This is the ninth in a 12 part blog series, where I review CXL Institute’s ‘Digital Psychology and Persuasion’ Minidegree. This week I took two new courses: i) Social Proof, and ii) Principles of Persuasive Design. In today’s blog we will discuss a 4 step framework to discover key emotional targeting tactics and how to run meaningful A/B tests for it.
You don’t sell a product! You sell solutions, a better version of the consumer after using your product or the experience they have with it.
Everything we do has an emotional reason, be it: being loved, become a part of the community or become a better version of ourselves. So if you have a cab service, you aren’t selling cab rides but easy and convenient transportation. If you are a skincare company, you don’t sell toners, but smooth and glowing skin. It is essentially about addressing your customers’ emotional needs. The root of every conversion is a human behavior which results in some emotional need being met.
Our aim should be to understand our consumers’ emotional triggers and what makes them buy our product. Then use this understanding to develop better landing pages and funnels.
4 Step Framework to Understand Your User at an Emotional Level
Talia Wolf of Conversioner, a CRO agency specializing in emotional targeting, shares a 4 step framework to discover key emotional targeting tactics and how to run meaningful A/B tests for it.
1. Emotional Competitor Analysis
Emotional Competitor Analysis is different from a regular Competitor Analysis. We aren’t going to compare features, benefits, products or prices. We analyse two aspects: where the market is emotionally and where we fit in that market. Follow the steps below to perform an Emotional Competitor Analysis:
Step 1: Choose 10-15 of your top competitors. Competitors can be both direct and indirect. An indirect competitor is someone who doesn’t compete with your product directly but targets your target audience.
Step 2: Grade selected competitors on the following four parameters:
- Message: The message they are sharing on their landing page
- Colors: Colors have a huge emotional effect on us. We want to analyze the industry in terms of its top color choices.
- Image: Build an understanding on what visuals the competitors are using and what is the first thing the customer sees when they land on the competitors landing page.
- Emotional trigger: What are our competitors trying to make the customers feel?
After this analysis we have a guess on what emotions our competitors are trying to evoke in the customers. The next step is to question whether we want to focus on the very same emotions or should we be different. However, before finalizing this we need to test both the options to see what works better.
2. Emotional SWOT
The emotional SWOT tells us what the customers think about us and how they feel about the industry. We evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in our product and the opportunities and threats present in the market.
3. Emotional Content Strategy
In our emotional content strategy we should answer the specific weaknesses and threats evaluated in the emotional SWOT. We must individually address all the issues observed in our product and the industry and try to remove or ease out the points of friction. There are 223 emotional triggers. Most companies should use a combination of these emotional triggers and avoid using just one.
4. Testing
The aim of testing is to understand our customers to the best of our abilities and then translate it into a funnel. Brainstorm different test hypotheses by listing the different emotions, elements, words, visuals and color. Using these hypotheses, create different landing pages which result in different emotional triggers. Test these landing pages to figure out what emotional triggers work best with your customers.
Responsive Design Kills Conversion
When designing landing pages always design and test for both – mobile and desktop. Landing pages are still being designed with a desktop first approach. However, the desktop is no longer the major source of website traffic. According to statcounter GlobalStats, 54.46% of the web traffic worldwide comes from mobile phones, 42.63% from desktops and 2.91% from tablets. Due to this inefficient approach of desktop first, mobile visitors convert less. According to stats from Monetate, mobile traffic converts at less than half the rate of that on desktop, at 2.25% compared to 4.81% for desktop. Data from SaleCycle 2020 Ecommerce Stats Report shows that mobile sales continue to grow, but shoppers still seem to prefer to convert on desktop.
One of the reasons for difference in conversion rates on mobile is that users on their mobile are on the go or multi-tasking. As a result the user’s emotional state and behavior is different. Therefore, we need to specifically address the needs of mobile users and create a better user experience.
Use these basic tools to get to know your customers better. This systematic framework can help you into adapting test strategies for emotional targeting.
Next week, I will further discuss my learnings and opinions from the next few courses I take in the Minidegree. To stay updated with my weekly blogs and explore the ‘Digital Psychology and Persuasion’ Minidegree with me, subscribe to my blog.
Until then, explore the various programs offered by CXL, by clicking on the link below: