Love is complicated, but encouraging your customers to fall in love with your brand doesn’t need to be –
Your annual advertising spend might be exorbitant and you might be hitting all those ‘marketing musts’ that the experts keep telling you to hit, but sales are low, your business is just not growing and you’re tearing your hair out trying to understand why! Well, here is a secret – most of the time people don’t actually apply logic to their purchase decisions, these decisions are all driven by…. Shhhhh…. emotions. Yes, the cat is out of the bag and there we have it, people buy for emotional reasons, and we all know that love is the most powerful emotion of all.
A simple concept yes, but the challenging part is once you have created that first spark of interest, how do you maintain it? You can make sure that your brand is dressed in the perfect little black dress that will grab all the attention at the party, but when that dress slips off (ahem… in marketing terms ? ) how do you keep the interest and ensure that you weren’t just another pretty face?
The really great news for brand owners is that being loved has very little to do with size, budget or marketing prowess; in fact, the most critical ingredient is passion. Passion coupled with a few of the tips below woven into your strategy, can change the way your brand lives and breathes; and ultimately how likely it is to be loved.
1 – Build a personality
We hop online and within 5 minutes we are assaulted from every angle by some kind of messaging. “use us”, “buy now”, “we are here for you” blah blah. But do we really connect to this messaging? We want to know who we are giving our hard earned rands to. The specific stories, pictures, details and quirks that make up your brand essence are also the things that are going to pique our interest and get our pulse racing. If you tell us straight up, from the start who and what you are, without trying to bamboozle us with information, we are much more likely to connect with our hearts – and our heads (and rands) will soon follow.
2 – Be relatable and authentic
These days your consumer is an expert with a smartphone who knows everything there is to know about your brand. Brand truth has always been important, but today its taking on a whole new role and it’s incredibly easy to have your reputation ruined by not being authentic, or by simply doing it wrong. Be your brand, be consistent, be genuine and be proud – honestly and authentically in everything that you put forward and we will trust you.
Another critical dimension of brand authenticity is the nurturing of staff who will become your most effective brand ambassadors. The best brands provide a framework within which employees can be themselves whilst creating engaging on-brand experiences.
3 – Build lasting communities through connections
When it comes to long term commitment, we want to not only feel like we are getting value, but we want to feel a connection, an attachment, a true sense of belonging. A group of loyal customers with a shared connection and love for your brand can very quickly become a community that we all want to be a part of. Customer Connection is about meaningful engagement through discussions, sharing and giving. It’s a universal emotion that can and will become an incredible motivator for brand loyalty.
4 – Go beyond your product
You want your brand to stand out from all the other suitors? Show us the human side of who you are. Yes, we are all cogs in this machine called technology, but please, show us that there is at least one human heart out there that we can fall in love with. We know what you sell, we understand and want to buy your products, but what do you believe in, what are you passionate about and how do you make a difference? A social conscience is a highly attractive attribute for us and if you care about the same things that we do, we relate on an emotional level and the rest is history.
5 – Make us feel special
You can follow and instill all the tips and tools available for building brand love, but you will still find yourself sitting at the singles table at the wedding without one critical aspect – We want to be made to feel special and valued. We want every single engagement with you to be a world class experience. When it boils down to it, customer service is what is going to ultimately catch our eye at the end of the day. Treat us like we are your one and only – every time and all the time – because we are.
Love truly is a complicated emotion, but getting your customers to fall in love with you doesn’t have to be. A few simple tweaks in your thought process can soon have your brand tugging at the heartstrings of your customers. They’re absolutely begging you for a commitment, are you ready to take the plunge?
Contact us for bespoke socially conscious gifting options – guaranteed to stir up the emotions and ensure that your customers feel like more than just another sales target.