Are your acquisition results lacking? Are customers already leaving after the first contract term? Then you probably don't know your client enough so you can’t differentiate yourself. In this blog series, I'll explain how to develop a strategy in four easy steps to achieve brand authenticity. To differentiate yourself from competitors, and most importantly, to establish an emotional connection with your customers to generate your brand value & equity growth and thus gaining credibility. You do this by sharing your brand story. From (life) experiences, mistakes or failures, convictions and from your intrinsic motivation. By staying close to yourself in the branding process of your business, you will most easily achieve a true purpose that makes a salient impact. Impact on lives that you change and that makes you successful as a company. The latter is indeed a consequence and not a goal.
At each step I will explain which aspect of the emotional connection is being made and which branding principles are applied.
The four proven steps to build an emotional connection between your brand and your target audience are:
Determine your Brand Target
Create a Brand Strategy
Design Brand Rituals
Deliver Brand Proof
I think marketers are still working on marketing 2.0: ensuring that a message is sent to customers from an inside-out perspective. However, with current technology and possibilities, this appears to be very old-fashioned. I would like to propose a different customer centric way. As a marketer you should know the customer as well as you know yourself. If you know what it is that makes your target audience happy or if you can solve problems, your value proposition is in line with the demand and your brand will automatically become successful. How do you ensure that customers remain loyal to your brand and become ambassadors for your brand? This is essential because the power of mouth to mouth advertising has never been outdone.
In the current global economy with free trade relations and open competition, almost every segment is a 'red ocean'. Full of competitors who more or less have the same offer as your brand, but may be slightly more attractive in terms of pricing. How can you differentiate in such a market consolidation? That can be achieved by setting a higher goal for your business and purpose-driven marketing companies.
In this inspirational blog series, I would like to give you my vision on how finding your business purpose and making this actionable, enables you to grow your business. This even has a personal side to it, because working towards a purpose is more fulfilling and will make you even more effectively making a lasting impact in this world. This makes your business grow faster and become more successful. If you need to find your purpose contact me and I can help you out!
In the next four weeks I will publish short blogs in this marketing series to build an emotional connection from a branding perspective, so be sure to stay tuned!