If you have hopes and dreams about a powerful brand loved by the masses, you might wonder if there are evidence-based ways to get there through digital marketing. While the answers to brand love and awareness might not be straightforward, psychologists want you to know how to make customers fall in love with you.
What Makes Customers Fall in Love with a Brand
The Oxford English Dictionary defines love as "an intense emotion of deep fondness." There are indeed two kinds of "love," according to clinical psychologist Kristina Hallett, Ph.D. One involves passion. The second is attachment, which occurs in committed partnerships.
Inbound marketers should know that customers are more likely to fall in love with a business when two essential elements—attraction and attachment—exist.
Attraction is precisely what it sounds like. It is a high interest or a liking for something. Attachment is an emotional link between two individuals. As two entities grow emotionally close, they seek more connection and feel safe.
Although it focuses on romantic relationships, marketers can learn many things from this 2010 Journal of Social and Personal Relationships study.
The study found 12 "precursors" to falling in love – and these could form an excellent blueprint for brand-customer relations:
- Personality – Brand personality
- Familiarity – Brand awareness
- Reciprocal liking – Corporate inclusivity efforts
- Appearance – Company image
- Similarity – Company alignment with market expectations
- Readiness – Preparedness to meet customer needs
- Social influence – Brand authority
- Arousal –Customer attention and arousal
- Isolation – Customers' unmet needs
- Filling needs – Customers need to be part of something larger
- Specific cues – Personalized offers
- Mysteriousness –Self-discovery in customer journeys
What Brand Love Isn't
Brand love is a feeling of solid admiration, attraction, and passion for a brand. It can be found in consumers' experiences with the brand and how others talk about it. Brands with excellent brand love are more likely to generate loyal customers, who are more likely to purchase products or services again.
It's not just about making people happy in the sales journey. It's about making them feel special and unique. It's about being there for them when they need you most, even if it doesn't seem like much at the time.
Experts warn that losing brand personality and values is quite simple when trying to obtain mass customer approval. It is much more crucial to understand and assess customers' feelings using organic SEO analytics than relying on assumptions and flatulent puffery.
How to Naturally Make Customers Fall in Love with You
Here's how experts advise doing it if your interest in customers is sincere and you want to foster emotions of intimacy and closeness between you:
1. Build a Favorable Image
Building a favorable brand image is one of the most important things you can do to make yourself stand out from your competitors. Unfortunately, this public relations endeavor can be one of the most challenging things to do.
It would help if you thought about how you can make yourself more memorable in the minds of your customers and how you can make them remember you when they're thinking about their next purchase.
2. Deepen Intimacy
One proven strategy to promote love between you and a customer is increasing intimacy via regular contact and personalized messaging.
For romantic relationships, psychologists Arthur Aron, Ph.D., and Elaine Aron, Ph.D., established the famous 36 questions to fall in love. In business, asking similar questions could form an excellent framework for understanding your customers in the sales funnel.
Successful customer interactions require a progressive deepening of communication. This, paired with letting the individual know you value them, is an excellent strategy for developing a long-term relationship.
3. Don't Manipulate People
Like being patient and not rushing the process, experts underscore that love is powerful and shouldn't involve manipulation on your part or from the customer's side.
You cannot duplicate numerous unknown, visceral, and ambiguous parts of falling in love with customers. Don't just do anything to increase sales because if the bond is not real, it won't last.
4. Be Patient
True brand love takes time, so be patient as you and your customers connect on deeper levels. Experts emphasize the charm of traditional lead nurturing and taking things slowly, as in social relationships.
Strategies like SEO and content marketing allow things to evolve organically between you and your customers.
5. Offer Small Acts Of Kindness
Millennials and Gen Zers appreciate random offers and discounts now and then. A straightforward way to tell customers that you are affectionate and concerned about them is to do occasional small things that express this love and concern.
It could be gifting them coupons, exclusive offers, and discounts. Whatever it is, these simple acts are huge, according to psychologists, and will help them remember why they choose to buy from you.
6. Understand Their Needs
Understanding what the customer wants is fundamental to building brand love and stabilizing sales during an economic slowdown. But you need to go much further than that and understand their needs before you can create a solution for them.
You'll also learn how to get inside the head of your customers by understanding their emotions, motivations, and behavior patterns. You can then use this information to design products or services that fit their needs.
7. Retain Your Values
This is especially vital for your long-term 2023 strategy or if you want customers to love you and continue buying from you. In social relationships, people often lose attraction to one another in long-term partnerships. It's not because they're no longer physically appealing; the novelty has worn off.
Galvanizing your company around a vision that values customer convenience will serve as a beacon for inbound leads. And as you continue to improve, nurture and grow your product, you'll also be building and cultivating an audience of devoted users who want to become advocates and help spread the word about your value.
8. Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone
Your customers have unique needs, desires, and expectations. They have different wants and needs than the other people in their lives.
You may know what your customers want, but you'll never know until you ask them directly. And even then, there's no guarantee that what you think they want is actually what they want.
So, ask questions. To understand what's important to customers and how they think, ask questions about their lives and what excites them.
Devise marketing strategies that make them feel comfortable. People often feel uncomfortable when they have something new or unfamiliar. If you want them to like what you're offering, make sure they feel at ease with it before asking for anything from them.
