It is finally here. The last part in the five part series where I break down The Catalyst: How To Change Anyone’s Mind, by Jonah Berger.
Today, I am covering corroborating evidence. If you’ve listened to the series, you know that change isn’t easy. Sometimes you can ask someone to change, and they will. Other times not so much. You’ll need to provide a lot more touch points through the use of social proof and evidence to influence change.
But your success and qualifications aren’t enough evidence to influence change,because most people need different points of view from all angles before they make a commitment.
In today’s episode, I reveal the final step to reducing roadblocks and influencing change inyour customer journey.
Corroborating Evidence
As entrepreneurs, we’re not just trying to change someone’s mind. We’re creating an environment and container through the means of products and services to inspire change.
We have to understand that as humans if we have an opinion that is important to us, whether factual or not, it will take more evidence to change because of our innate biases.
We’ll discount info that we disagree with, until more proof is provided to create certainty.
Jonah breaks down corroborating evidence through the metaphor of pebbles and boulders. He says, changing minds is a bit like trying to lift something on the other end of a seesaw.
How much weight or proof you need depends on how heavy the thing is that you’re trying to move.
If you’re trying to lift a pebble, you don’t need a lot of reinforcement. You just add a little evidence and it moves right away. Change happens. But if trying to move a boulder, you’ll need a lot more effort and proof before people will change.
How does this apply to your customer journey?
The point of a customer journey is to create a container that allows someone to collect enough
corroborating evidence, eliminate their uncertainty, mitigate the distance, ease endowment, and remove reactants.
All of those pieces together allow customers to make a change that matches the level of commitment based on the change that they want to create.
When you hear me talk about my events, coaching, or consulting, that’s corroborating evidence.
Start designing these steps for your customer so that you become a catalyst for their greatest change by increasing retention, revenue, and referrals.
Influences Change Through Social Proof
Like anything we do in marketing, it’s important to discover the who, the how, and the what.
How can you provide more proof?
Who else can you involve in your customer journey?
What will be the most impactful?
Remember, your success and qualifications aren’t enough evidence to influence change. That’s why you must strive for consistency and congruence across your customer journey and have multiple touch points that address different angles of proof to influence change.
This isn’t about posting 84 times a day or recoding 800 piences of content.
It’s more about repurposing what you have and figuring out what is the minimum effective dose to get a maximum result that influences change.
It might be evidence collection. It might be a commitment to an email list. It might be a podcast.
Whatever approach you choose, your customer journey must provide corroborating evidence over time for consistency and congruency to influence change.
What does corroborating evidence look like in your customer journey? Share it with us on Instagram.
Recap
We’re not trying to convince people to change. We’re creating a catalyst that allows them to change, which is the backbone of every successful business in today’s world. Corroborating evidence allow you to apply consistency and congruence in your customer journey so you can include the right touch points at the tight time to influence change.
If you haven’t picked up the book, I highly recommend you grab a copy and read it today.
As a thank you for listening, shoot me a DM on Instagram that says Jonah Berger worksheet, and I will send you a GIFT with a customer journey training.
