How To Get Customers To Fall In Love With Your Brand
Love is a complicated word. Some think it doesn’t exist. Some think it makes the world go around. When it comes to your brand, it is definitely the latter. Love is what keeps your customers coming back for more and what makes them resonate with you and your values.
Brands like Apple and Nike get it. So do Coca-Cola and MacDonald’s. But how do they do it?
Respected advertising leader and former CEO of M&C Saatchi Asia, Chris Jaques, famously challenged advertising executives to discard old marketing textbooks and instead take cues from modern pop culture icon, Lady Gaga. According to Chris, impact is everything. Most companies think that they are followed because people want to learn about their products and gain exclusive information. In reality, however, people follow you for discounts or because they saw an ad or piece of content that related with them on an emotional level.
Relating to your brand on an emotional level is the ‘secret sauce’ that will keep them coming back. Because, let’s be honest, people don’t buy from you for logical reasons. While your product might initially address a need or solve a problem they have, loyal customers (the kind of customers you want), come back because they feel an emotional connection with your brand. This means that you have to put in a little more effort than selling your product or service – you have to ‘court’ customers and make them fall in love.
This is a similar concept to Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Jab, jab, right hook” formula for engaging customers on social media. It’s all about creating value, offering something, and then selling. And like any other relationship, it takes two to tango. To go from your ‘first date’ to ‘going steady’ and ‘happily ever after’, you’ll need to put in the work.
How To Get Customers To Fall In Love With Your Brand
The following steps are an important starting point for relating to your customers and making them fall in love.
1. Create Your Profile
Before your customers can get to know you, you need to know yourself and what you are looking for. To do this, you need a clear, documented brand guide that details your vision and values, as well as your core story, key messages, tone of voice and brand elements.
This will ensure that you are clear on what you are and which customers you want to attract, as well as which platforms you’ll find them on. It will also help you create a consistent and clear message online and across all your PR and marketing activities.
2. Dress The Part
Dress for the customers you want. When it comes to branding, your image matters a LOT. Start with your website – the number one way to project your credibility and your brand essence. Also, remember that your website is not a static document. It is dynamic and needs to change with the times, your customers, the seasons and grow with your business. Having an amazing looking website and only updating it every four months is the equivalent of having a retail store or head office that is only open and operational once every four months.
When it comes to your website, you need to ensure that everything, from the colours, the fonts, the copy, contact details, services and social media links are up to date and on brand.
3. Content is King
Yes, you’ve heard this a million times and its importance can never be over-emphasised. When you get to know someone, looks and initial small talk will make a first impression, but what you say and do consistently during the relationship will determine how much that person likes or dislikes you. The same goes for your brand. Also keep in mind that quality and consistency beats quantity.
Did you know? Company websites with blogs tend to generate 67% more traffic than those without.
4. Get Emotional
In the age of social media and info overload, customers DO NOT want to see your ads. In fact, if you’re not offering a discount, announcing a massive launch or event, then I would advise you to try everything else first before doing any kind of advertising.
The reality is that millenials (the generation EVERY company is targeting), will most likely roll their eyes and scroll past your ad. More than ever, consumers are buying for emotional reasons. As a brand, you need to put effort into creating an emotional connection with customers through your story. Regardless of the platform you are telling it on, authenticity is more important than ever.
5. Listen
Bill Gates once said that “your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”. For every one complaint you receive, there are 26 other customers who choose to remain silent.
Make sure you use your online presence as a way to actually interact with your customers, listen to their complaints and work to improve their experience – it will go a long way in convincing customers that you genuinely care, as opposed to just wanting to sell them stuff.
If you constantly seek to understand your audience and communicate with them in an authentic and engaging way, your brand will thrive. However, as with anything worthwhile, it takes a lot of work.
If you would like to elevate your brand, but don’t have the resources or time, contact me for a free consultation to help determine your needs and connect with your audience.
