Have you ever looked at a brand and felt a deep connection as though it were human or a pet? One might say you are “in love” with the brand. It is Valentine’s day so it is only appropriate to talk about Love.
We like because…; we love despite… Often times you ask people why they keep using a brand and they don’t have a tangible reason other than “I just love it.” Women stick with one brand of makeup despite rival brands outgunning their favoured brand. People stick with a brand of phone, say iPhone, despite the competition coming up with innovative mindblowing features; they don’t care. Same applies to cars, designers, computers, and so on. It is inexplicable why we feel this level of affection for these brands. Or maybe there is an explanation to it?
Brands such as Apple have spent years of growing a community of people who like a luxury lifestyle. German brands of cars get their community of people who like rugged and durable machines. Whatever demographic your business fits into, you can get people to fall in love with your brand. It doesn’t happen overnight but how can you key into people’s emotions when branding?
Here are strategies that can be deployed to make your customers fond of your brand.
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Branding
For a brand just starting out, it is very important to get branding right. The saying that first impression counts connect to this deeply. When someone comes in contact with your brand, they spend all of 20 seconds analysing your brand. How does the brand colour(s) speak to your demographic? How does your product design come off? Do they look at your logo and go “oh okay that is cool”? Do you have a tagline? Does it fit with your demographic? There are so many questions to be answered when handling branding as this is the most important facet of winning people over and growing a community.
A Branding Guideline is a set of rules you have that guides your brand and make sure it aligns with the message you plan to send across. The only thing worse than a lack of identity is being two-faced. The branding guideline is divided into three elements.a. Brand design elements – Using your brand’s approved colours, logos, and fonts consistently and correctly is critical to presenting a unified front. These are the hard-working visuals that personify who you are as a brand — the personality of your people, products, and culture — so take care to get them right.
These elements include colours, logo and fonts. To get a world-class website, you need a world-class brand design elements.
An overview of Netflix’s brand guideline
b. Branding style elements – Your communication style — whether visual, written or verbal — is the lifeblood of your brand. Your music and voice-over choices, the photography you select, and even the ebb and flow of your words, tell your audience at every twist and turn who you are as a brand. Take your time to enunciate this clearly and thoughtfully.
These elements include visuals, written or audio components.c. Brand essence elements – At the heart of your brand is the mission, vision, and promise that you make to your customers that define the purpose of your company. The following brand essence elements help align your internal teams around who you are and how to talk about your brand.
As a whole, content should align with your mission, vision, values, promise pledges and traits. -
Customer Relations
Care makes the world go round. It is only natural that people are drawn to people or brand who shows they care about them. Customer interaction is integral as a brand is dealing with people and people have emotions and sets of values they live by. It is important to critically analyse the demography of your customer base and even more so analyse them individually. The lingo used to interact with an 18-year-old university undergraduate is different from how you would address a 32-year-old mother of two. Have their birthdays and wish them a happy birthday. Be interested in what they are willing to share on social media. You want them to be comfortable enough to keep coming back.
Happy customers are key to a thriving business
In addition, how you react to different challenges that arise with customers daily is equally important. What happens if a customer buys a defected product and comes on social media to call out your brand as a fake? How do you quickly deescalate that situation? Or do you just ignore it? With customers, you have to put in mind that you are doing an almost impossible job of trying to keep everyone happy. It is important to try to find a quick resolution to whatever the issue might be because guess what; a negative review spreads way faster than a positive one.
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Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility
Ultimately, whatever you do as a business or brand, whatever industry you find yourself in, the goal is to help humanity, to better the standard of living of people in your society or in some cases, the world at large. But it is important to take it a step further. Every top organisation in the world do CSR. It shows that the brand’s mission and vision isn’t a farce after all. Whatever it is your brand could do for the society ranging from charity work to community service, you should consider doing. Good deeds win people over much quicker.
In business, finding customers isn’t the hardest part of doing business, it is retaining them. Keeping customers and having them return and assist by bringing more people in through referral is the daydream of all entrepreneur but it requires constant work, commitment and emotional intelligence. It is difficult when you have to employ staff members and they aren’t as passionate about it as you are. You have to keep reiterating how important it means to you. Consciousness is key with the day-to-day task of all staff members. It is possible for people to fall in love with your brand, you just have to show them what there is to love about your brand.
Happy Valentine’s day.
P.S – We Love You!
