If you’re running paid ads for your marketing campaign, impressions and clicks matter. 

In fact, they are everything in paid acquisition. And there’s a way you can boost your click-through rates. 

You could potentially double…triple…quadruple…your conversions and sales.

Marketers seem to ignore this “mind trick” because they think it’s unethical. They don’t know how to use it. That’s why.

This trick is useful when…

You want people to take action. In the digital world, that’ll be a click. If you think about it carefully, that’s all there is to it — a click. Without it, online businesses wouldn’t exist.

Every marketing comes down to the click. So your marketing has to be persuasive enough to make people click. And enticing enough to NOT make them leave after that. Do that, you’ll get the benefits listed below.

Generate potential leads with ease

Converting prospects into leads is the second commitment in their journey after consuming your content. And it’s quite a big jump for them. How you present the messaging, the benefits, and the offer makes a difference.

High ROI paid acquisition

This is self-explanatory. Every penny should be optimized for the click. It’s the start of every customer journey. In paid acquisition, if you can’t sell the click, you can’t sell anything.

Convert nurtured leads into customers

The more your leads click during their content consumption, the more micro-commitments they are making. Lead nurturing is all about the commitments your leads willingly make along their journey.

The name of the trick

So what is it? What is the trick that makes people click on CTAs? It has something to do with psychology.

It’s called the Zeigarnik Effect.

Bluma Zeigarnik, a Lithuanian psychologist, studied why cafe workers seemed to remember incomplete tabs more efficiently than those that had been paid for and were completed. 

The results of her experiments suggest that a desire to complete a task can cause it to be retained in a person’s memory until it has been completed. 

This proves why some people are having sleepless nights over incomplete tasks. These incomplete tasks form an open loop in the mind that’ll demand attention based on the complexity and one’s motivation to complete the task.

Why is it so powerful in marketing??

It’s the best weapon in a marketer’s arsenal. Cliffhangers, urgency, and irresistible offers contribute to the Zeigarnik effect which makes marketing more persuasive.

The human psyche has a huge role in marketing whether you like it or not. And the difference between successful and mediocre marketing campaigns is the ability to drive actions from prospects. 

Persuasion comes from emotional arousal — happy, sad, nostalgia, and many more. But emotions alone aren’t enough. You need to give them a reason to take action. That’s where the Zeigarnik effect comes in.

The best way to use it

There’s no right or wrong way to use it. There are two effective ways you can use it in your marketing campaigns. It’s up to you how you structure your tactics and strategies.

The “what, not how” strategy

You tell your prospects the “what and why” of your offers. This will make them curious and excited (copywriting must be done correctly). If they are interested in the “how”, direct them to the CTA.

That’s how this strategy works. The key to this strategy is you’ll need to double down on your messaging and the offer. You have to make sure that the message resonates and the offer is a no-brainer.

The “compelling reason + urgency” strategy

Keep in mind that your prospects will try to justify their emotions with logic. In your marketing and copywriting, emotional arousal should be followed by a logical explanation.

The two must co-exist. If you only focus on emotions, it becomes clickbaity and salesy; If you only focus on logic, you won’t convert. So there must be a perfect balance between emotion and logic.

The perfect example

This is a real sample of one of my side projects. I’ll show you the exact landing page — 7-days email mini-course opt-in.

On the opt-in page, I’ve applied both the strategies I talked about earlier. I’m telling the audience what they’ll be discovering throughout the course, as well as why they should enroll (financial literacy knowledge from an expert).

And I’ve also given a compelling reason why one should opt-in (free email content straight into the inbox). The urgency here is paying bills. Everything in this course will help the audience with their cash flow. They would want to enroll so they can take control of their finances right away.

Use it and your conversion will skyrocket

High conversion doesn’t come from the latest marketing hacks or tactics. It comes from understanding how to push the right buttons at the right time with the right strategy. Before your next marketing campaign, take a step back and figure out how to use the Zeigarnik effect to your advantage. I promise it’ll be worth it.