Blog

Professor BJ Fogg, founder of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, discovered a relatively simple principle for making every interaction more persuasive. I’ve further simplified (without oversimplifying) it here. You can apply this to everything you touch to make it more persuasive and effective.

What Dr. Fogg discovered in his research is that three factors impact the persuasiveness of virtually anything. The first is motivation – as in how motivated is the person. The second is ease – as in how easy is it to take the required action. And the third is time – is there a trigger at the intersection of the peak of motivation and ease?

It comes down to this. High motivation plus easy to do at exactly the same time = the action that leads to persuasion.

Here’s a key you can apply to un-sticking the potential for persuasion in literally everything you touch. Ask:

1. Is this as compelling as it can be? Have we captured and whipped up the motivation of the audience?
2. Have we made this as easy as it can be to do?
3. Will the audience experience both the motivation and the ease at exactly the same time? (trigger)

This is part of our system for accelerating brand-driven growth® at DIGO. Find resources and tools to get even more persuasion and growth from this insight here.