Humanizing Your Brand

In the last 10 years, we’ve seen a trend in the marketing and advertising world of companies humanizing their brands and looking to develop a stronger, more sincere connection with a consumer. This emotional connection is strategic, meant to secure a long lasting, loyal relationship with a customer.

It is estimated that the average consumer is exposed to over 5000 ads each day. It is no wonder marketers are looking to find a more strategic way to reach their audiences, and reel them in for the long run.

So how exactly can you humanize your brand and set yourself apart from your competitors? I’ve outlined a few tips below:

1. Establish an emotional connection
   • Consumers respond to content that is personal and meaningful to them, so once you’re able to zero in on what that is, you can target them effectively. Showing that your brand is associated with a passion or cause will help shed a positive light on you in the eyes of the consumer.
2. Show that you’re listening with action
   • The best way to earn the respect and trust of your consumers is to value their opinions and feedback, and respond with action. A consumer feels an immediate connection to you when they feel like their voice has been heard.
3. Prioritize the relationship
   • While it may be difficult, the relationships with your consumers have to be put ahead of your bottom line. You need to trust that the relationships you develop with your consumers based on trust and respect will be a lasting source of conversions.
4. Follow through
   • Understand that when you humanize your brand, you’re making a commitment to your consumers to care about the passion and emotion you’re bringing into the mix. They’re engaging with you as a result of you caring about something, and that means you must always follow through on what you’re portraying.

While the benefits of humanizing your brand can be fruitful, it is also a large commitment. It is not simply a band-aid solution to marketing woes, it is a redefinition of your brand and what you stand for, and something you need to consistently deliver on once in place.

What are your thoughts on creating emotional connections with your customers to increase engagement with your brand? Let’s discuss…

Advertisement

Do You Know Why Your Customers Choose You?

With more and more competing services spreading around the world, it is becoming easier to create look-alike companies and services. And yet, standing out from the crowd is one of the most important requirements of any company. Being different gives customers a good reason to choose your company over one of the many lookalikes.

There are many ways to be different. Offering a unique and better service is a good place to start. However, adding layers of innovative services or developing a brand with special attributes can also make you look and feel different.

One of the most important roles that market research can play is to find out what your potential audience wants and needs, and use these findings to help differentiate your company or service offering.

With almost two decades of market research expertise, I have outlined below a few compelling reasons as to why you should survey your customers. As for the process of creating the survey, how the survey is conducted, and what methods can be used to follow up, I’ll leave those for another blog later in the month!

Customer Loyalty: Understand the magic – what they like about you and what they dislike. Knowing what keeps them coming back over and over again is the secret to your success. Loyalty is the magic when they start talking about you and referring you to others.

Customer Satisfaction: Satisfied customers are those who do not have outstanding negative issues concerning you on their mind. This doesn’t mean everything has always been perfect. Sometimes things may not have gone all right. In all such situations you gave your customers a chance to talk to you. Sympathetic listening to customers is essential. An online survey, or better yet, a personal phone call from a third party, provide an excellent way for your customers to have a chance to get their side of the story out without being interrupted. A second essential is follow-through. Proper tools of analysis will help you segment your customers into different categories based on what you need to do in return. Then show them you “heard” them and are putting their words into action.

Effective Communication: By inviting customers to talk to you through careful design of your survey or asking key questions in a telephone conversation can effectively inform your customers about things they may not know or remind them of important changes or innovations in your organization. This is clever because customers will take your survey more seriously than most other communication you send them.

Spotting Trends: Beyond understanding the drivers behind loyalty and satisfaction of your customers, you can benefit from the wisdom of the masses by asking them for their ideas and spotting patterns in their feedback. Spotting such trends ahead of competition could offer you a significant advantage.

Think about your own loyalty as a customer and why you choose certain brands or companies to work with – heck, knowing what your customers value is what’s behind those great beer commercials who put their customer in their brand experience! Listen to your customers; let them show you what they value and once you act on their input, enjoy watching your business grow!

When was the last time you conducted a customer survey? Did you send out an online survey or did you call your customers? Did you follow up on the customer feedback and if so, how? Do you feel you did a professional job or do you think you should have hired a marketing firm to conduct it for you?