The Psychology of Persuasion: Influencing Qualified Leads to Choose Your Community

Harvard Professor Gerald Zaltman says 95% of all our purchasing decisions occur subconsciously, putting emotions in the driver's seat of consumer behavior.

If you're killing it with resident leads, you have a solid foundation to build from.

But once the excitement of gathering those leads winds down, there's more work required to trigger residents to take action and buy—or, in this case, lease.

How??

It's more than hyper-targeting your audience down to a specific demographic.

It's also more than blasting your email list with generic announcements about rent specials.

Converting more leads to leases requires applying the psychology of persuasion.

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What is the Psychology of Persuasion?

The brains behind a Yale group did the work for us and determined persuasion is best achieved through:

1. A source that delivers persuasive massaging: This could be a blog post, an email marketing campaign, or even an ad.
2. What the message is all about: What does your messaging say, look like, or convey?
3. An intended target audience: If you're getting leads, you should be narrowing them down to age, income, and other demographics that align with the core of your community or neighborhood.
4. Context on how the message is received: When your message is too complicated or doesn't resonate with your audience? It falls flat and does nothing but plummets your conversions.

In an ideal world, you're already delivering a winning piece of content to a specific target audience that's easy to digest.

But once all these touchpoints are in place, you still need to know how to persuade within those steps. Here's how to do it.

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Establish Authority

First and foremost, you need to establish authority by proving that you know what you're talking about.

But tread lightly here. It's not about YOU as an expert.

You could be the area's best property manager or landlord, but few of your leads will care about those accomplishments.

Instead, they care about your community and what it can do for them.

Your community is the authority, the shining example, and the beacon of light in a sea of communities that all look the same.

Work on establishing your authority by:

👉 Developing relationships with businesses your qualified leads patronize, including dog walkers, dry cleaners, co-working spaces, and more.

👉 Creating engaging, valuable blog posts on topics that matter to your audience, including a neighborhood guide, apartment organization tips, and interior design for small spaces.

👉 Answering all of your online reviews, both good and bad, and addressing the issue and how you plan to resolve it.

The more you establish a voice and sense of authority, the more likely people will view your community as a reputable and worthwhile place to live.

Leverage Anchoring

Want to entice residents to jump on a lease and see the value in your community?

Use strategic anchoring.

Here's what Harvard says about anchoring:

"The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions."

Okay… 🤔🤔🤔

But here's how anchoring works for your community:

1. Present a high rent figure for the priciest apartment in your community.
2. Show a rent reduction alongside your sky-high rent.
3. Or show other options, such as a mid-range apartment that isn't the cheapest in your community but certainly not fetching penthouse-worthy rents.
4. The idea is that once that higher price anchor is set, your leads develop a bias about how they interpret any other rent figures you throw at them.

Suddenly, your rent special or mid-range unit looks super desirable and valuable.

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Remember that the anchoring technique is not about being duplicitous with your audience.

After all, those rents are still the exact numbers you've been advertising all over your website and social media.

Tip 💡: Instead, you're presenting your information in a specific way so that the value of your mid-range unit is suddenly more desirable.

Behavioral Triggers

Let's dive into behavioral triggers.

Really, any psychological persuasion technique involves triggering behavior, but there are specific ways you can use it to help market your community.

Start with how you handle your prospects.

Property managers and leasing agents know that prospects are considered "hot" for a short period of time.

At some point, they start to cool.

Sure, a ton of leads may hang out on your email list and keep clicking on emails about rent specials, but they're just browsing at this point and could take months to convert, if ever.

Instead of letting them cool and turn into passive leads, maximize your touch points and how you engage them.

👉 Increase the frequency of your email campaigns to attract hot leads.

👉 Create a landing page for leads that are still on the fence by highlighting limited-time rent specials.

👉 Entice leads to take a virtual tour, followed by a real one.

👉 Invite your hot leads to a rooftop party for current and potential residents.

The goal is to treat those leads with a higher sense of urgency to entice them to convert.

You can read all the studies out there from the most prominent thought leaders on the psychology of persuasion and how to trigger behavior, but it will only take you so far.

You can gather ideas from everyone else, but only YOU will truly understand the data you've collected in your community.

If you've noticed your leads convert best after a community event, start there.

If your zero-party data tells you that prospective residents want better amenities, go there.

Truth 💣: The goal isn't to rely on psychological party tricks to influence your leads; it's to combine proven principles and practices with your existing data and expertise to get results.

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