 The Value of Building an Emotional Brand
By: Helen Thompson
With so many products and services in today’s marketplace (over 23,000 new food and consumer products were introduced last year), companies have to find more effective ways to build brand loyalty. Women, who are typically charged with most buying decisions, are feeling paralyzed because there are too many brands and too many choices. As marketers, whether you are a business-to-business or a business-to-consumer company, it is essential that you communicate the essence of your products and services in meaningful and relevant ways. In years past, it was enough to simply compete on price, features and benefits. Today however, most products and services are at parity, allowing for little or no differentiation. Companies must find new ways to compete, position themselves and hold onto customers. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to go beyond the rational and move into the emotional in order to establish and maintain a unique bond with customers. A 2002 Gallop Organization study attests that “engaged” customers who have an emotional as well as a rational “bond” to the brand spend more, return more frequently, are less price sensitive, and serve as brand ambassadors to their friends and neighbors. So, how do you strengthen your offerings to ensure deeper customer engagement, motivating your clients to return time and time again? Assuming you have achieved the basics (quality products, delivered with a high level of service and on a consistent basis), what more can you do? In his book, Emotional Branding, Marc Gobe skillfully solves this exhaustive dilemma and calls for a shift in both corporate culture and approach to consumers including a more humanistic, imaginative and risk-taking style for conducting business and managing employees. He also challenges us to listen to customers in order to bring more pleasurable, life-enhancing solutions to the world. If this seems a bit overwhelming, consider these steps:
1. Begin to foster a creative, caring business atmosphere internally.
2. Develop an innovative culture that allows for real connections and open communication with clients and consumers.
3. Create a partnership, a real win-win, between your company and your customers.
Create Customer Evangelists
1. Continuously gather customer feedback.
2. Make it a point to share knowledge freely.
3. Expertly build word-of-mouth networks.
4. Encourage communities of customers to meet and share.
5. Devise specialized, smaller offerings to get customers to bite.
6. Focus on making the world, or your industry, better.
And lastly, especially from a woman’s perspective:
1. Let your customers know how much you appreciate their businessÉ. surprise and delight them with a gift, a written thank you.
2. Give the right tools to create and control her lifestyle or business needs.4. Make her proud of you.
5. Educate her. Give her all the information she needs.
6. Make her experience with you easy, simple and fun.
7. Support causes that are important to her. Creating an emotional brand begins and ends with cultivating an authentic relationship. Transcend the confines of ordinary business practices. Create an emotional brand experience that builds customer loyalty through a sense of purpose, community and inspiration. Helen Thompson is Managing Partner of Resonate, a marketing and training consultancy that helps companies build programs that connect with women. She can be reached at 913.383.1988.
Article Source: http://www.flourishmagazine.com
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