This is the final part of our series on applying the science of persuasion to your business. Today’s first tip is one of the most valuable secrets in marketing.

Tip 5: Give People a Reason to Act Now
Getting customers and prospects to make a purchase decision is usually a challenge. But the science, backed by practical marketing evidence, shows a number of ways you can encourage people to act quickly.

In “The Psychology of Persuasion”, Kevin Hogan describes the Law of Scarcity - “when a person perceives that something he might want is limited in quantity, he believes that the value of what he might want is greater than if it were available in abundance”.

In short, if people think something is scarce, they are more likely to buy it and pay more for it.

Psychologically, the fear of losing something is generally about five times more motivating than the thought of gaining something. So people will take action more quickly if they believe they will lose out.

Similarly, if people feel they are competing for something, it is perceived to be scarcer and therefore more valuable.

The most common way to make this work is to use a limited time offer - where if you don’t take action by a set time, the price will go up or the offer will be withdrawn.

Here are some other ways to use this principle:

• Limit the number of people who can buy.
• Make a usually scarce resource very available for a time - then make it scarce again to increase the demand even more.
• Create an aura of “inside information” to your services.
• Elicit a future commitment to buy the scarce service when it is again available.

Tip 6: Provide Evidence of Satisfied Clients
One of the best known rules in marketing psychology is what psychologist Robert Cialdini calls “Social Proof” or “Consensus”. The principle here is that when we are uncertain about what to do in a situation, we look to “similar others” for the answers.

The classic way of meeting this need is to provide evidence of satisfied clients through testimonials. This demonstrates that other people have used your service and feel comfortable with it - so new prospects will feel more comfortable about dealing with you.

But the key of great testimonials is making sure they are relevant to the audience - people are more likely do what other people will do if they are similar to themselves.

So make sure you collect as many testimonials and examples of happy customers as possible - you never know which one is going to be the one that a new prospect will quickly relate to.

One way of increasing the power of your testimonials is by using photographs of the person, maybe with their signature and ideally on video and audio too.

Putting all the Persuasion Techniques to Work
That completes our quick tour of the science of persuasion. I hope you’ve been able to put them into practice and that you’ve seen some great results. If you missed the four previous tips, you can view them in the ezines section.

All of the persuasion tips can be used on their own or - more effectively - in combination.

But the most successful persuasion is always carried out with a view to helping your client or prospect get what they want. Persuasion techniques used unethically and without integrity just don’t work in building a long-term business relationship.

When you use persuasion techniques effectively, they help you serve your clients better and build your business faster.