A Stitch in Time Saves Nine: Cognitive Fluency and the Financial Planner

This is a guest post from Richard Pelletier, Principal of Lucid Content in Portland, Oregon. In this second post of a two part series, Richard shares how advisors might consider communicating with their prospective clients through their websites.

In my last post, I talked about how important it is for financial planners (among others) to use language that is customer-centric or customer focused. The larger point was that customer focused language indicates where your focus is, it signals a respect for your customer and it helps you connect more genuinely with her.

Today, I’d like to share some thoughts about cognitive fluency, a fascinating, hot topic of study among psychologists. Cognitive fluency touches on the ways that people respond to the different approaches that you take as you try to educate, inform and persuade them.

What is Cognitive Fluency?
Simply defined, cognitive fluency is a measure of how easy it is to think about something. And, not surprisingly, people prefer to think about things that are easy to think about rather than the opposite.

This is common sense, right? If you define financial terms with insider language or difficult to decipher words and sentences, then you’ve made it much harder for me to think about the very thing you want me to consider. On the other hand, if you keep it simple….

I know what you’re saying — I’m stating the obvious. Yes, absolutely, but what’s really important here are the ramifications of how cognitive fluency affects and shapes peoples decision making process.

And that’s where our story gets very interesting.

Fonts, Repetition, Outcomes
It turns out that people are more likely to believe as true — and act on — information that is simple and presented clearly. Let me repeat this because I think it’s a really important point. People are more likely to believe as true, and act on, information that is presented to them simply and clearly. And perhaps even more amazing, this even applies to such decisions as font choice! Repetition and rhyming (hence my title: A Stitch in Time Saves Nine) may also play a role in moving people toward a more favorable view of your words.

In combination, these seemingly subtle changes can actually cause people to be more forgiving, more adventurous and more honest about their own personal shortcomings. Fascinating isn’t it?

So the next time you create a client questionnaire that has a series of questions about money history, attitudes about money and so on, think about this fact. The quality of your presentation – the look and the feel of the document itself, as well as the clarity and simplicity of the questions – is going to affect how truthfully people will answer your questions.

So I would posit that it’s not only your copy that should be customer focused, your font choice should be customer focused, too.

From “Easy = True” by Drake Bennet in The Boston Globe January 31, 2010:

“Because it shapes our thinking in so many ways, fluency is implicated in decisions about everything from the products we buy to the people we find attractive to the candidates we vote for – in short, in any situation where we weigh information. It’s a key part of the puzzle of how feelings like attraction and belief and suspicion work, and what researchers are learning about fluency has ramifications for anyone interested in eliciting those emotions.”

An Adaptive Shortcut
Cognitive fluency seems to function as an adaptive shortcut. In a world where lots of things clamor for our attention, it helps us figure out which things are worth our precious time. The story of cognitive fluency does take some interesting turns. Take disfluency. An example of disfluency might be a difficult to understand concept delivered in a difficult to read font. To some people, disfluency suggests innovation.

So let’s circle back to the world of financial planners again. You have a website, and if you’re like most people, the goals you have for your website are many. You are trying to educate, inform, persuade, generate leads, and convert visitors into paying customers.

Weighing Information
You have a LOT to say and offer and your site visitors are weighing your information. They are trying to decide whether what you say is true, whether they should be suspicious of it and so on. And they don’t have a lot of time.

So given what we now know about cognitive fluency, it becomes terribly important – beyond the appeal and value of a great design – to simplify and clarify your home page especially, as well as the other key pages of your site.

One of the challenges that all of us face as website owners is the (very strong) temptation to load up our home page with too much information. It’s understandable, but it’s important to not give in to that impulse.

We now have proof that people tend to respond more positively to simple, straightforward messages in an attractive, legible font. Always keep your customers in the forefront of your considerations and wealth and prosperity will be yours.

Good luck!

About Richard Pelletier
Richard Pelletier is the Principal of Lucid Content, a website copywriting firm.   For more information visit www.lucidcontent.com.

About Kristen Luke
Kristen Luke is the Principal of Wealth Management Marketing, a firm dedicated to providing marketing strategies and support for financial advisors. Kristen works with independent advisors to develop effective marketing plans and provides the back office support required to implement the strategies. For more information, visit www.wealthmanagementmarketing.net.