Using the Liking Principle in Marketing to Influence Consumer Decisions

Using the Liking Principle in Marketing to Influence Consumer Decisions

The liking principle is the phenomenon of people being easily convinced by those they like, and those they want to emulate. Understanding how the psychology behind the liking principle works, and how to use it in your marketing activities, can give you a major edge over your competition.

Getting it right means you will be able to sway customers your way with little effort. It will also help you build convincing websites that will make your customers more receptive to what you have to offer.

Definition of the Liking Principle

The liking principle was first introduced by psychologist Robert Cialdini, in his 1984 book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Cialdini describes it as one of the major weapons for persuasion. In the book, he explains the liking principle as a rule, in which:

“…we most prefer to say yes to the requests of someone we know and like.”

From a marketing and branding perspective, building your strategy around the psychology behind the principle of liking helps you persuade more customers to buy your products and services. With that, comes business growth.

What Makes a Person Likable?

What Makes a Person Likable
The first step to strategizing around the liking principle is to understand the main factors that make someone likable. Once you know these techniques, you can focus on the key strategies you can employ to make your marketing and branding communications more effective.

Here are the key elements that make a person likable:

  • Physical Attractiveness: We, as humans, are naturally attracted to people who look good.
  • Similarity: People can relate to others when they have a similar character or temperament or have gone through the same experiences in their lives.
  • Compliments: We like to hear good things about ourselves.
  • Cooperation: Working together helps to build a close bond between people, especially when there is a common goal involved.
  • Humor: Humor allows you to better relate to people by keeping the mood light.

Remember, these points apply to more than just individuals. Building your marketing strategy around either of these points will help to make your brand more likable. However, using more than one element or using them in combination will amplify their overall effect.

Good Looks Matter

Good Looks Matter
Physical attractiveness is a common theme in most marketing campaigns, which is frequently portrayed by Social Media Influence on Business. We all know how good-looking celebrities and models can make a brand instantly desirable to members of the target audience. But strategizing around good looks is not just about people. This aspect of the liking principle also applies well to the appearance of the brand itself. That includes the symbols, packaging, retail stores, and even the website.

A great website needs to look intriguing to your visitors, who are your most potential leads. To make a website attractive you should:

  • Use the right colors. Be bold or subtle as required.
  • Have accessible and clean menus. Users should be able to find what they are looking for.
  • Use shapes, graphics, copy, and fonts that communicate as much information about your brand as possible.
  • All design elements should be carefully thought over. Avoid elements that seem random.

It’s Like Me, So I Can Trust It

Similarity means relatability. When two or more people can relate to each other, it helps to build trust between these individuals. From a psychological point of view, it is essential to make your customer feel that you are on the same page s they are. As a marketer, you can earn their trust by convincing them that they share common ground with your brand.

  • Make sure that brand communications and your website copy reflects your understanding of existing and potential customers.
  • Identify and relay their needs and wants.
  • Use words such as ‘we’, us, and ‘you’ in your copy, so that you can show that you are ‘one of them’.
  • Add a human element to your website. A message that shows that there are real people behind your brand can be quite convincing.

Trust turns into loyalty over time. Who doesn’t want loyal customers that come back to give you repeat business?

Flattery Works

Complements are critical to the liking principle. Well-placed and meaningful complements make customers feel good and help break the ice. They are valuable in influencing customer decisions by positively affecting their mood. All you have to do is tell your patrons you like them a lot, and you are doing everything to please them.

While flattery works best when you have in-person customer support and sales teams all dealing with customers, you can use complements through your online channels in these ways:

  • Use copy that makes customers feel welcome and appreciated.
  • Use positive reinforcement messages when customers go through a marketing channel, like complimenting them that they did great on a specific ordering step.
  • Send updates about your products, encouraging them to try new products or new use-cases for existing products.
  • Metrics can help when giving goal-oriented encouragement.
  • Send birthday wishes and gift offers. A gift or discount feels like a compliment, too!

Common Goals Unite

Common goals, much like the similarity element, allow people to identify with others and follow their lead. This is evident when we talk about politics, and it is no different in business settings. You would be surprised to know that customers might even be willing to compromise if your goals align.

From a marketing standpoint, it means you can leverage the liking principle to command a premium price on your products and services, or a higher volume if your customers are more price-conscious.

  • Convey the big picture in your branding communication about benefits that are community-centric (sustainability and regulatory compliance, is one example).
  • Include a feedback form on the website or on social media channels to improve your product or customer experience.
  • Build communities to meet old and new members.

Humor

A brand ambassador with a good sense of humor has the potential to keep your audience engaged through relatable cues. That’s a recipe for priming your audience to open up to your offers. Just like flattery, humor also lightens up the mood.

Since humor is entirely subjective, we recommend that you carefully consider your audience when using humor. It works well when targeted towards broad audiences. Using humor for niche marketing could end up polarizing the market or driving potential customers away.

  • Use integrated communications on your website which resonates with offline channels.
  • Multimedia content is best used to convey humor.

Final Thoughts

We have covered the main points behind the psychology of the liking principle. As we mentioned earlier, each of these principles synergizes perfectly with each other.

Try to use a combination of these factors to magnify your persuasion efforts. It’s also important to understand that you do not need to focus on all the listed elements to be effective at the persuasion game. As long as you know which angle to work on, you will be in a good position to score the favor of your customers.

You should also consider conducting proper market research on consumer preferences and behavior. Market research has the potential to give you a strong ROI by helping you tailor your marketing strategy to realize sales-driven business growth.

At Arturo Digital, we are happy to give you the best out-of-the-box branding solutions for creating an attractive website. We have several custom packages that will fit your budget. Contact us today to get started.

Arturo Digital

Arturo Digital – An American technology firm providing Mobile Application Development, Website Development, Large/Small Ecommerce Stores, Website Portal Development & Digital Marketing Solutions for Entrepreneurs, Business Owners and Future Technologists alike. 

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