Getty
Building a brand is not enough to attract high-paying clients. You need to create brand advocates.
If you don’t have advocates willing to champion your brand, you don’t have much of a brand.
A brand advocate is not an affiliate. An affiliate will recommend your brand if there is something in it for them. Typically that might be a 10% referral fee. Now there is nothing wrong with paying referral fees, that is a strategy that I recommend.
A strategy that goes beyond that is a brand advocate, someone who is willing to be your champion. These brand champions are happy to give you measurable results testimonials. Brand champions are willing to testify in print and on video of how you measurably increased their revenues, lowered their costs, or helped them accomplish more in a shorter amount of time than they could do on their own. When they testify they demonstrate their gratitude to the brand.
This type of brand loyalty must be earned. However, to obtain brand advocates should be an active not a passive pursuit.
To understand how to facilitate a personal connection between brands and clients, I turned to Adrian Cohn, director of brand strategy and communications at Smartling, where he spearheaded a branding campaign in 2019 that increased adoption of Smartling’s language services by 186 percentage points, year over year for new customers.
“There are a multitude of choices for consumers in today’s market, so it’s essential for brands to differentiate themselves as a brand to which consumers can relate in order to rise above the noise, attract prospects and retain existing customers,” says Cohn. “Humanizing the brand has the power to do just that. Humanizing a brand isn’t an easy undertaking, though. To create a brand that consumers will come to love, marketers should consider three must-dos: create trust, create a personal connection and provide an excellent customer experience.”
Determine what your brand stands for (mine is generosity, family and fun). Make sure there is a human touch to your brand. What steps can marketers take to humanize a brand?
“Creating trust first starts with authenticity,” opines Cohn. “No one likes a brand that isn’t who they claim to be. Brands must push back the curtain and be real with their customers about who they are and what they bring to the table, without pretty marketing jargon that doesn’t really say anything. Creating a personal connection isn’t as nebulous as it might sound. In today’s busy world, a brand that communicates with its customers person-to-person to uncover areas of friction and optimize the customer experience is a brand that will remain relevant.”
Cohn suggests using social media as a conduit for making a personal connection with customers.
“One way to accomplish this one-to-one communication is through social media – an accessible tool to converse with customers directly,” says Cohn. “Tying in to delivering on promises and expectations is creating a great customer experience. Plain and simple, if the brand’s product or service doesn’t do what it says it does, customers won’t return. Each department must be aligned to provide a consistently seamless experience.”
Accord to Cohn, each interaction a customer has with a brand matters. By creating a more human brand, customers won’t just be loyal, they’ll be brand advocates.
