I have always been both fascinated and freaked out by the claims and effects of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and psychological triggers used to get people to buy things.
At first I was skeptical as well, but am now coming to know that there are “triggers” that set people into buying frenzies because I’ve seen them in action and I’ve seen the sales stats behind those triggers.
Triggering Positive Actions
Copywriters play with triggers and even test and track them to see which ones work best together throughout a sales letter or presentation. I’ve watched people use amazingly subtle verbal nuances in their copy which seem to take control of the reader and direct them more often than not in a desired direction or to complete a desired action.
The thing that freaks me out about it is that there are people who’d use psychological triggers, and do, to make people do things they’d not be likely to do – like buy bad or worthless products. I’ve wrestled with the morality question of this for years and have come to a conclusion.
Is It Ethical?
Bad people will do bad things regardless of the tools at hand to help them concoct diabolical marketing schemes to take advantage of people. Good people with good products of real value, on the other hand, can use triggers to gently nudge their prospects in the “right” direction and most do so without even knowing they are using triggers.
You Already Use Triggers
A well written sales letter or presentation includes triggers designed to manipulate greed, ego, desires, and perceived needs whether the copywriter consciously applied the triggers or not.
Honing your skills in the use of psychological triggers is merely acknowledging this fact and consciously making an effort to improve your conversions.
Which brings me to an excellent training series just released called “IM Triggers.”
“IMTriggers was engineered to place the most deadly effective psychological sales triggers in your hands – for use in controlling your web site visitors – and nearly forcing them to do as you desire.”
The reason I would recommend such a guide is that, as I mentioned above, I am only interested in helping people with real products and services of value. Not the bad guys.
I believe in karma and using this deadly effective information in the wrong way, I feel, will doom any business. I won’t go into whether or not NLP and psychological triggers in sales copy works. It’s been proven over and over again and not just in shady parts of the web.
It is used successfully in marketing by mom and pop web sites to very large multi-national corporations. The evidence and proof along with respected studies are easy to Google.
IM Triggers places some of this power in your hands. It is well-written and easy to understand and implement the triggers in your own marketing materials. Just use it responsibly. Trust me, this stuff gives you enough power that you will think twice about abusing it if you are a decent person.
Any copy you write, no matter what product or service it sells, uses triggers of some sort. They are either remedial triggers unintentionally placed or laser targeted triggers that you’ve purposefully injected into your copy to create a desired effect. The latter is what you are shooting for if you want to boost your conversions.