INTRO from Rand: Paul was the winner of our Landing Page Competition and authored a post last week on his personal style.

This blog post is going to take on a very simple format:  first of all I’m going to present my landing page as a “good cop persuader” and refer to the work of Gerry Spence.  Then, I’m going to present my landing page as more of a “bad cop salesman” and refer to the work of Dr Robert Cialdini.  I’d love to give you more, and I had lofty ambitions for this post, but that’s all I’ve got space for.

Caution: I have to say, Spence and Cialdini are not in the mould of Bryan Eisenberg (a true online conversion expert, and author of “Call to Action”), in fact, I would be willing to bet neither Spence nor Cialdini have ever heard of the term “landing page” before in their lives… but, then again, neither had I until recently… so let’s just go for it!

Here are the two books I’ll refer you to:

• How to Argue and Win Every Time by Gerry Spence (ISBN-13: 978-0312144777).  Gerry Spence is often referred to as “America’s finest trial lawyer”.
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Dr Robert Cialdini (ISBN-13: 78-0688128166).  Described by the Journal of Marketing as “one of the most important books ever written for marketers."

You’ll learn a lot more about selling/psychology/influence from the two books I've mentioned above than you will from me in this blog post.  However, in the spirit of the SEOmoz full disclosure policy, I am happy to answer any questions you post in this thread fully, honestly, and in line with what I have learned studying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of scientifically tested direct response results (offline results).  Please consider nothing to be off-limits, and after we are done I will vanish into the night together with my silly little theories and ideas - deal?

You are very welcome to pay me a visit over on my own blog if you want to check out my latest meanderings, and I’ll certainly still be lurking around here at SEOmoz.

First: Introducing “How to Argue and Win Every Time” by Gerry Spence

I argue that the powerful argument comes not from disavowing our divine uniqueness in favour of someone else’s style, or values, but from tapping into the wondrous well of our own personhood.  We do not fail to make a persuasive argument because we lack electric genius or lightning wit, we do not fail because we possess but a sparse fund of words, we fail to make the successful argument because we have fixed certain locks to ourselves, locks that imprison our arguments, locks that bar us from assuming a successful stance or from adopting a winning method. -- Gerry Spence

So, what represents the divine uniqueness of SEOmoz?  I would argue that it is the story of the “Linkerati,” as found in the SEOmoz blog archive.  As I read the series of articles rand wrote on the “Linkerati,” a little siren went off in my head… and I knew these articles would arouse what I will call the “let’s go!” feeling within a small section of the target market.  I’ll concede to you that my exquisitely sensitive emotional antenna wasn’t really tested during the process of identifying these articles on the subject of the “Linkerati”, because for a long time they were among the most popular on the SEOmoz blog (as measured by number of thumbs up).  So, I’ll just have to ask you to take my word for the fact that I would still have “felt the force” even if it weren't for all of the thumbs up.  This work on the “Linkerati” was clearly written from the heart and based entirely on what I perceive to be the core beliefs of SEOmoz as an organisation.  What I’m saying to you here is that the Linkerati story “persuades” people in a way that is entirely moral, ethical, and truthful.  In other words, by putting the story of the “Linkerati” front and centre in my landing page I helped to free SEOmoz from their own “locks,” as Gerry Spence would put it.  I just helped SEOmoz say what they had to say.

Yes, I realize that to all of you “old pros” out there the story of the “Linkerati” is all a bit ho-hum and “heard it all before”.  However, as I mentioned in the last post, my landing page was targeted to those who fall into the category of “newcomers” to the SEOmoz community; and to them the story is hot stuff.

Finally, because the core message (the “big idea”) of my landing page is entirely in alignment with what I perceive to be the core beliefs of SEOmoz, I think this should help to silence a lot of questions about the intelligence level of people signing up to the premium membership package from my sales letter.  I’d love to talk with you more about switching off the “oh yuck” reaction in people (people like me, for example) who generally don’t buy from sales letters… but I simply don’t have space to do so in this post.  The cat & mouse game I’m referring to has been going on for more than 100 years, though - Robert Collier wrote briefly about the “dying sales letter” a century ago.   The sales letter is always dying in one form or another, but just remember the nature of human psychology hasn’t changed much since the beginning of time and it won’t change much in the future, either.  OK, I’m tired of being a good guy; let us move swiftly on to Cialdini.

Second, Introducing Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Dr Robert Cialdini

Although there are thousands of different tactics that compliance practitioners employ to produce "yes," the majority fall within six basic categories: the principles of consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity (not included among these 6 principles the simple rule of material self interest) -- Cialdini

Cialdini examines the ability of each of these tools to create a kind of automatic, mindless compliance that makes people say "yes" without thinking first.  Consider: as human beings we don't have time to critically analyze every new situation, person, or choice we are faced with on a daily basis.  We have to take some “autopilot” decisions and focus only on a few normally reliable features of the “whole,” during our decision making processes.  A quick example: if a policeman knocks on your door, flashes you a badge, and asks to come in to your house so he can ask you a few questions about an “incident” across the street, few would hesitate to comply.  Not many of us would ask him to wait at the door as we call his station, check his badge number, and so on.  Criminals frequently exploit this fact to do people harm.  Another example of a shortcut response: expensive products = high quality products. 

The reason why we trust our shortcut responses so much is because they are extremely accurate, dependable, and helpful.  In fact, we'd all be completely lost without them - stuck in a state of "paralysis by analysis," if you like.  The following point is critical:

The proper targets for counter aggression are only those individuals who falsify, counterfeit, or misrepresent the evidence that naturally cues our shortcut responses. -- Cialdini

Reciprocation

The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.  We are obligated to the future repayment of gifts, favours and the like.  There is no human society that does not subscribe to the rule.  We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food in an honoured network of obligation. -- Cialdini

My landing page gives people the story of the Linkerati.  This story of the Linkerati is nothing new to all of you SEO veterans out there.  However, to people outside the SEOmoz community it's news, and a very fun, interesting and educational read.  Bottom line: my landing page induces a desire to reciprocate in those readers for whom the story of the Linkerati is fresh. 

Social Proof

As a rule, we will make fewer mistakes by acting in accord with social evidence than contrary to it. -- Cialdini

The use of testimonials is classic social proof in selling.  The reason why I didn't use testimonials in my copy was because I didn't feel the testimonials on file offered general appeal; they sounded "too far up the ladder of abstraction" for my liking.  However, it was a weakness on my part not to weave in some relevant testimonials throughout the copy.  Question: are there other ways to "trigger" social proof besides testimonials? Yes, the idea is basically "monkey see, monkey do".

Liking

We like people who are similar to us.  This fact seems to hold true whether the similarity is in the area of opinions, personality traits, background or life-style.  Consequently, those who wish to be liked in order to increase our compliance can accomplish that purpose by appearing similar to us in any of a wide variety of ways. -- Cialdini

Wonder no longer why my landing page uses a "just you and me talking" tone of voice.  To paraphrase SEOmoz member Mike Tekula, who put it so eloquently, "The writing style is less about presenting a product or service and more about you sitting down with Paul (Rand) and having him explain a few things to you."  I'd also include here under “liking” the picture of Rand and the SEOmoz team.  This increases likeability by helping to humanize the selling effort - we think we are far less likely to be ripped off / get a raw deal if the guy selling to us is willing to show his face (and the face of his team).

Authority

It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study -- Cialdini

Logos for The Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, and so on... all demonstrate or imply authority.  Selling Rand as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies on a minimum retainer of $10,000 per month?  That is authority building, too.  By the way, building Rand up as a $10,000 per month minimum consultant is also an illustration of what is known as the "contrast principle".  This makes the required investment of $399 seem small when compared to what others have paid for access to the same/similar information.

Commitment and Consistency

The tactic of starting with a little request in order to gain eventual compliance with related larger requests has a name: the foot-in-the-door technique.  Subjects had innocently complied with a trivial request a couple of weeks before, and these people became remarkably willing to comply with another such request that was massive in size. -- Cialdini

Libraries could be written on this subject, because the power of commitment and consistency is mind blowing.  Some say (Robbins, for instance) that commitments are the basis of all selling, and I would tend to agree. 

All I'm going to do here is explain a seeming discrepancy in the data of the landing page results: Carlos's landing page had an opt in rate of 12.5%, which was much higher than mine, yet his overall conversion rate was lower.  Now, obviously people who read a few dozen pages of copy are much more committed to buying than people who simply look at a table.  What makes this more interesting, in my opinion, is the fact that… for “raw” traffic not logged into an SEOmoz account… my landing page redirected people to an “error” page (my fault).  Understand this: when the WANT within someone is stirred up, you would be amazed at how tolerant/savvy they will become in order to fulfil their desires.   By all logic, this error page should have been a conversion rate crusher, but it wasn’t (or at least didn’t seem to be) because people were already committed to the idea of buying at the time they clicked “Enroll”.

Please also recognize that it is perceived to be less of a commitment signing up for a service when people have a money-back guarantee to fall back on: the idea is to get people thinking "I'll hand over my money now, check it out, and if I change my mind later I can always get my money back".  This works because people are much more likely to make a small commitment than they are a larger one, however the larger commitment follows naturally from the smaller one with astonishing regularity (as Cialdini’s work demonstrates).

Scarcity

Opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited -- Cialdini

Very few resources in this world are infinite (maybe none?) and I would argue that the same is true of the SEOmoz premium membership, because SEOmoz is made up of a small team and there will be a limit to the number members that can be serviced to a high standard (Q&A etc).  When I chose the number 7,000 it was fairly arbitrary… I tried to lean on the high side.  Scarcity is some very powerful “voodoo”.

Closing Thoughts

As I said to you before I’m happy to offer you full disclosure, so feel free to ask me any questions you want.  I’m not claiming I’ve been able to cover everything in this post.  But, wait a minute… when I made the offer of ull disclosure was I stating what I genuinely felt was the right thing to do (being truthful with you)?  Or was I trying to induce reciprocation within you?  Was I trying to increase your level of “commitment” to me by engaging you in dialogue?  Was I trying to make you like me?  Was I trying to pass myself off as an authority?  When I said that I would “vanish into the night” was I trying to make myself out to be a scarce resource? 

Am I a good cop or a bad cop?  Have I been trying to persuade you all along?  Well, there are no easy answers… sometimes life can be “blurry” like that.  I’ll leave you all to draw your own conclusions.  All I will say is that it’s been my pleasure to try and help explain my landing page a little bit, and I hope you found this post to be of some value to your own endeavours!

All the best,

Paul Robb

www.crediblecopy.org