Chapter 5. Robert Cialdini’s Influence. Liking. “Few people would be surprised to learn that, as a rule, we most prefer to say yes to the requests of someone we know and like“.
If you haven’t yet read Influence, you should. Ask yourself. What element of your marketing focuses in on becoming a brand that your customer will know and like? The switch from being something to being somebody. The switch from persuading people to buy from you to inviting people to buy into you?
We nod our heads in agreement. We are influenced by people we know and like.
Personality drives sales.
Last week I wrote about taking ownership of your customer touchpoints. To inject personality into your brand.
I love the example below. Blenders Eyewear are a San Diego based brand of shades ‘Founded on fun. Designed for adventure. Priced to party’. It’s a company ethos that goes way beyond lip service. Take a look at how they cross sell pouches for their shades:
‘Naw, I never drop my shades‘. That’s the message you click to close the overlay. Even the ‘no thanks’ touchpoint is owned. 99% of the time we give our customers the ‘click here to do something’ generic message. Blenders provide a gentle reminder of the reason why you need to invest in a $5 pouch. Smart isn’t it?
The thing is you can’t simply add a tongue in cheek message in isolation. It just doesn’t fit. It doesn’t feel right. You cook personality into message at every opportunity. No matter what you sell.
I see retailers spending their profits on new look websites with the same old messages. Yes, they’ve invested in the tech to speed up download times by a millisecond. Yes, the backend integrations are so so smooth now. The front end? I can just smell the plastic. I don’t feel I know your brand. Yet.
This is one of the many advantages you have over the box shifters. The ability to make the purchase feel one-to-one. To build rapport. To make people feel comfortable buying from you.
The others?
Jessica’s not looking her best today is she?
It’s a point I want to keep emphasising. It’s message over mechanism. We all have access to the same tech. Quick question, have you come across a retailer that’s not offering a 10% discount code ‘today only’? We’re all investing in the tools that present the same opportunity. To motivate people to purchase. To build relationships with our customers. Even as early adopters, take the current trend of social proofing tools like Fomo
as one example, it’ll be a matter of moments before the competition latch on and the same popups will start appearing on their site. Suddenly what looked like a smart competitive advantage is now simply yet another plug-in that had 5 minutes of fame in your marketing update meetings.
One way you can influence people to buy is to build a likeable brand. I’m refusing to use the term ‘humanise’. There, I did it. It is such an important part of how you build your brand and how you grow your business. Just be likeable. It’ll mean more people shop with you. That’s a good thing, right?
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