities endorsing a product, chances are they will buy them too.
Read more: How to leverage social proof to boost sales
#6 – Scarcity
Portraying an element of scarcity, in most cases push for an impulsive spend. This is a perfect way to get your customers to transact with you, with the underlying fear of missing out on the opportunity. An easy way of incorporating this into your business is to apply count-down clocks, out-of-stock announcements, and seasonal or limited product sales.
A good practice is to not only address this scarcity but also provide a comprehensive call-to-action on how the customer can leverage this piece of information to complete the buy. A “Buy Now” button right above the “limited stock” tag, allows for customers to transact with you instantly.
#7 – Unity
An additional principle which is not included in Cialdini’s principle, but proves helpful in the art of persuasion is unity. Celebrating a sense of commonality with your customers goes miles in creating a strong brand identity and recall. It is essential to embrace common ideas, values, and beliefs which organically unite your customers to your brand.
An interesting way of engaging and connecting with your customers is to take a stand on important issues pertaining to politics, environmental changes and more. While doing this, you may lose a host of other customers who oppose your opinion. But this can help you build a streamlined army of niche customers who actively endorse your company and views.
When a customer has connected with you organically, it allows for a longer customer life with you. Longer the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) with you, larger your profits through the association.
Are these sales techniques for you?
There are tons of ways one can use psychology in influencing customers to engage with you. Pick sales techniques that have long-standing effects and a larger organic reach. One of the key tenets of sales acquisition is to actively and effectively use social media as a tool. Leverage the networking connects of your customers to build strong brand loyalty via social media marketing for the best results.
Providing seamless and secure transactions covers the last mile, ensuring your customers are happy with their association with you. This helps in getting better reviews and testimonials, as well.
With Instamojo, you can not only ensure successful transactions but also use our free services such as a free online store, invoice generator, SMS alerts, pro analytics and more.
