Brand Love

What is the reason for creating brand love? 

• You'll want to identify exactly what you mean by "brand love" vs. "satisfaction" vs. "loyalty" vs. "advocacy."

• Define it, measure it to get a baseline and then set a clear goal for what you want the outcome to be and how that will help your other marketing and sales objectives. Marketing Plans is a good place to start with that.

• Market research has all the articles on MarketingZone to help you with options for how to you can measure and track brand love. 

TIP:  You want Brand Fans who show brand love on social media!  Posts on places like Facebook and Twitter amplify word-of-mouth.

 

Here's an example of some questions to help determine how active someone is on social media...

Brand love is generally about the product/service or the experience

• Think of a restaurant you love. Is it for the incredible food? Or the incredible atmosphere? Or both?

• It's very, very hard to be great at everything. It may be helpful to come up with a winning strategy to differentiate your brand.  Advertising Strategy will get you started.

TIP:  A Nike Executive shared this about their brand, "Typically, NIKE is looking to emulate performance innovation from an elite athlete’s perspective as opposed to more of a mainstream approach to average athletes.  The belief is that if it serves the needs of elite athletes, we can figure out how to trickle it down to the mainstream athlete."

 

 

 

TIP:  The Wow Effect!

 

A personalized card sent by the local vet to the owners of a yellow lab after their dog Buddy had surgery at the emergency pet hospital. 

This is an incredible example of customer contact management!  They learned that one of their patients had been seen by the emergency pet hospital and that triggered their office team to pull out the yellow lab card (relevant dog breed) and get everyone in the office to sign the card.  And then mail it so it arrived a day later. 

That's what builds positive word of mouth and brand love!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brand love is about creating customer advocates who are credible in referring new business to you

Are you identifying and tagging people in your customer database as Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople personality types as described in Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point? 
 

• Connectors are people who have lots of varied connections to different types of people and act as human bridges to help others make connections and "cross-pollinate" information and ideas.  They don't get paid to do this.  They just do this for free.  It's how they operate.
• Mavens are people who like to be seen as experts and help other people make informed decisions.  They're the "go to" people and "smart friends" and "experts" who people seek out.
• Salesmen are people who are persuasive in selling, inducing others’ to do or buy something.  In social media, these "salesmen" (and women) do this for free.  They're like a free sales force if you can harness them to recommend and advocate your product, company or services. 

TIP:   how can you attract connectors, mavens and salespeople personality types that Gladwell describes?  These are the people you want as customers!  These are the vocal people who are most likely to spread word-of-mouth, help you make connections and give you referrals.

• How to Improve Customer Satisfaction
  

• How to Get More Referrals
  

• Viral Marketing
  

TIP:   Learn how to assess and build customer loyalty and better yet, create Brand Fans and customer Advocates who proactively share positive word-of-mouth for free.  Customer loyalty is hard to achieve in this age of selling with coupons and constant sales. Add the Internet, and that makes it even harder to maintain and increase customer loyalty because it's so easy and fast for customers to compare prices, suppliers and products. Enough complaining: This is the new normal.  Learn how to measure and improve customer loyalty.

How can you tell if something is "built for love"?

• There's an almost magical ability to generate excitement and loyalty from customers. 

• It's how using and owning the product makes them feel.  There's an emotional connection and sense of pride. 

Logowear should be worn by your Brand Advocates! 

• The customers who should be wearing t-shirts with your company logo on it are the customers who love your brand. 

• Top Suppliers for Promotional Products will help you identify all kinds of things to sell or give your customer "advocates." In fact, offering logo items at a trade show, event or on your website may help you identify who the people are who love your brand.

Don't confuse brand love with top brands

Know this:  Of the top 100 brands, which of these brands really have "brand love?" Let's just talk about the top of the list: Google? Coke? Microsoft? IBM? GE? Nokia?  High brand value means these companies can charge a premium for their brand which makes them more profitable. Keep that in mind as you are crafting your "brand love" strategy. 

 

The ClippingZone
The best marketing articles, blog posts and reports from around the web

• Check out the book Built to Love:  Creating Products That Captivate Consumers by Peter Boatwright and Jonathan Cagan. 
• Brand Advocates - good summary of research on the power of influence of brand advocates in this article on Social Media Examiner