Fifteen years ago, I got a beautiful bound journal. I remember the
month and year because the first entry in that journal is dated
September 21, 1999.
My intention was to journal every day – I've heard from many
successful people that the journaling habit is a crucial part of their
success formula.
My second and third entries were also from that month. The fourth
entry was made in August 2001, and looks like a page of notes from a
prospecting meeting. The fifth entry is from 2009.
Clearly my plans for daily journaling had not panned out.
Then, on January 27, 2014, I picked up the journal and decided to get
serious this time. Since then, I've written at least a page a day with
only four exceptions.
I used a simple trick to turn a source of frustration and shame into a
pretty bulletproof habit. And once you understand it, that same trick
can be deployed on your website to get more visitors to convert into
leads.
Tiny Habits
BJ Fogg, PhD, has developed a system of habit formation called "Tiny
Habits." It's kind of the opposite of the New Year's Resolution.
Instead of making a giant, hard change (like suddenly going to the
gym three times a week or giving up cigarettes or yes, writing a page a
day in a journal), you implement a tiny habit by identifying the
ultimate desired behavior and making the very smallest step in that
direction that you can possibly make.
Fogg's flagship example is flossing. He notes that people find
starting to floss hard. It can hurt, our gums can bleed, it takes a
couple of minutes, the floss can get stuck between our teeth, and so on.
Rather than try to increase our motivation for an unpleasant and
difficult behavior, Fogg suggests simply making the behavior much
easier.
So instead of flossing, here's his formula for a tiny habit: floss one tooth.
Write One Sentence
My new journaling strategy: Every day I wake up and write one
sentence in my journal. There's no quality assurance either: I'm fine
with, "Here is my one sentence for today."
And here's what happened: I wrote one sentence.
And since I had already opened the journal and uncapped the pen, I
wrote a second one. And a paragraph. And a page. It was really helpful
to see my thoughts unfold, my insights come out.
Next day, one sentence. And then the rest of the page.
And so it goes. Each day, I write a single sentence. Sometimes that
is all I write, if I'm in a rush or not in the mood. But most of the
time I write a page or two.
Should We Focus on Motivation or Ease?
Fogg developed "Tiny Habits" after seeing the implications of his
behavior model: that behaviors occur given sufficient motivation,
ability, and a trigger occurring simultaneously. The harder the
behavior, the higher the motivation required. The easier the behavior,
the less motivation.
We search marketers spend so much time analyzing our markets,
sleuthing our prospects' fears and desires, and honing our copy, that we
naturally default to amping up motivation.
The art of copywriting is all about motivating people to action.
Features and benefits, social proof, psychological triggers, urgency,
scarcity, and the whole toolkit are there to make our prospects want it
more.
But search marketing, although a descendant of the old sales letters
that tried to sell anything and everything through the mail to the
uninterested masses, is actually a very different beast.
Search marketing is driven by desire. I search for "healthy meal
delivery" because I already want vegan meals delivered to my home. Yet
the ads and websites triggered by my search are spending most of their
real estate on convincing me that I want their product.
For example, BistroMD.com has gorgeous food photos and lots of copy
about how much weight I can lose easily and deliciously. But their
primary call to action is to order a week's worth of food for $159.95.
I don't care how easy it is to receive, store, reheat, and eat their
food. Spending $159.95 is hard for most of us when we don't know if it's
a good idea.
Inviting Your Website Visitor to Develop a Tiny Habit
Instead of motivating your prospect to do something hard, why not work the other part of the equation: ability?
BistroMD.com could offer a days' worth of food as the first call to
action. Cheaper, simpler, less risky. And that one day, if pleasing to
the prospect, can easily be converted into a larger habit, just as my
single-sentence journaling easily grew to its natural size. Writing
wasn't the hard part; starting was.
And with many of our products and services, once folks get a taste,
and develop a tiny habit, they'll increase their order size and
frequency to its natural dimensions as well.
So next time you try to increase your conversion rate, try this: make
one thing easier for your prospect. You may find that approach becomes a
habit.
Source: searchenginewatch
