Читать книгу Launching & Building a Brand For Dummies - Amy Will - Страница 109

In many ways, building a strong brand is about building strong relationships. People form relationships with one another based not so much on what they think about each other but on how they feel toward one another. The same is true of relationships that people create with their favorite brands. It’s not so much what they know about your brand but how they feel about it that keeps them coming back and endorsing it.

One of your top branding goals should be to create an emotional connection with existing and prospective customers and clients. Stop thinking so much about what your brand is and what it offers, and start thinking more about how prospective customers and clients feel about it. How does your brand affect their lives? Get personal. Taking a more personalized approach enables you to nurture an emotional connection between your customers and your brand.

Here are a few suggestions for getting your customers, clients, and prospects connected more emotionally to your brand:

 Get connected to the people in your market. When you’re connected to others, you’re in tune with their needs and desires, what they like and dislike, and who they are. You “get” them, and when you do, you intuitively know what to do and say to get them to love your brand. Maybe they appreciate a good laugh. Maybe they’re afraid of what’s going on in the world. Maybe they have a common cause.When you know what makes your customers tick, you can market more effectively to them. If you’re serving a community that’s committed to environmental issues, you could post blog entries about environmental issues and perhaps offer products made from recycled materials.

 Share real stories. People like to see brands in a real-life context, so look for opportunities to tell customer stories. Better yet, encourage customers to share their experiences with your brand. You can take advantage of this type of user-generated content (see Chapter 13) in your social media, website, and newsletter.

 Add a personal touch. Nothing makes a person feel more emotionally connected to a brand than being acknowledged and appreciated personally. Adding a personal touch can be as simple as addressing customers by name, calling them on the phone when they have a complaint, or liking and sharing their social media posts about your brand. Strive to personalize your brand’s voice, as explained in Chapter 8, especially when you’re scaling up and having to delegate or outsource some or all of your marketing. Creating a brand style guide, as explained in Chapter 6, can help ensure consistency in your brand’s voice when you’re having to distribute your workload.