How to Generate More Leads Using Basic Psychology: Three Tried-and-True Tips

You’ve only got one chance to make a good first impression on your landing page. Just think about it. Your landing page is your very first contact you might have with a potential new client – so make sure you don’t waste this chance because you might as well not get it the second time.

If this sounds scary, you need not worry – it is big, but there are several easy tips that can help you make sure you keep those conversions rolling. The secret lies in paying attention to what makes a client react in a way that is of benefit to your small business and it all narrows down to understanding and putting to practice basic psychology tips about human behavior.

So what is it that makes a human being interested in your landing page and willing to go further? According to the Fogg Behavior Model for Persuasive design, the three elements that ought to converge simultaneously for a behavior to happen are the following: motivation, ability, and triggers. It’s these three simple concepts that will take your lead generation machine to the next level – so dig in!

1. Motivation

Motivation is huge when it comes to influencing human behavior. People can’t do much without being motivated so you should never underestimate what motivation you should be offering through your landing page.        

What you should aim for, according to psychologists, is offering the following three series of positive motivations that are most effective: pleasure, hope, and social acceptance. While the first comes as more difficult to approach, you can play it out with motivating your audience with the other two.

Hope makes people anticipate a positive result – which is what we all ultimately aim for while social acceptance is one of those deeply rooted inner longings that come out as a means of survival.

A couple of quick and effective ways to trigger these motivations? As cliché as it might sound, always go for mentioning the number of downloads your offer has. Everybody loves knowing that a product or service is trusted by a lot of people – it somehow reassures their choices. Just by doing this you will most probably get at least a 4% increase in conversion rates so simply go for it.

2. Ability

The way to really get what ability means as a factor of motivation in persuasive design is by looking at it as simplicity. Since audiences can get easily overwhelmed with online content in terms of time and cognitive load, what you should be aiming for to avoid that is simplicity.

What does that mean exactly? A good way to start implementing a simplicity principle unto your landing page is making sure you cut down the words for images – of course, as long as you make sure you manage to convey your desired message. Get to the point quicker and always choose great visuals to express your offer in a way that feels more effortless for your audience to digest. It is proven that only by changing a bullet points offer to a visual screenshot one will increase your conversion rates by as much as 3%.

Also, a big one when it comes to cutting down on the heaviness of a landing page is to make sure you keep those form fields in your forms to a minimum. Of course, you desire to get as much information as possible, but keep in mind that nobody likes the feeling of being invaded. There’s nothing as off-putting as seeing a landing page that is full of a lot of form-fields. Respect this need of space and simplicity that everybody has and go for a shorter, less demanding form. Remember, the initial contact your audience has with your page is crucial so don’t waste it just because you want everything at once.

3. Triggers

The last (but definitely not least) element to take into consideration when it comes to motivations is the trigger. What a trigger means is that there is something, right here and right now, that can make you decide to act upon a specific action you might not consider pursuing that very second. Triggers come in many forms – they can be a signal that brings your attention to something desirable to get or a facilitator that comes to help you act and react on the spot.

Ok. So what does this has to do with your conversion rate optimization strategy? A lot – just think of what is the best trigger out there when it comes to making an offer? What rings people’s bells and motivate them instantly to pursue an offer? You guessed it – it is, without a doubt, the super powerful word “free.” There’s nothing as strong as this word seems to be on the human mind. It makes us react since we know it might soon go away – so why not take advantage of it right now? By simply mentioning that your offer is free, you will avoid that nasty hesitation people hold when they simply don’t understand that clearly how much does a product or service costs. So just don’t keep them guessing anymore and hold the suspense factor to other, more thought out aspects of your marketing strategy.

That being said, “free” is not the only trigger that gets people’s attention. The next best words to use to get the same effect are words pointing out to some sorts of urgency. Make people know that they wouldn’t want to leave without downloading since they can never know if that same great offer will be on again. Go for words as “immediately” or “limited time only” to really make sure they get motivated to get your offer as soon as they land on your page.

Make sure you implement these easy to try tips that are sure to be raising those conversion rates and improve your lead generation efforts.