Five Behind-the-Scenes Ways to Get Your Audience to Act

As you engage in marketing, there are certain outcomes you hope will happen. You hope your audience will subscribe to your newsletter or take a free trial or sign up for a webinar. Whatever the outcome, you need your audience to act to generate some traction for your business. Achieving this action is not always easy. You may be slogging away but getting very little back regarding actions. To help you along, here are five things you can do behind the scenes to encourage more action.

Be Open to Criticism

Most business owners are loath to receive negative feedback. Perhaps it is because of how hard they have worked or just the natural human tendency not to take criticism easily. Whatever the case, you want to be intentional about accepting negative feedback, which means leaving the comment section on your blog open or sending a questionnaire to your clients after closing a sale. By signaling that you are open for feedback, whether positive or negative, you are telling your audience that you are willing to change to serve them better.

Use Agreeable Statements

Have you ever visited a site that made a statement and you found yourself nodding your head? They could say something like, “Buying a home for the first time can be a stressful experience,” which is a statement that will get almost anyone’s head nodding. Contrast this with a message that says, “Most first-time buyers need help when buying a home.” This second statement does not immediately evoke nodding. It raises more questions instead such as “Do they?” or, “According to whom?” Focus on using agreeable statements to get your audience nodding as you introduce your pitch.

Use Evidence

Your friends and family will take your word at face value. Your audience will not. They need more than just your word to act. Using evidence is a powerful tool you can use. As a real estate agent, one powerful set of evidence you can use is the number of homes you have sold. If this is not a strong option, use statistics, studies, and graphs to make your case. If people see you know your stuff, they will be more likely to listen to you and to act.

Constrain Choices

In marketing, a concept known as the paradox of choice states that when people have too many options to pick from, they tend to shy away from making a choice. For example, faced with picking one out of forty options, most customers will end up not picking any. However, reduce that to five options and the number of people who make a choice goes up significantly. That is why constraining or limiting choices is such an important part of marketing. If you have certain offers you are making, limit the choices to help your audience make a choice.

Know Your Audience

If your marketing efforts are targeting a general audience, chances are it will be hard to tailor your messaging to fit everyone. Instead, carve out a niche or several niches and focus your message on each. For example, create messaging for people who are only interested in buying condos or townhouses. It is possible their priorities may also be different so segmenting them in this way will help focus on their specific needs and make it easier for them to identify with your messaging and act.