Persuasive Writing: 4 Copywriting Techniques Swiped from Psychology

4 Persuasive Copywriting Techniques

1. Rhyme – You’d remember this point better if it rhymed
2. Bizarreness Effect – Unusual material is easier to remember
3. Repetition – The more you hear a message, the more likely you are to believe it’s true
4. Primacy / Recency – People remember what they saw first or last

When you’re talking conversion rate optimization (CRO), you’re usually also talking persuasion.

Persuasion and conversion go hand-in-hand. If you’re not persuading visitors – to sign up, to comment, to share, to buy – it’s going to be very hard for you to boost your conversion rate…

You’ve heard about persuasion in general. Maybe something about loss aversion or something about contrast effect – topics we cover in in this free persuasion ebook – but what else is out there? After all, knowing a little only leaves you wanting more, right?

So here are 4 useful, little-known tricks to amplify the power of your copy and persuade… without getting gimmicky, sleazy or embarrassing. But first, the short list for those tl;drs out there:

1. Don’t be sloppy – write rhyming copy
2. Use a word that humanoids don’t expect to see
3. Repeat your message again and again
4. Organize your lists so peeps remember the right stuff

Persuasive Writing Technique 1:
“Rhyme as Reason Effect”

Check out this snippet from Animoto‘s home page:

See that second line? That’s a solid example of Rhyme as Reason Effect at play. Swiped from smart psychologists, this principle holds that:

When two words or phrases rhyme,
people are more likely to believe them.
(tweet this now)

The rhyme-as-reason effect is closely related to the Fluency Heuristic – where “we are swayed by the ease and palatability of everything we encounter in our world” (Wray Herbert).

In 1998, Psychology Today wrote about a study conducted by Matthew McGlone, PhD. McGlone gave students a list of phrases that rhyme and phrases that don’t – like “Woes unite foes” vs “Misfortunes unite foes” – and found that students believed the rhyming phrases more accurately described human behaviors.

So a rule to consider for your copy: if it rhymes, it must be true.

Or, more aptly, if it’s like a song, it can’t be wrong.

Now on to the next persuasive writing technique…

Persuasive Writing Technique 2:
“Bizarreness Effect”

We talk a lot in our web copywriting books about the importance of making things stand out… and the Bizarreness Effect is yet another example of why being a wallflower sucks in marketing. Here’s what the Bizarreness Effect teaches us (and, yes, that’s the scientific name for it):

Unusual or unfamiliar material is easier to remember
than common material.
(tweet this now)

So y’know how I rant about “Save Time & Money” as the crappiest message on earth? Well, one reason I loathe it so much is because it’s completely common phrasing… which basically wipes out its chance of recall… and recall is kinduv a big deal not only for converting visitors – they need to remember messages as they move through your site – but also for generating shares and retaining customers.

This 1995 study found that people were best able to recall messages when bizarre nouns were mixed with common words in a standard sentence. As Jason Carr summarized, for Bizarreness Effect to improve your visitors’ recall, there needs to be:

1. A distinctiveness of the bizarre material (e.g., noticeably different word)
2. An uncomplicated sentence structure

In 2005, Macklin and McDaniel found that common nouns embedded in unusual sentences were easier for peeps to recall than common nouns embedded in standard / boring sentences.

So say something different. I mean, say something wackadaisically wild.

No, it’s not great for SEO… but it’s great for communicating your message.

Before we move on to the third persuasive writing trick, here’s an example of this tactic at play on the Foolish Adventure podcast site:

Persuasive Writing Technique 3:
“Illusion of Truth Effect”

What’s the Illusion of Truth Effect? It sounds sort of awesome and highfalutin, right?

Well, it’s really just a fancy way to say that repetition works (as the 2 experiments here showed). In a nutshell:

The more you hear a message,
the more likely you are to believe it’s true.
(tweet this now)

So in case you needed another reason to use email marketing and retargeting – to say nothing of social media – voila…

You need to make your message familiar – not just on your website but also across the other channels and media your prospects use.

Now, before you start using copy-paste all over your marketing materials, note this: you don’t have to say a message exactly the same way each time for the Illusion of Truth Effect to work for you. At Microconf 2013, I spoke briefly about a copywriting technique called “3D,” where you write the same message three different ways in sequence (i.e., without interruption). Check that presentation out here

Last on this technique, remember this important point: The Illusion of Truth Effect works best when your audience isn’t that attentive. The more actively they’re processing your messages, the better your argument should be – or you’ll simply be imprinting negative branding on ’em! Now on to the fourth and final technique…

Persuasive Writing Technique 4:
“Serial Position Effect”

Take a read through this list from the Batchbook home page:

Now close your eyes and try to recall the items in the list. Don’t peek! Just give yourself ~5 seconds to think about what you saw on that list…

K, open your eyes. 🙂

Which messages came back to you? Was it the first few… or the last few? Did you remember any details about the stuff in the middle?

A big part of my Master’s research project was the study of primacy effect and recency effect on online consumers; these two effects fall under Serial Position Effect, which breaks down like this:

People remember what they saw first or last
but almost never what they saw in the middle.
(tweet this now)

There are studies galore on this subject, with a full reprint of a pivotal 1960s study here and simpler retellings here, here and here…

My friend Darren designed this to show primacy vs recency:

On the web in particular we use a lot of bullet lists, don’t we? Do you know what order to put shizzle into your bullet lists so your visitors recall the critical stuff?

How about if you have a really big global nav? How do you organize the items in that nav? Just based on an internal card sorting exercise… or on principles like the Serial Position Effect?

The question is really this: what stuff are you okay with your visitors NOT seeing? Whatever your answer to that question, that’s what you’ll put in the middle of your bullet list, in the murk of your scrolly Features page or in the mire of your uber-huge nav.

EXCEPTION: The Von Restorff Effect
If an item in the middle of your list stands out – as in, if it’s eye-catching – your visitors may remember it better.

I don’t know about you, but the more I learn about how my brain works, the more I want to learn…

But we as startup marketers don’t need to know every cognitive bias under the sun to start using what we know to our website’s advantage…

So, what are you going to do with the four copywriting techniques we’ve just discussed?

Here are actions you can take right now – CHOOSE ONE:

1. Reorder your bullet lists to ensure the items in the middle are least important to prospects

2. Set up a headline test on any page – it doesn’t have to be on your home page – where you replace 1 of the words in your current headline with something “bizarre”

3. Adjust your most sent autoresponder to repeat your value proposition across each email in the series (e.g., in the email header)

4. Where you have a small line of text – like a subhead or an About Us line in your footer – tweak it to make it rhyme… yes, really 🙂

And if you find yourself falling IN LOVE with the psychology of how we make decisions, you’ll likely dig this free ebook on the principles of persuasive design for conversion copywriters.