Building Customer Relationships That Last

One of the ways a business builds its brand is to tug at the emotions of their audience. The way a customer and client work together and communicate can build long-lasting, meaningful relationships

Relationships that turn clients into fans, and fans into clients. You can actually set out to build these relationships by using emotional marketing techniques.

1. Show Them That You Know Them

The more research you do into the needs and desires of your target audience, the more your audience will be able to tell that you’re interested in them. When you show interest in them, it will make them interested in your business and you. When you discover something about your audience, let them know through your content and your actions.

2. Treat Them Right

So many times, business owners have sales and special events to get new clients. What about the clients you already have? Keeping them is far more important than getting a new client, and less costly too. Do something special for your existing client base or fan base that shows them that you care about them. Give them a discount, or a special freebie, or something else that attaches them to you in a special way.

3. Be Transparent and Honest

One way to endear yourself to your audience is to always be transparent and honest. If you make a mistake, own up to it. If you change your views on something, it’s okay to admit it. Doing so will endear you to your audience and make you appear so much more trustworthy to them.

4. Put People before Numbers

While you do things to help promote your business, it’s important to keep your morals and remember that people are more important than numbers. If you put people first in your business, including yourself, you’ll find that you naturally improve your bottom line. The more people trust you, the more they’ll buy from you.

5. Be Fun When Appropriate

No one wants to feel as if they’re communicating with a robot or someone who is not real. Be funny when it’s appropriate so that you can show your humanity. Your humanness will shine through when you add some humor and fun to posts, emails, and even sales pages.

6. Be Responsive

Your customers expect to get an answer when they have a problem, and they expect it to be quickly. Provide many different ways for your audience to contact you. Explain to your audience at each method how long they can expect to wait for a response. Then follow up and do what you said you’d do.

7. Engage with Your Audience

Find ways to engage with your audience. Ask for their advice or ideas when it comes to a new product or service you’re going to launch. They can help name it, help define what should be in it, and even how much you should charge for it. Your audience can also be your best source of word-of-mouth marketing.

8. Consider the Communication Format

Also, it’s important to try to get an understanding of how people communicate within their environment. Communication online in chat, instant message, Twitter, or a blog, is far different from communicating on the telephone or in person. Even email is different from other methods of communication. It’s imperative that you determine what is different and then make up for that with the type of communication they’re using.

Building customer relationships that last is part of the goal of emotional marketing. When you’ve formed an attachment with the consumer, they will stick with you for years – through price increases, trials and tribulations, and more. You can’t go wrong with building relationships.

Emotions and Customer Loyalty Go Hand in Hand

Emotions affect every part of our lives. From our friendships to what we eat and what we buy, everything is affected by emotions – whether we realize them or not. If you want to be serious about marketing, you have to understand how to evoke emotions in your audience that encourages customer loyalty as well as purchasing. In fact, emotions are often more important than other factors when consumers make decisions.

Understand What Your Brand Is

Your brand is a mental and emotional representation of your products and services. When a consumer thinks of your brand and you’ve done your job by branding your business, they will feel an emotional attachment and loyalty toward your version of the product or service. This is true even if there is a competition that produces exactly what you do. Even if your price is more expensive, their loyalty and emotions keep them with you.

Benefits over Features

One thing that elicits emotions in a person is learning about the benefits of a product or service. Consumers don’t care about attributes, features or facts; they care more about what the product or service does for them.

Experiences Matter

One thing that affects emotions exponentially, and by extension customer loyalty, is an experience. If you can ensure that every customer has great an experience no matter where they are within the product funnel, then you can ensure good emotions that encourage loyalty which they’ll share with others.

Emotions and Reason

At first glance, you may feel as if emotion and reason don’t work together. But, the truth is that if you can combine emotional cues with reason, you’ll affect your customers’ loyalty at a much higher rate. Emotions require you to use triggers, but reason requires you not to exaggerate or lie.

Emotions Build Trust

When you know exactly the words to use and the experiences to offer your audience, you will build trust that cannot be broken. People tend to look back on their experiences with a brand and judge future potential based on those experiences. Seek to provide awesome experiences and the trust you build will grow your business exponentially.

Share Your Mission

Consumers love businesses that have a mission outside of the bottom line. For example, if you can connect your business to a charity that your audience would enjoy being part of, or you can demonstrate sound employment practices, offer excellent benefits and show care of other humans, you can cause your audience to become emotionally attached to you.

Engagement Builds Community

With technology, there are more ways to have conversations with your customers than ever before. There are many online tools and social media outlets you can use to connect with your customers.

When you engage with customers online, be careful not to create a one-way conversation. Ask customers questions, and respond to their inquiries.

Another way to encourage customer loyalty is to make your customer feel as if they’re part of a community. The emotions they develop being part of a close-knit community will translate into them also being loyal to your brand. Engage with your customers by creating a Facebook group or message board and keep discussions going.

Make Your Costumers Feel Special

Reward long-time customers with a loyalty discount program. You can hand out reward cards, or use a loyalty program app to track customer rewards.

With a loyalty program, customers earn points for buying your goods or services. After earning a certain number of points, the customer gets a reward. For example, you could reward a customer with a discount on their next purchase.

Work to build special relationships with your customers individually and as a group. Find ways to make them feel special by offering consumer loyalty discounts, specials, freebies, and other offers. Don’t just make all the great offers for new customers.

Remember to treat your customers generously and look at them as human beings instead of wallets or ATMs. Customers can tell if they’re not being treated well and will go elsewhere – no matter how good the value you offer is. That’s because emotions and loyalty go hand in hand.