Love is in the air. And with Valentine’s Day right around the corner, you might be wondering how this applies to your business and how to make your customers fall in love with you. So, we decided to play Cupid and create this guide to help you woo your customers and make them fall in love with you. Meet our ultimate recipe for love.
Boldr’s Love Recipe: The Six Most Important Ingredients
Humans are emotional. We thrive on connections, feelings, and sentiment. This also applies when it comes to creating a relationship between yourself and your customers. Have you ever heard the phrase “People don’t buy things for logical reasons; they buy for emotional reasons”? Well, it’s true (and anyone who hasn’t succumbed to an impulse buy may throw the first designer shoe or high-end caffeinated drink). Emotions play a big role in our purchase behavior, and triggering the right feelings in your customers can help them connect with you and even become your brand ambassadors. Read on to find out how.
Boldr’s Love Recipe
1 Cup of WOM Marketing
Contrary to popular belief, WOM does not stand for Women over Men or Waste of Money. In this case, it stands for Word of Mouth. WOM Marketing is when your customers talk about – and even recommend – your products and services to their friends and family. If your company is doing a good job, it can be an excellent marketing tool since 92% of consumers trust their friends over traditional media. To add to that, 75% of people don’t believe in advertisements, but 92% will believe brand recommendations from friends. Even though WOM is an organic form of marketing, there are a few ways you can encourage your customers to talk about your brand:
- Incentivize creating and sharing reviews, pictures, and videos of your product. User-generated content is more reliable to other customers, with studies showing how 86% of millennials say UGC is a good indicator of the quality of a brand or service. You can encourage your customers to create UGC by doing a challenge or offering a discount if they participate. This is your chance to be creative and think outside the (Valentine’s Day chocolate) box!
- Having a referral program is another good way to make people talk about your brand. One example is UberEats. When you share the link with your friends and family, you get a free meal or free delivery, and the other person also gets a treat. It is a simple way to spread the word quickly that makes everyone happy!
- Offer something special to your customers: a simple but nice experience that they won’t usually get with other brands. A great example of this is Gucci, who sends flowers to regular customers on their birthday. This little token of appreciation makes their customers feel special while also prompting them to remain loyal to the brand and tell everyone about Gucci’s incredible personalized service.
1 Dash of Infatuation (Before They’re Even Customers)
How can you make someone fall in love with you if you don’t know them? The answer is: you can’t. Knowing your customers is the first step for every marketing strategy. You need to find out what they like and why they like it. Just like in a normal dating scenario, you need to know what the person you are wooing fancies. Knowing their favorite type of chocolate, flowers, food, and anything else might help you land the perfect first date.
Knowing your target audience is and your ideal customers is key. Once identified, you can get all the information necessary to approach them at the perfect moment and on the ideal channel. For example, if your target audience is millennials (those born between the years 1981 to 1996), one of the easiest ways to approach them is through social media. Studies show that 79% of millennials use social media more than once a day, so it is a great way to start the conversation!
½ Cup Of Personalization
What would you prefer? A present that was 100% customized and made specifically for you? Or an off-the-rack, standard present that everybody else has? Personally, I would pick the first one. When someone pours heart, thought, and soul into a personalized present, it shows.
This customization can also cause customers to fall in love with your brand because it will make them feel special, unique, and eager to come back for more. According to a recent study conducted by Epsilon, 80% of consumers prefer to buy products from a brand that offers personalized experiences. An example of personalized products that was a huge success was the “Share a Coke” campaign: we all remember searching for hours on end for that special Coke can – the one with your name on it. Everyone was talking about it, sharing their experience on social media, and buying extra Cokes because they had the name of a loved one. The impact this campaign had on Coca-Cola was massive. They achieved a 2% increase in soft-drink sales, increasing Coke consumption from 1.7 to 1.9 billion servings per day, and making #shareacoke a No. 1 global trending topic on social media. All of this thanks to a little change on the label. As you can see, personalization can have a huge impact on your customers! Side note – this campaign is also a fantastic example of how powerful user-generated content can be.
2 Teaspoons Of Friendly Customer Service
73% of customers say that friendly customer service is one of the factors that makes them “fall in love” with a brand. On the other hand, 89% of customers have stopped doing business with certain brands if the customer service is poor. As Theodore Roosevelt once said: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” This means that your customers won’t care for your brand if you don’t care for them first. And that’s where customer support and customer service come in!
Friendly customer service will help you create a better relationship with your clients, as well as have a positive impact on your overall sales. So to have Cupid on your side, you better start training your customer support team!
1 Pinch Of Great Content, (& Frequently)
Content plays a crucial role in achieving business and social media objectives. The only reason why many (myself included) follow brands on social media is because they publish interesting content. When a company tries too hard to sell you their products, the result is a lack of engaged followers. Having original and captivating content allows you to cement your position as a go-to destination for your customers, whether it be for entertainment, education, or inspiration. It will help you to build a long-term relationship with your audience, ultimately leading to them falling in love with your brand.
Some good ways to create original content are:
- Tutorials on how to use your products
- Blog posts that show your customers why your service will help them
- Attractive pictures in your feeds and channels
- Challenges and activities that involve your customers
Sprinkles Of Strong Brand Identity
For your customers to identify with your brand, a unique and distinct identity is crucial. The foundation of building a successful brand is displaying the value proposition to the consumers. What is that special je-ne-sais-quoi about your brand? What makes you different? How are you better than your competitors? Having the answer to these questions will help you build you distinguish yourself as a worthy suitor.
Check Out Our Other Recipes!
What did you think about our love potion? We guarantee that if you implement all of these steps, your customers will start falling head over heels with your company. We wish you a happy Valentine’s Day, and good luck wooing your customers!
At Boldr, we are lifelong learners, but we also love to share what we have learned. If you want to know more about marketing and other ways to grow your business, check out our blog for other related topics, including lead generation, SEO strategies, customer service, and more!
