Make Your Message Stick

Q. What is the one step most people forget in the four-step innovation decision-making model?

A. Confirmation. Let your audience know that they’ve made the right decision.

The original model (first identified by behavioral psychologists Rogers and Shoemaker in 1971) is a 4-step process – knowledge, persuasion, decision and confirmation.

That last step is too often forgotten. Reinforce your messages, even after your audience has taken action and made a decision. Congratulate them on making the right choice. People who feel they made the right choice are less likely to reverse their decision because of negative influence or changing circumstances.

BMW doesn’t run brand ads in the The Wall Street Journal just to sell cars – the main reason is to confirm that readers with BMWs made the right choice.

Only one thing is worse than ignoring the confirmation step – and that’s not convincing the audience to go through the decision-making model in the first place. So, with all due respect to behavior psychologists, we’ve added a step:

Attract – Knowledge – Persuasion – Decision – Confirmation