Creating a Culture of Brand Love

Roses are red, violets are blue, with so many options to choose from, why would customers choose you?

Determining why customers should choose your product is the foundation of a successful marketing strategy. You’re either a new product entering a crowded marketplace or a niche product whose benefits are being introduced to the world. Regardless of what category under which your product falls, it’s important to establish a connection with your targeted customers by speaking to their needs and wants, a practice that creates a culture of brand love.

Brand love is a marketing strategy that looks to adopt brand-loyal customers and turn them into advocates or influencers for your brand. In an effort to achieve this culture, brands must foster customer satisfaction, customer value and relationship marketing.

Let’s take a look at the three elements needed to successfully create a culture of brand love.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is the communication strategy of explaining to your audience exactly why the product will satisfy their needs.

In a busy world full of travel for work and pleasure, airlines have become a bit stricter with the amount and size of luggage that passengers bring aboard the plane. There’s no fun in diligently packing your carry-on luggage for a four-hour flight, fighting through long security lines and locating your gate at the very end of the terminal just to find out that your bag is too big to bring aboard the plane.

In this scenario, the brand’s goal is to provide a product that guarantees customer satisfaction as a result to the issue at hand. The problem: bulky luggage. The solution: Away luggage. Away founder Jen Rubio told Forbes that she asked herself, ”How do we take something really simple and make people care about it?” In 2016, Away luggage was born. Away has since expanded beyond luggage and now sells other travel products and lines. According to an interview with NewsCred Insights, Away communicates customers’ satisfaction through content marketing and brand storytelling that effectively talks about the features and best uses of the products and how it enhances the travel experience.

Customer Value

Customer value is the strategy of demonstrating the product value and ensuring that said value is clearly communicated and desired by the target audience.

Brooklinen—which calls itself “The Internet’s Favorite Sheets”—is a New York City-based e-commerce retailer that sells luxury sheets and other bedding items. In an interview with DigiDay, founders Rich and Vicki Fulop said Brooklinen dedicated some marketing investment to subway advertisements and paid social media campaigns, but it primarily depended on word-of-mouth as a way to express the value that customers place on Brooklinen products.

Customers hype the value of Brooklinen’s products across the brand’s social media accounts. In a world where consumers rely on reviews from other consumers, Brooklinen’s approach to communicate customer value is one of the most effective forms of marketing.

Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing requires brands to establish a strong bond with their audience and the ability to illustrate organic growth with their customers throughout the course of the relationship. As the world moves faster by the minute, consumers demand quality—and quickly.

Regional coffee shops such as Gregorys Coffee offer high-quality products while maintaining a quaint atmosphere for their customers. Gregorys also provides competitive offerings such as the Gregulars app, which allows customers to order ahead and access coffee shop perks and rewards. Gregorys Coffee also maintains flexibility with its offerings, so it may change with customers’ needs.

“We’ve always tried to blend this idea of quality and quantity,” Gregorys Coffee CEO Gregory Zamfotis told Forbes. “We can give a boutique coffee experience while serving many, many people, as you’d find at a mass market location, like Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. We are able through systems, training and design to process lots of guests while maintaining an extremely high level of quality.” According to Zamfotis, the coffee chain has become a destination for people seeking quality coffee and innovative products.

Moving into this new decade of marketing, look to court your customers by creating a culture of brand love. Remember to instill customer satisfaction, demonstrate customer value and establish strong relationship marketing strategies while looking to grow your products and features to meet consumer needs and wants.

Illustration by Bill Murphy.