How to get customers to fall in love with your brand.

In this quick how-to article, you’ll learn how to:

• Break down Brand into its components and really understand what it is.
• See how Brand goes beyond your offering to help customers fall in love with you.
• Understand the factors that can support or impede having a successful Brand.
• Word count: about 1,600
• Read to the end to download a handy diagram that summarizes this article.
• Reading time: about 6 minutes

Why Your Organization Needs a Strong Brand:

The question really is, why should a prospective customer choose your offering?

Customers have a plethora of choices to get their needs met today. You’ve got to find a way to stand out.

In a field of competitors offering very similar products and services, brand is your differentiator.

Brand removes the uncertainty of choosing your product or service.

It gives customers a sense of security in choosing you. It conveys credibility. Authenticity. Familiarity.

A strong brand feels like a person that your customers are innately attracted to. Aligned with who they are, what they value, and what they need.

Like someone they already know and trust.

That feeling is more powerful than any product benefit or feature.

Your offering could be objectively less feature-rich and more costly than competitors—and you’ll still get the sale. Because your brand itself has worth to your customers, beyond the mere functionality or the pricing of your offering.

Your brand gives your customers good feelings and peace of mind they simply don’t get from competing offerings.

Which makes brand one of your most powerful and important business assets.

Brand, Defined:

Brand is the relationship your customers have with your offering and your organization.

You’re not selling products or services. You’re selling a relationship.

Products and services are transactional. You, and presumably many other suppliers, could offer the same product and service benefits.

Brand is relational. It is the reason that when faced with a choice between your offering and others’ similar offerings, customers will choose you instead.

And not just once. But over and over again. Falling in love with your Brand.

Like any relationship, your relationship with your customers (your brand) is built on:

1. The story you tell—building the perception, hope, and anticipation of what it’s like to be in a relationship with you, and…
2. Your customers’ experience of being in a relationship with you, i.e., their participation in that continuing story.

Which makes your story really their story.

Simply put,

Story + Customer Experience = Relationship (Brand)

The stronger your relationship with customers, the more successful your organization will be. Plain and simple.

Let’s break down the essential elements of the Story and Customer Experience to build that relationship.

Your STORY

Give your customers something they can RELATE to.

Your STORY goes beyond simply what you offer.

It creates the perception, hope, and anticipation of what it’s like to be in a relationship with you.

Your story is human. Personal. Aspirational. Inspirational. Motivating.

Because you’re not a soulless organization.

You’re someone, or a group of someones, real people, who went through an experience customers can relate to.

As a result, you saw a need that others have , and undertook a journey to fulfill that need.

Your story also reflects your values—what you stand for (and what you won’t)—that align with your customers’ values.

Customers will see themselves in your story. Because your story is about them—their values, their struggles, their wants and needs, and how your story resolves with a promise to make a positive difference in their lives.

Elements of a Great Story:

ORIGIN:
Your unique, personal narrative that explains how your brand came to be—the founding moments, challenges, and insights that led to your current purpose and values. It’s how you got here. And why.

This foundational story provides context and authenticity.

That’s a good story to tell. And everyone loves a good story.

VALUES:
The guiding principles and beliefs that shape your brand’s behavior and decisions. Values ensure authenticity and alignment with your audience. As consumers, we all naturally gravitate toward brands that share our values and consistently behave in sync with those values.

PURPOSE:
The core reason your brand exists, beyond making a profit. It defines your brand’s mission and societal impact, setting the foundation for everything that follows. In short, it’s how you’ll help improve people’s lives. This is your WHY.

PROMISE:
The commitment you make to your customers, outlining what they can consistently expect from your brand. Whenever you articulate your promise to customers, be S.W.I.F.T. — Show What’s In it For Them.

• Problem you’ll solve or desire you’ll fulfill: [your offering and what it will do for customers]
• For whom: [your specifically defined customers]
• Why it’s unique and better for them: [proof points — S.W.I.F.T.]

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Fulfill your Promise and earn customers for life.

Your Story attracts customers to start a relationship with you.

The Customer Experience you create is the actualization of that relationship.

The more fulfilling and consistent that experience, the stronger the relationship.

Sustain that great experience, and customers will fall in love with your brand, become fanatics, and evangelize to others.

Elements of a Great Customer Experience:

WHAT YOU DO:

PRESENTATION:
This is your Brand Identity—how your brand is visually and verbally expressed—logo, design, messaging, and tone.

This translates your values and purpose into tangible touchpoints your customers can see and feel.

It should be thoughtfully aligned with your story and meticulously crafted to help sustain a great impression of your organization.

FULFILLMENT:
The actual experience customers have interacting with your organization and using your offering. Delivering on your brand Promise builds credibility and satisfaction with your customers.

CONSISTENCY:
Maintaining uniformity in every interaction and touchpoint and routinely meeting or exceeding customers’ expectations will reinforce their trust in your brand story’s Values, Purpose, and Promise.

INTERNAL CULTURE:
This is a critical component of brand and customer experience that often gets overlooked.

Your internal culture is the embodiment of your brand’s Values, Purpose, and Promise. It defines how your internal team works together and what experience they create for customers.

A functional culture fosters total team alignment with your brand’s Values, Purpose, and Promise. It provides that all-important “why” for the work the team is doing. It empowers and inspires every team member to help deliver the best possible customer experience in service of that “why,” and to feel great pride in that accomplishment.

It celebrates the team. It celebrates the customer.

A dysfunctional culture does the opposite. It stifles, demeans, demotivates, and demoralizes employees. It fails to give team members a solid “why.” It creates a disconnect between the work team members are doing and the organization’s Promise to customers. It is out of alignment with the organization’s stated Values and Purpose.

This negatively affects the quality of the product or service and the care that customers receive before, during, and after purchase.

In other words, it leads to a bad experience for customers. And turns them away.

That’s why internal culture is so critical to a good brand. Indeed, culture is the flip side of brand—they are two sides of the same coin.

HOW YOUR CUSTOMERS REACT:

LOVE:
Your mission is literally to make customers fall in love with your brand.

That’s how you’ll keep them coming back for more and singing your praises to others.

Consistently great fulfillment leads to customer trust, which leads to loyalty, which leads to LOVE.

When customers love your brand, they will happily stay in a long-term committed relationship with you and enthusiastically advocate for your brand.

Remember, it costs a lot more to gain new customers than to keep existing customers.

That’s why it’s so important to keep showing the love for your existing customers.

FEEDBACK:
This is the valuable insight you receive from customers, media, and the market, including testimonials, reviews, and direct communication with your team.

This input helps you understand how your brand is perceived, what’s working well, and where improvements are needed, feeding directly back into refining your Presentation and Fulfillment to improve the relationship customers have with you.

Healthy relationships depend on good two-way communication and mutual respect. Whatever feedback you get, good or bad, always thank and affirm the customer who gave it, and thoughtfully consider it.

The fact that customers are talking to you (or about you) at all means they care.

Never take that care for granted.

Instead, show gratitude and mutual caring. That speaks volumes to customers about your values and helps increase their trust in you.

SWOT ANALYSIS

What factors, internal and external, could help or impede fulfilling your brand promise?

You may have the best of intentions to fulfill your Purpose and Promise.

But reality may have other plans.

That’s why it’s critical to understand your operating environment. What are the opportunities, and what are the threats to your success?

Understanding this will help you adjust, navigate, or pivot to succeed.

That’s where the SWOT analysis comes in.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

It’s a comprehensive survey and analysis of the current and future factors that can support or impede your ability to fulfill your purpose and promise.

What are the competitive STRENGTHS of your organization?

What current attributes position your organization to excel at its mission? Such as: brand perception/reputation, financial reserves, revenue sources, staff and board talent, market share, innovation, unique value proposition, intellectual property, marketing effectiveness, quality of service delivery, partnerships and alliances, positive internal culture aligned with your values, purpose, and promise; etc.

What are the competitive WEAKNESSES of your organization?

In what areas is your organization lacking? Such as: brand perception/reputation, financial reserves, revenue sources, staff and board talent, market share, innovation, unique value proposition intellectual property, marketing effectiveness, quality of service delivery, partnerships and alliances, dysfunctional internal culture, etc.

What OPPORTUNITIES can your organization leverage to its advantage?

Such as: new partnerships and alliances, new revenue sources, technology, process improvement, social trends, political trends, economic trends, new markets, new client types, new client needs, competition leaving the market, etc.

What THREATS should your organization be prepared for?

Such as: loss of current partnerships and alliances, loss of funding, technology changes, social trends, political trends, economic trends, new markets, new competition, decreasing relevance, etc.

See it Visually. Download the Brand Map:

For those of us who like to see things in diagram form, here is a handy graphic that outlines everything we talked about in this article. Download »

I hope you found this introduction to Brand helpful. I can guarantee that if you follow this framework, you can get customers to fall in love with your brand and keep them for life.

I’m always happy to talk about your Brand. Reach out to me any time.

I can also present this as a complete, interactive workshop for your team if you like. Ask me about it »

Thanks, and see you next time!

To your brand and marketing success,