When I was a kid and saw a Tide commercial. I started saying the word ‘angel’ over and over. My mom always found this behavior odd. So, when I was old enough to communicate with my mom, she asked me why I said the ‘angel’ during the Tide commercials. I said, ‘my dolly fell into the Tide bin and came out white, looking like an angel.’
Extract from the book Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts
Love has various forms of expression. With people, we express it in one way, and when it comes to brands, we treat it differently.
If you love a brand, you’ll prefer it above every other brand. Period! If an ecommerce service delivers you the exact product they promised without any hassle, you will stick with it for all your future shopping needs.
A pizza place that serves delicious pizzas will be your go-to choice whenever you feel hungry. So, brand loyalty is a thing only if you develop one.
Creating a website or an app, marketing your product, and generating traffic is the norm that most businesses follow these days.
But the problem with this model is that brands are just making an exchange – customers show a need, and brands fulfill it and ask for a fee. Simple!
The difference between big brands and small brands is that the former makes the customers fall in love with the brand. That’s why they are big.
Yes! You can make people fall in love with your brand. Here are some amazing ways to do that.
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Begin with the need, not features
When a brand focus on how buying a product will solve or address customers’ need, this is when a customer feels love at first sight with the brand.
You need to offer the solutions that the customer is looking for. This is where many brands go wrong. They choose to blow their own horn & go about how great is their product when the customers care less about it.
If customers find the answers in your product, they won’t even look for another brand. Sounds easy? Well, the hard part is cracking the enigma of what customers want.
If you can do that, your customer is not going anywhere.
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Research about your target audience
Know your audience. This line fits well for so many situations. If you are talking about ‘business management’ in a room full of literature students, who will listen to you? No one!
Similarly, if you are selling overcoats in an area where the weather is warm throughout the year, who’ll buy it? Therefore, research!
Doing some research about your customers is a great way to connect with the customer on an emotional level. For an ideal customer, a brand must figure out their need and serve them in a way that gets etched in their memory.
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Instead of reacting, respond to the customer
Be it good or bad, customer feedback is something that creates a reason to tie or break a bond with the customer. Responding to customer feedback quickly, even if it’s a negative one, can change the situation in your favor.
Technology has made it easier to manage and respond to feedback from customers. You don’t need to check manually what every person is saying about your brand. You now have softwares called Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to do that for you.
While big brands can dole out a large sum of money to market their products, small businesses cannot do that. The only way for them to maintain their brand’s image is by customers’ feedback.
That’s why CRM for small business is like a godsend. It makes things very easy for them. They can respond to feedback by customers and solve their issues promptly.
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Offer solution for FREE
The whole point of marketing the product and building the brand is to make customers buy from you. This tip works well with startups struggling to get a market share.
When you provide the audience something for FREE, it gives them a reason to trust you and treat you with respect. Sustain initial loss to earn maximum dividends in the future!
What you want from a customer is to build trust before they purchase something from you. When you offer them the very thing they are looking for, they feel attracted to your brand.
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Deliver more than expected
One possible way to create a positive experience for the customer is to deliver them more than what is expected from you. For instance, if you have a discount coupon for customers, you can also throw in a free sample to excite them.
Make your promotions more lucrative and keep rolling out discount offers and sales from time to time.
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Go for the right distribution channel
Indeed, branding and mobile advertising are trending right now, but how successfully you’re going to reach your consumer depends upon how much research you’ve done.
Say, you want to reach older people. Then mobile advertising might not be the right medium to connect with them. In such a case, a more appreciate medium will be SMS marketing.
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Storytelling
Marketing is all about being smart. Say, you are selling espresso machine. Now, instead of talking about the stainless-steel feature, talk about how the coffee can be made in just 30 seconds.
Tell them how your machine can save time and electricity. Talk about how a freshly brewed coffee on a Sunday morning can kill laziness when your kids are still tucked to bed. Appeal to their emotions!
Through storytelling, you should be able to sell them the quality that your product adds to their lives. Figure out the right story with the right words, and you can spell your magic on your customers.
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Visuals are important
While most of the brands don’t worry about visuals at all, a professional brand will worry about the color scheme they will use in their next campaign, and what impact will the color create to the end-user?
An excellent website is good, but you need to extend that awesomeness to social media and other related platforms. Every visual is like a touchpoint waiting to engage the visitor.
Key takeaway
Making the customers fall in love with your brand is an art. You are the artist. If you can draw what’s on their mind on to the canvas of your brand, that’s where the real magic will happen. As a brand, your goal is to create an experience of a lifetime for your customers.