Unlocking Persuasion Power with the Rubicon Model of Action Phases

In its most basic iteration, marketing can be defined as the actions you take to help sell a product or service either directly or indirectly. But if you dig deeper, you’ll find that there’s a never-ending amount tips, tricks and tactics marketers can employ in order to more effectively bump up those sales.

We can sell a pen a million different ways, but is our job over once the pen is sold? What if the pen breaks? What if the pen wasn’t everything we chalked it up to be?

The many schools of psychology offer unique paths to understanding how people make decisions. We delve into the mind of the consumer, trying to make sense as to why he or she makes certain buying decisions and what cognitive theories come into play during those decision-making processes.

Some marketers just get through their nine to fives going through the motions and doing the bare minimum to sell as many pens as their quota asks. Other marketers refuse to rest on their laurels, consistently educating themselves in an effort to not just make sales, but really understand the consumer buying process and the role our products become in their lives. That’s right! The things we sell are given meanings and roles we can’t always expect or plan for.

For today’s article let’s focus on two psychological areas and how marketers can use them to help better understand the consumer buying process.

Decision Fatigue

At the end of a long work week, or even a long work day, time seems to drag and we’re just mentally exhausted. It turns out there’s actually some reasoning as to why we’re exhausted, and it’s not purely from a lack of caffeine or a lack of sleep.

The concept of decision fatigue refers to the idea that when we’re charged with making decision after decision after decision, it’s something that gets mentally exhausting after awhile. That idea has been uncovered in scholarly studies.

Research concluded that Israeli prisoners were much more likely to be granted parole if their cases went before the judge first thing in the morning versus last thing in the afternoon. In fact, 70 percent of prisoners who appeared in the morning received parole compared to only 10 percent of those who appear in the afternoon.

And it makes sense: charged with the task of literally deciding the outcome of a fellow human being’s life, judges were more likely to grant that freedom in the morning as their minds were clear. But the process of hearing case after case after case takes a mental toll on judges, whether or not they’re consciously aware of it.

At the end of a few hours of making difficult choices, mentally exhausted judges are left with two options: act impulsively and grant prisoners parole without thoroughly considering all facets of a case, or take the other route and decide to do nothing.

Since the decision to release prisoners into the public is a serious one, it makes sense that judges – acting in the interest of society as a whole – would be more likely to take the second route; a less tiring mental shortcut where reception and review generally has less backlash.

Now this next part might sound a little cynical and manipulative; however, 99% of businesses capitalize on it.

We already have an idea of how decisions wear down minds to a point of making easier and safer decisions. Now comes the magic of effective frequency.

This is a somewhat controversial subject, but just think about how many times you see the same company advertisement in a day, week, and month. In fact, many advertisers and marketing researchers have concluded there is an ideal number of times a person must see an advertisement before they buy it. Thomas Smith was one of the first to make effective frequency famous and published a brief guide on what’s going on in the consumer’s head every time they see an advertisement. You can grab a free copy of the guide below:

Thomas Smith's Effective Frequency Guide

What Decision Fatigue Means for Marketers

There are a lot of ways you can apply the concept of decision fatigue to online shoppers. Let’s consider a few of them:

• Just like the judges were more likely to grant parole earlier in the day, shoppers are likely more susceptible to making big purchasing decisions with a clear mind. You don’t want a potential customer to stumble across your e-commerce platform after spending a few hours browsing other websites. You want that person to go to your site first, especially if they’re considering a long-term commitment like an annual subscription.

• Many advertisers believe the best way to get visitors to convert is to mirror their traditional medium strategies – the Thomas Smith model. Keep blasting out ads until they deteriorate all mental fortifications. This is not a clever way to capitalize on decision fatigue, but it’s a quick way to burn through marketing budgets. Instead, focus on making your product immediately appear as the clear and safe buy. Yes, that actually means talking to prospective customers and asking them about their pain points. Then we alleviate the pain by changing our copy, design, maybe the tagline/unique selling point too. We can let the nature of the medium – the Internet – wear down consumers, so when they do arrive on our landing page, it’s optimized for their fatigued mind, in search of something that doesn’t make them second guess anything.

• We could also employ urgency discounts to catalyze consumer decisions. You’ve seen these and they convert like crazy:

Understanding how decisions are made doesn’t just help us craft optimal selling propaganda – it helps us help consumers. We can make the process painless. Forget your fatigue.

Have you heard of the “Rubicon Model” of action phases? We can get a much better understanding of the actual mental buying process. Let’s explore:

The Rubicon Model of Action Phases

At its core, the Rubicon Model of Action Phases is applied to decisions that are black and white. Prior to making the decision, you are in a pre-decisional stage where you might consider a whole lot of other choices. After you make the decision, you’re in the post-decisional stage – but the decision you’ve made cannot be overturned.

An example: Let’s say you’re in the market to buy a car. There are literally thousands of options at your disposal. Do you want the 2013 BMW? The 2004 Toyota Camry? The 1981 Renault Fuego? Do you decide to not get a car after all and instead rely on public transportation to get you from Point A to Point B?

Let’s say you decide to move forward with the Camry. You sign the papers, make your payments, get the keys and drive off into the sunset. You can’t take back your decision.

It’s important to note, however, that the Rubicon Model itself is not as strong as “breakable” commitments. For example, a business might choose to deploy the Adobe Creative Cloud software suite that’s delivered through the cloud on a subscription basis. Sure, customers that have decided to purchase the technology can break their contract any month. But once they become familiar with the software, they’re less inclined to do so because they don’t want to have to learn new technology and don’t want to risk interrupting their workflow. Now they rely on it. And so does their business.

“Crossing the Rubicon” is just another way of saying “the point of no return.” These types of one-way decisions (purchases, in our case) often require a lot of time, informational research, and mulling over before a consumer is ready to cross over. An example of “breaking the Rubicon” is the common free trial and subscription pricing strategy. Consumers know once they cross, they can also turn back. This reduces decision making and stress.

Before the Internet globalized almost everything was set up with a Rubicon. Today, we can get subscriptions where complete meals are delivered, “man packs”, news, games, perfumes, diapers, electric toothbrush heads – you name it, there’s probably a subscription for it. This is the age of convenience after all.

Applying Psychology to an eCommerce Platform

Let’s say you run an online shop selling a variety of T-shirts. Chances are when customers arrive on your site, they’re in the market to buy a shirt. Your analytics software tells you how they arrived on your site and it’s your marketer’s job to optimize landing pages that convert visitors based on their searches.

We’re not trying to be the source of decision fatigue; rather, the solution. The remedy. Our landing page should make customers think we did our homework and know what’s going through their head; the questions and concerns they have.

By treating consumers with same attention and curiosity we’d grant to a friend debating whether or not to commit to something, we learn more about our consumer’s mind. We’ll have better demographic and psychographic profiles and more information to use when shaping our digital marketing strategy. In addition to appealing, impressing, and converting more consumers, we start laying the cement for a positive user experience and brand disposition.