Use emotions in your branding to build customer engagement
Creating a thoughtful, emotive brand that gets to the heart of what customers want is called intentional brand alignment.
We align your brand reputation, values, vision and mission to make an emotional connection to your customers.
Your personal brand can be intentional too, people will relate to your own personal stories, your own emotive output. Being open and authentic is so engaging.
My career steps have been intentional, even if the odd one's been wrong. They all helped me gain the knowledge I needed to position Snapper Studio to solve business and customer problems.
An example, I spent four years working in a creative design studio. Designing limited-edition, 40kg books. For brands like Manchester United, Ferrari, Arsenal Football Club and Major League Baseball.
This taught me how to create books, brand and market them. This lead to the next opportunity.
I moved into a marketing department for a university in the UK. Working on advertising campaigns and controlling various brand identities.
Together with 20 marketing people, 7 designers, 1 photographer and a videography team, we shifted the universityies positioning and reputation from mediocre to being one of the top universities in the UK. That is no small feat, considering the monopoly Cambridge and Oxford have on the top home and international students.
Why is this relevant, well those marketing campaigns, focused on the emotional connection to a students childhood.
It connected people with nostalgia and made them linger longer. The success of the campaigns lead to a 20% increase in applications.
Emotional connections build customers trust in your brand
Here's a great example of how simple it is to align your brand.
If I start writing about Pepsi or Coke, or McDonald's and KFC, instantly, you'll start making a judgment about Snapper Studio. When you align with a brand, even in passing, you start forming opinions.
That emotional connection drives people's views of your brand.
That is your brand image. It's the opinions people have of your brand, which is why emotional connection is so important.
People's views are turned into reputation. One of the main goals of branding is to build and uphold great reputations.
Going back to Coke, they rule the roost of the advertising world, to the point where Pepsi don't try to compete with them.
Interestingly, in a blind tasting of Pepsi and Coke, people preferred Pepsi.
But, when people knew what they were drinking, you guessed it. People loved Coke! It's that mix of reputation and people aligning to the brand experience of Coke. It takes them back to hot summer days, that iconic bottle with water dripping off it and Christmas Holiday adverts.
It's got that emotional connection!
That psychological association, the emotional bond to the drink, and long-term loyal customers have positively affected the brand image.
Coke allegedly spends $6 billion on marketing every year!
What can small businesses learn?
We need to get into the heart and soul customers.
Build a brand that tells the truth, stands for authenticity and originality. Without diminishing its values. It's the values, mission, and vision for your long-term plan.
Audit your existing brand
If you haven't already done it, take our quiz and download the feels finder. It's the first part of connecting your people to your brand.
The second thing to do is find the gaps in your current brand. These are areas where the message is confusing or not highlighting how you want customers to walk away feeling.
You need to look at:
- Visual audits – are the fonts, colours, logos and design assets reflecting the emotion you want to connect to.
- Verbal audits – are your tone of voice and message right? What words and phrases do you use to communicate. These are the stepping stones to improve your language.
- Behavioural audits – how do you or staff talk in email, podcasts, on the phone or in person? These are in the form of conscious and unconscious messages.
- Competitor audits – looking at the 3 audits above and seeing how your competitors perform, can you make some wins?
- Peer audit - is there a famous brand/company that you aspire to be like. How do they communicate the emotions.
- PR audit – where have you gone wrong, what did you do right and how do we go about maximising that in the future.
- Customer audits – how do they feel about your brand? What are the positive things people say about you? Can the negative testimonials be learnt from?
Speaking to customers as well as your team is an invaluable resource. Ask them why they chose your products and services instead of competitors? What do they think you do well?
Think about those negative experiences people had with a competitor. How did that experience make them feel? What can you do to ensure you don't deliver that experience to your customers?
You'll be amazed to see where you fall short when you look to see how emotional connections work.
Brand values that are emotive, connect better!
A quick explanation, brand values (sometimes referred to as brand principles) are non-negotiable. They are your boundaries.
They should be aspirational and give you space to grow. When you provide structure to your brand, you won't wander off track.
Values also help you create content.
How can brand emotions build your values?
As communicating your values is a core part of messaging, it links in the emotions.
After your audit, you need to gather your leadership team, staff, partners and business coaches. Then find words and phrases you happily associate with your business.
Get your Sharpie out, put on some thinking music, and write down anything that you feel is relevant.
To help, Snapper's values are on about page, so you understand the depth you need to go into.
Reflect on things you're already doing. Reflecting on how you're communicating with customers, and whether you can do anything better. Is there something you can do to ensure that products/services are delivered earlier? Do people value timeliness? What do they value? What do they want to see reflected in your brand?
How to write brand values
We need 3-5 brand values. Your core values are not just words that sit on a piece of paper or your website.
You want your employees to live by these values and incorporate into their personal brands. They've gotta be a tiny bit obsessed with the business they work in, they are the ones front and centre after all, so make sure they know how awesome they are.
You need to document them, so they prompt action. A single word like diversity or innovation isn't enough. You need to use words like respect, strive and recognise.
You need to:
- Make them short – employees are more likely to act on brand values when they're easy to remember. ie Be Trustworthy, Be Approachable. Be Simple. etc.
- Make them unique – they should reflect what makes you special.
- Make them fit your brand's voice.
- Make them specific – don't be vague or open for interpretation.
- Make them meaningful – words have power when they're authentic. Don't choose adjectives that just sound good.
- Make them accessible – pop them on your about page and in your brand guidelines. Put them in a central place that everyone can access and see.
Your values must be easy for employees and partners to uphold.
