- Because connecting with your (best) customers is critical to your business...
Whether you’re an entrepreneur trying to make a competitively dominant business or a consumer trying to better understand marketing, it’s important to understand how brand consumer relationships work. Stronger brand consumer relationships lead to higher customer satisfaction, more efficient companies, and sometimes, more innovative business practices.
So what are the mechanics that drive these relationships and how can you improve brand consumer relationships in your business?
What Is a Brand Consumer Relationship?
Brand consumer relationships, sometimes called simply “brand relationships,” refer to how customers feel about a product or company brand. In a positive brand consumer relationship, customers may feel positive feelings toward a company and may be especially loyal to it. The stronger this relationship is, the less likely the customer will be to shop with another brand or leave the company in the future.
By contrast, a negative brand consumer relationship could force the customer to leave – and a nonexistent relationship may leave the customer unfamiliar with the brand altogether, even after buying its products.
Indications of a Thriving Brand Consumer Relationship
There are many metrics a company can use to estimate the character of its brand consumer relationships including:
- Net promoter score. Net promoter score (NPS) is a metric designed to estimate a customer’s likelihood of promoting the business to other people. The higher the score, the more likely they are to refer friends and family members to this brand. It’s an indirect indication of how positively a customer feels about the brand – and can give you a hint of how much brand evangelism you can expect in the future.
- Customer retention. Even more commonly, brands track customer retention (and by extension, customer churn/turnover). In other words, how many customers are sticking around for the long term and how many customers are leaving? You can dig deeper here to find out why customers are leaving.
- Brand familiarity. Do people recognize your brand? How do they feel about your logo when they see it? Brand awareness isn’t necessarily an indication of a positive brand consumer relationship, but it’s a good first step.
- Social mentions. How often are people mentioning your brand online? Are they interacting with your brand on social media on a regular basis? More social mentions and interactions are almost always a positive sign.
How to Improve Brand Consumer Relationships
If you’re a business owner hoping to boost your brand consumer relationships, there are several strategic steps you can take, such as:
- Building a better customer experience. Most companies understand the importance of customer service, but overall customer experience goes beyond customer service. An exhaustive customer experience strategy allows you to perfect every aspect of your customers’ journeys, giving them a good first impression and making sure every interaction with your brand counts.
- Keeping your branding consistent across all channels. Next, it’s important to establish consistent brand standards that you’re going to follow across all channels. No matter where your customer sees your brand or how they interact with your brand, they should enjoy a similar experience.
- Adding more personal touches. It’s tempting to optimize your customer experience strategy for touchless automation, but if you want better brand consumer relationships, you need to add personal touches. Your customers should have the chance to interact with your customer service agents, sales reps, and other human staff members on a regular basis.
- Resolving issues quickly and seamlessly. Even amazing businesses sometimes make mistakes and have to deal with delays. You don’t have to be perfect, but you do need to make a concentrated effort to resolve issues quickly and seamlessly. Offer apologies when appropriate and try to make up for inconveniences when you can.
- Going above and beyond to serve your best customers. Don’t give the bare minimum. Go above and beyond your required actions to give amazing, memorable service to your best customers. They’ll remember you and become even more loyal to you.
- Engaging with customers regularly. The more you engage with your customers, the more loyal and invested they’ll become. Make it a point to offer multiple touch points and opportunities for communication, such as ongoing email newsletters, social media interactions, and more.
- Reinforcing and encouraging brand interactions. When customers reach out to your brand directly, make sure they have a good experience. Respond promptly and politely, and when possible, allow customers to repeatedly interact with the same people.
- Investing in customer loyalty. Finally, make it a point to invest in customer loyalty. Even simple customer loyalty programs that allow customers to earn discounts on future purchases can have a dramatic effect on customer retention.
Perfecting your approach to brand consumer relationships could be exactly what your business needs to thrive and surpass the competition. There are many metrics to measure and many strategies to utilize in this endeavor.