Getting your customers attached to your brand is an effective way to keep them returning. But, you can take it a notch higher and have them truly fall in love with your brand. So, how do you do that? Let Virtua Solutions teach you the secrets to capture the hearts of your customers.
Understanding What Brand Love Is
So, you might wonder, what does loving a brand really mean? How does it differ from ordinary brand support? Well, it is certainly different. Regular brand support will often be just your customers regularly transacting with you and promoting your brand.
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Brand love goes a notch higher. Here, the customer becomes more emotionally connected with your company. To them, your brand becomes a symbol of their values and ideas. With that, they start incorporating it into their lifestyle and become more involved in sharing it with their peers and other contacts.
Why Brand Love Matters
While the goal of encouraging brand love is convincing your customers to transact more with you, it’s more than that. In fact, the idea can also elevate your company to a new status. Here are several things that make brand love a great approach.
Turning Awareness Into Action
With an effective marketing strategy, you can make more people aware of your brand. However, it is often just that. Your customers will not always act on that awareness as quickly as you might want.
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Brand love is what pushes them to do that action. And it isn’t just about them making purchases. This greater affection for your brand also encourages them to share their experiences with others. That strong recommendation and word of mouth helps bring more potential customers toward you.
Longer-Lasting Loyalty
Strong brand love also fosters a more loyal fanbase. And you will definitely need that as you grow your company. Your loyal fanbase will be the first to support you during various transition periods and will help spread the word. Furthermore, they will be your more recurring customer base.
Stronger Brand Advocacy
Brand advocacy isn’t just about customers enthusiastically promoting your brand. It can also go the other way, as they can help you improve. With their love for your brand, they become more open in telling you how they feel about it. That is a good source of insights for improving your company practices.
So, How Do You Foster Brand Love
Fostering brand love is by no means a quick one. Just like actual romantic relationships, you need to be diligent in courting your customers. So, where do you begin?
Giving Customers The Reason To Love You
Of course, for them to be head over heels for your brand, they need a reason to do so. To that end, you need to know how to give that reason in the best way.
Here, you can use the so-called Pyramid of Delight to plan to enamore your customers. It has three levels.
- Survival and support: What is your brand doing to deliver the promise you made to customers? How are you supporting them?
- Belonging: How do you make customers feel seen and heard?
- Empowerment: How do you help improve customers?
By answering these questions, you can clearly see why customers will fall for you. From there, you can start cultivating those feelings.
The Five Steps To Developing Brand Love
Once you know why customers will fall for your brand, then it’s time to build on that. Like building a romantic relationship, you need these elements to effectively woo them.
Validation
As mentioned above, customers like it when they feel that you see them and hear their voices. For that, you need to elevate your personalization efforts to better connect to them. Gather as much information as you could to create a picture of them for engagement.
Image from LinkedIn.
Virtua Solutions can help you here by being your frontline information collectors. We can then organize this information so that you can browse through them better. And our customer service agents will provide you with useful insights here.
Empathy
Going further, you should also show customers you are always there for them. Being empathic to your customers isn’t just about saying these things during engagements. You also need to display it through actions.
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One effective way to do this is by building a community for them. With it, they can connect with other like-minded individuals to discuss things for your brand. For your part, bringing together these fans will help you better connect with them and deliver a more empathic service.
Appreciation
Customers also like it when they see that you appreciate their dedication to your brand. Delivering a quality service is already a great way to show that, but you can take it further. You should go above and beyond that.
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Consider a more proactive approach in serving them, taking the lead to identify potential issues and creating ready solutions. Virtua will assist you here by being your frontline customer service provider. With our help, you can provide round-the-clock proactive support for your customers.
Trustworthiness
Trust is a major element of both a romantic and a customer relationship. So, you definitely need to ensure that you are a brand of their trust. A big aspect of this is being transparent about what’s happening to your brand.
That is especially the case when it comes to customer data. People want to be sure you are using and storing their personal information. Additionally, you should be ready to answer their questions regarding security concerns. Virtua will be your frontline responder here, ensuring customers are well-informed.
Authenticity
The final ingredient to make people fall for your brand is authenticity. That can be a bit tricky, as people have subjective ideas about authenticity. Nevertheless, aligning yourself to their values helps in that perception.
Image from DigitalWellbeing.org.
In that regard, you need to empower brand advocates to tell others the story of how you align with their values. Encourage them to tell these stories in their own words and give them the platform. Virtua will help you coordinate with these advocates to spread the word.
Spread Brand Love With Virtua Solutions’ Help
Just like romantic courtships, fostering brand love can be a lengthy effort. But don’t worry. Virtua is ready to be at your wing. We will help you win your customers’ hearts in more ways than one. Contact us today and let’s make your brand MORE loved.