Building brand relationships is like falling in love

Estee Cockcraft

As with relationships, consumers tend to choose brands that understand them. Similarly, to introducing our friends to other eligible friends, consumers are introduced to brands through word of mouth. Essentially the first three seconds of meeting someone is crucial and equally brands should use creativity to make an impression.

The three building blocks for a brand to create long-term relationships are very similar to dating: creativity to create attraction, communication that builds trust and loyalty and word of mouth to peers are three powerful activities.

Creativity creates attraction

Customers love to see something simply done and differently to make the interaction more exciting and thus more appealing. The trick is to have the ability to see something different in the ordinary. This is where innovation comes into play. In order to differentiate your brand and develop from beings simply liked to being loved, a brand needs to be innovative, whether through products or campaigns.

Developing loyalty should be an intentional activity

Customer loyalty takes a long time to build, which is why it is important not to flirt to convert, but rather be open and authentic in your customer communication. Have a sales philosophy that emphasizes relationship building. Think end-of-time friendships, not end-of-month totals.

Without customer loyalty, customers leave and you could end up sacrificing as much as a third of your sales per year, all in a bid to 'get your numbers up'. Building customer loyalty goes beyond generic loyalty programmes and e-mailers, although these may form part of it.

With so many brands around it is becoming increasingly important to understand your consumer beyond their demographics. When it comes to understanding consumers, psychographic factors become key to gathering insights, as you need to understand what makes them tick, whom they trust and what their goals are. If one simply understands a consumer in terms of age, gender and LSMs, your communication will miss the human element of building relationships.

Through sharing the goals and ideals of your target market you are able to understand where and with whom they connect, what they share and how they prefer to be communicated to. The relationships you have with your friends are different to romantic relationships, which in turn are different to the relationship you have with co-workers. You approach people differently, according to their personality and the more you get involved in various relationships the more you realise that each relationship has to be treated as an individual and built upon.

It is important that your relationship starts internally first. If your internal audience is not loyal to your brand, you simply cannot expect your external audience to be. Sustain your internal brand with the same level of passion you would for your customers.

Connecting with connectors

Word of mouth may be nothing new, but the extent to which word of mouth can travel on a digital space certainly is. Peer marketing extends your sales force across channels you cannot buy, making it extremely valuable. This is specifically relevant when it comes to youth marketing, an audience that often bases its decisions on peer reviews and is moving further and further away from traditional media channels, focusing its attention and energy on the digital and social spaces available.

Once you know your audience in detail, you will be able to identify who they see as influencers and regard as authorities within your industry. Having said this, it is important to connect your brand beyond the industry that it occupies - it needs be able to live across various lifestyles. We seemed to have become stuck in a mind-set that if we advertise fishing gear it has to be in a fishing magazine, but a fisherman may also drive a 4x4, love camping and outdoor cooking. So how can we bring together his loves and our brand? The answer is simple, by connecting our brand to his frame of reference in the spaces where he already connects.

If you manage to connect with the correct influencers through content that inspires conversation and you give them a reason to share with their network, you have set the tone for growing the relationship. It is crucial to create benefits in your brand and content, aside from the service you provide or the specific elements of your product you need to be adding positive value to your consumer's life.

Deal breakers

As with any relationship there are certain 'deal breakers' when it comes to brand love. This includes:

• Trying to force customers to love your brand. You need to earn their love by showing that you understand them and cater for their needs.
  
• Playing it safe. Sometimes brands need to be risky in order to make an impact, often playing it safe is risky.
  
• Speaking generically to a faceless target market. Customers need to be treated as individuals rather than 'dear valued customer'. It is important to understand them as individuals through tribal mapping and psychographics.
  
• Thinking marketing is not measurable. We need to be able to measure the love for our brands and be able to adapt and adjust our tactics if they are not delivering the right result. We need to measure the important things.
  
• Focus on creativity alone. Beyond creativity brands need to focus on changing their consumers' behaviours and getting the customer to not only like the brand, but to love it and essentially buy it, and buy it again.

What should we remember?

Always remember that you are in a long-term relationship, which needs constant nurturing and trust in order to grow. Before you can start cultivating this relationship externally, you need to create the love internally and then be innovative enough to be noticed by your consumers. Focus around a lifetime value rather than a short-term solution and always be creative in your approach while measuring what matters most.

In brands, as in life, always remember that a relationship is giving and getting and involves a two-way conversation combined with mutual benefits to both, your brand or product as well as the consumer.