Connect with Your Customers by Sharing What You Love
Customers who feel emotionally connected to a brand are more likely to maintain loyalty to said brand. Building that connection can be difficult for a business, but let’s remember that your business was built by you, a human. In a time where every company is vying for attention, you can use your hobbies and passions to gain the attention of your consumers.
Social media simultaneously provides more opportunities to connect with your customers than ever before while providing a great platform to humanize your brand and build trust with consumers.
The down side: your competitors know this to be true, as well! You need to stand out from the crowd and apart from your competition, while actively communicating to your target audience that you know their pain and you have the solution to their shared problem. How? By sharing what you love.
I don’t mean telling them your favorite flavor of ice cream. I’m talking about sharing your passions, hobbies and interests.
Emotions are a huge part of decision making, as much as we love to deny it. Your customers make emotional decisions every single time they interact with your brand. It doesn’t mean they’re having some kind of epiphany every time they make a purchase, but they buy a product or service based on their connection to your brand. They also feel the anticipation of happiness when they decide to buy.
Hobbies Play a Vital Role
Authenticity – People are incredibly good at spotting fake enthusiasm. You can’t fake happiness when you’re talking about something you love. If you share your passion in a video on social media or write about it in a blog post, your genuine enthusiasm will show. It’s real and being real humanizes your otherwise cold and unfeeling brand.
Trust – Your customers will gain insight into who you are and what drives your brand. This insight will help you connect with your customers, building more brand trust. By nerding out about your hobbies, you’re not selling them anything. You’re simply sharing a little bit about who you are.
Relatability – Almost every single person has a hobby. Even if it’s not the same as yours, people will know the feeling of being completely absorbed in a pastime. We all have that one thing we could talk about for hours and hours. Your customers will be able to relate to you through this.
Conversation starter – In the same vein of relatability, sharing your hobbies is a great conversation starter; a way to encourage your customers to interact on social media. Just like you could talk at length about your own hobby, your customers will be only too happy to share their own passions, taking pride as if they are “in the know”. This allows them the opportunity to feel valued beyond what they contribute to your bottom line.
In closing, if you connect with your customers it plays a HUGE role in strengthening consumer loyalty, generating FREE word-of-mouth advertising, building brand credibility, and helping you stand out from the competition. When consumers feel they have a story to share, they will be only too willing to spread the word about you and your brand to anyone and everyone. It’s a win-win!
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The Best Places to Feature Your Logo
A logo is so much more than a pretty face! It’s got the potential to unite your visual branding to convey a message to your audience. This seemingly innocuous image is actually quite powerful if you use it correctly. Sadly, many brands treat it as an afterthought, quickly forgotten by consumers. Businesses lose the opportunity for their audience to visually connect with the brand. Afterall, beauty is nothing apart from brains!
When your logo is used to its full potential, it can quickly become the first thing your customers recall when they think of your brand. If you’re doing things right, they will relive all the good feelings they associate with your brand when they see that image in their mind’s eye.
Here are some of the best places to feature your logo:
- In your website header. For many new customers, their first experience of your brand will be via your website. Having your logo featured in your website header will ensure that they have a clear idea of who you are and the message you want to convey.
- In your social media. Branding goes beyond your website. It can be easy to treat your social media pages as a separate entity, yet they are a vital part of your visual branding. Make sure to include your logo on every social media page you have.
- On your invoices. Invoices aren’t very exciting to look at. In fact, most of your clients will likely give them a cursory glance. However, the presence of your logo on your business invoices catches the attention of your customers, signifies your professionalism and is a visual representation of your cohesive business elements.
- In purchase confirmations. Your customer is going to be in “feel good” mode when they’ve made a purchase from you. In those immediate moments after a purchase when their order confirmation appears on the screen, you’ll want to capture that positive emotion and link it to your brand. This is exactly where you want to be sure your logo is featured.
- On your emails. Newsletters, promotional emails and even basic customer service responses all present an opportunity to share and connect with your customers. Consider including your logo in your signature whenever you communicate with them.
- In your downloadable content. If you offer downloadable content – a paid product or free ebooklet – make sure to brand it! Having your logo featured on the content will raise the trust factor and create an opportunity to stay in your customers’ minds for longer.
You can increase your level of engagement by using your logo both on and offline if you think strategically. The goal is to raise brand awareness and increase lead generation. Remember: your logo is often the first insight a consumer will gain into your brand. It should be featured on every piece of information, material, digital media and element of your business! Don’t use it sparingly! Go all out and be liberal!
Your Knowledge Builds Your Brand
As a business owner, you fuel the success of your employees, customers and ultimately your business simply by sharing your knowledge of your products and services. Afterall, knowledge is power and, when communicated effectively, your insight can bring about sales opportunities as you flex your impressive brand muscles. In addition, some of the best sales leaders understand that sharing knowledge has a greater impact on consumers than annoying sales pitches.
Advantages of Establishing a Help Desk for Your Business
Customer satisfaction is the primary goal for all companies as contented customers build businesses, increase revenue and set you apart from your competitors. Your brand is strengthened when your customers are satisfied, remaining loyal to you above your competition. Unfortunately, deadlines, communication, important messages, and crucial business matters commonly fall by the wayside when companies operate without help desk software. The truth is that customers want twenty-four/seven support, proactive solutions, and timely quality service addressing their complaints and concerns at superhuman, lightning speed. Six benefits of incorporating help desk software into your business include:
- Single, one-stop solutions for customer complaints, assistance requests, queries, and support from one place
- Status tracking and monitoring of complaints, service requests, solutions, and resolutions
- Improved customer satisfaction and quality service
- Increased speed in problem resolution and efficacy
- Brand reputation is strengthened
- Improved understanding of what customers want and improved quality in delivering support, products, and services
Imagine streamlining much of your most time-consuming, mundane daily tasks by cutting out the process of combing through old emails in order to trace issues or complaints. Help desk software enables you and your staff to quickly track questions, issues, and tasks, resulting in greater adaptability and responsiveness to your customers. In addition, a help desk creates a way for your customers to solve problems on their own without waiting on the phone for hours or jumping through complicated hoops in order to get the service they require.
Help desk software enables you to prioritize and keep track of the most urgent tasks and customer concerns. For example, you can set up a system that allows you to handle consumer issues on a first-come, first-served basis or an urgency “grading system” which bumps more concerning issues to the top of the queue of issues to be addressed. In addition, more pressing issues that require your direct attention can be more efficiently optimized, ensuring no consumer feels as though their concerns have gone unaddressed or that they have been neglected for an unreasonable period of time. When customer concerns are addressed promptly and efficiently, you as a business owner can make consumers feel valued, strengthening your brand’s integrity while creating greater revenue opportunities as you increase consumer trust in your business.
Help desk software allows business owners to create a better understanding of consumer audiences. Help desks allow companies to collect and track customer data regarding commonly asked questions and concerns about products and services. As a result, you can fine-tune your products and services by utilizing this valuable information to improve upon what your company offers, creating further products, services, better solutions-oriented business practices, and strengthening customer service. Even the most loyal consumer will leave you if they feel they have not been heard. Implementation of help desk software can act as an insurance plan against consumer neglect and customer service delays, ensuring nothing and no one slips through the cracks.
Whether establishing a small business or running a Fortune 500 enterprise, help desks are used by companies across the world regardless of scale. Impressive automation prevents business owners from missing important deadlines by bumping more urgent matters to the top of the list so that nothing gets missed. In addition, help desks ensure your customers are dealing with one response, not multiple and confusing phone calls from various members of your organization, completely defeating the purpose of building efficiency within your company.
As a business owner, you have a responsibility to your employees and customers to provide the best in customer service and quick solutions to everyday concerns. Help desk software enables you to offer that support more easily while increasing efficiency within your company. Strengthen your collaborative team efforts by providing better responses resulting in greater customer loyalty. In addition, you can analyze and improve your efforts in order to fine-tune your customer service in a way that further elevates your brand’s image and consumer loyalty.
How to Respond to Customer Reviews
Reviews are crucial to the success of your business as 93% of customers base their purchasing decisions on consumer reviews. If your overall review rating falls below 3.3 stars, consumers won’t engage with your business.
Your responses to your company’s reviews play an equally important role in consumer engagement, influencing purchasing decisions. When you fail to respond, you send a message that you do not care about your customers.
Telling A Story Through Branding
Brand storytelling is a powerful marketing tool encapsulating everything consumers experience regarding your business. It is a means by which to form connections with customers in a way digital interactions cannot. Social media and commercial advertisements lack human connection, however, a solid brand story lends a personal element to an otherwise cold, impersonal experience.
Masterful brand storytelling employs narratives that communicate a company’s values and convictions in a meaningful way that directly impacts consumer behavior. In fact, 55% of consumers choose to buy from companies simply because they fell in love with the brand story. Forty-four percent of those consumers will share the story and 15% will rush to purchase the product immediately.
Solid brand storytelling empathizes with the consumer at the core of its marketing message. Empathy makes the story stick and fuels the business-to-consumer relationship as customers feel understood, primed to take action by purchasing your product or service. Vulnerability and authenticity are the pillars of human connection and solid brand storytelling presents an honest journey full of conflict, victories, and surprises experienced by real humans. When businesses are transparent and truthful about their journey, trust is born and customers become converts.
While solid branding goes well beyond a clever logo, the logo is where the story begins. It is the introduction of your target audience to your brand’s story and is powerful in influencing a consumer’s opinion of your brand as it communicates what your brand is all about. A great logo is recognizable independent of the company’s name and can trigger assumptions of importance, leisure, affluence and more. For example, IBM incorporated bold, futuristic designs reflective of the company’s technological expertise.
Color pallet is a crucial component of brand storytelling as colors have the ability to stimulate hormones and evoke emotions.
Color sets the tone for your story as red is known to solicit feelings of warmth while commanding attention. Blue communicates responsibility and ambition while evoking feelings of confidence, intelligence and authenticity. Color psychology is a key component of brand storytelling and is equally important as a business’s scalability.
Great copy reflects the rest of your branding elements while engaging your target audience, enhancing the tone of your brand’s story in a way which color cannot.
Copy is authentic written material designed to draw the positive attention of consumers who are far more interested in understanding how you can help them solve a problem rather than technical specs. The reasons they should buy from you should be highlighted along with the mission of your company in a way that allows consumers to envision how your story fits into theirs. Consumers want to be naturally drawn in and not “sold to.”
The use of generic stock photos in brand storytelling is a big mistake. Stock photos cannot effectively represent a truly authentic brand and are often misleading regarding a company’s mission, products and services. Effective, authentic visual imagery enables users to connect and engage with your brand across all channels of marketing, creating interest while strengthening your brand story.
Brand storytelling imagery needs to be enticing and memorable while painting a picture for consumers. Whether incorporating vibrant videos, authentic photography or a combination of text and graphics, your imagery needs to reflect your brand’s values while lining up with your story. If you are an accountant, don’t use a stock photo of a goldfish in a bowl to communicate your story. It doesn’t align with your company’s mission or product and simply does not match your brand.
SUMMARY:
Effective brand storytelling simplifies sales and marketing as it attracts leads and builds a loyal consumer base saving you valuable time and resources. Consumers are tired of endless ads, commercials, and emails. They are more attracted to compelling content delivered in the form of a memorable story that communicates that your product enhances their daily lives. A great story can express your brand promise and value in a way that consumers want to absorb because they appreciate feeling in charge. Your brand storytelling enables you to sell to consumers without making them feel they have been “sold to.”
