When you are selling products and services your customers must believe you. They must
believe you'll do what you say you'll do. Question is how can you increase that believability?
Well it turns out that you can do it in an instance with images. Maybe not that image.
New research by Eryn J. Newman from the Victoria University of Wellington discovered that images
any images make claims more believable. In other words if you put an image any image
next to a claim even if it's a decorative image that claim will become more believable
in the eyes of your ideal customers. More how to use this in sales and on the web in
just a minute. But first let me share the experiment that Eryn J. Newman ran with her
colleagues. Here's what went down Eryn got together seventy undergraduate students and
asked them to rate a statement as either true or false. Simple statements like the liquid
inside of a thermometer is made of magnesium or macadamia nuts come from the same evolutionary
family as peaches and regardless of whether or not the statement was true, the college
kids were more likely to believe the statement was true when an image was present. Meaning
this was less believable than this. In reality the liquid inside of a thermometer is made
of Mercury but the college students were more likely to believe the statement was true when
an image was present. The same goes for this was less believable than this. So the key
takeaway is this, people believe claims are true when a picture is beside them. Now as
you might've guessed this works great on the web but before we talk about that I want to
share with you how this actually works in the real world as well. As the persuasive
litigator points out lawyers can actually use this same strategy to persuade juries
that they are telling the truth. Meaning this is less believable than this. Hey. Or as another
example, you can actually use it when you are giving a presentation at a conference.
When you're about to make a really strong claim you can include an image next to your
strong claim to bolster believability. Now I know you might think this sounds silly but
here is the deal just because something is true doesn't mean people believe it to be
true and anything you can do bolster that believability is vitally important. But now
let's take this back to online marketing, how can you use this strategy on the web?
Well I got three specific ways for you to do it. Number one, lets say you are writing
a sales page and you want to include some strategic client testimonials on that sales
page. Well what's the problem? People need to believe those testimonials. So what can
you do? You can include an image of that client next to that testimonial to increase believability
and thirty seven signals does this great. Number two, lets say you are designing an
opt in page and you are promising to give away an e-book or a video download in exchange
for name and an e-mail address. Instead of just using text based content you can put
an image next to your text to bolster the believability of what you're promising to
give away. Well, it turns out that this is actually a proven conversion rate best practice.
Because when you include that image it makes people believe that the video download is
actually real, it's tangible and my friend Ramit Sethi does this real well. And even
though I've known this for quite some time it's nice to have some academic research to
back it up. Finally number three; let's say you are writing an article for newspaper,
a blog or magazine. If you want your readers to believe what you are saying, just include
an image next to one of your main claims. You ever wonder why people always believed
those trashy gossip magazines? Because there is images everywhere. Now I have question
for you, d o you know someone who's about to write a blog post, write a sales page,
give a presentation that is trying to persuade people to believe whatever it is they're saying?
Well, send them a link to this video so they can learn about the unusual persuading power
of images. Also, I'd love to know how you plan on leveraging this newfound psychological
principle. Do you plan on putting images next to your testimonials? Are you going to put
an image on your opt in pages? I'd love to hear all about it so go ahead leave a comment
below this video. I'll read every single one of them. If you are not on my mailing list
go ahead and type SocialTriggers.com into your URL bar and get on it as fast as possible.
You are gonna learn more about psychology, marketing and business and I promise you this,
not only will you get more SocialTriggers TV episode just like this one you'll find
that all of my information is backed up by research, data and personal experiences unlike
much of that other junk out there. Oh and go ahead and share this on Twitter, Facebook,
Pinterest and you know what do me a solid by pressing the like button on this video
so you can let the whole interwebs know that I create great videos. Meaning this is less
believable then this. Oh, I didn't do it where do I gotta do it?