Customer satisfaction has been the most critical factor in building a brand traditionally that helps your business grow. Business seeking growth invests significantly in improving customer satisfaction at every touchpoint. A lot of digital transformation programs focussed on enhancing customer satisfaction and expect an increase from the program. But studies show it is not enough to bring growth for the business.
A study conducted by HBR (Scott Magids, Alan Zorfas, Daniel Leemon, 2017) shows it is essential to connect your customers emotionally to increase revenue and profitability. Emotional branding is 52% more valuable than those who are highly satisfied.
How customer emotion influence is so valuable and what are they
1. They tend to buy more
2. Visit you more often
3. They are less price-sensitive
4. They pay more attention to your communication
5. They follow your advice
6. They recommend your brand to their network
Some of the examples of emotional motivators are given below.
Case Study – Apple brand is built on the new science of customer emotions
The creative visionary late Steve Jobs always wanted to make a brand by maintaining secrecy surrounding the brand. The hype surrounding their product releases by focusing on brand advocates; creating conversations among both techies and non-specialists alike. The brand has always positioned itself as a “Think different” approach and makes an identity based on it. It creates a sense of identity to stand out from the crowd. Steve Jobs had always been vocal about calligraphy lessons he had always helped him to build a unique identity for his first product.
The aesthetically beautiful products created have enabled the Apple brand to be associated with luxury in the eyes of its followers. The consumers are ready to pay a premium to Apple products which are driven by emotional marketing not the actual value of the product.
Most of the Apple product ads, you won’t see they talk about features or technical features, they make ads to convince tool as an ultimate tool for your life. They sell their product by assigning feelings to the idea of owning it. An example is the iPad Air ad, which shows a pencil on a table with different surroundings until they pull up iPad Air from its behind.
Apple chooses not to mention any features of their new product, yet convince their audience that this is the ultimate tool for creativity. They sell their product by assigning feelings to the idea of owning it. The crux of this advert is not that the iPad is as thin as a pencil, but instead that it opens as many creative doors. Most of the Apple ads follow similar tactics that create a Feel a sense of freedom.
Ecosystem of products
Apple has always been focused on creating products that only work on their ecosystem with their network of products. It allows Apple to make revenue streams because the fans have a sense of feeling that they are buying the most excellent product in the industry. Even without ever mentioning product features, it takes users a matter of minutes to discover how to connect and sync Apple devices. The more Apple products you own, the more benefits there appear to be; apps, music, and videos are all in one place and are accessible on every device.
Every year Apple launches a new iPhone with new things which are already existing in the market packaged nicely. Apple emotion puts customers at the center of everything they design. Consider this; the brand identity is created that makes thousands of people camping outside their stores overnight to pick up a pre-ordered product? Users can have the latest, newest iPhone without having to learn anything new. Open the box, turn it on, and after signing up, you’re ready to use it in precisely the same way you’ve been using your previous phone.
Optimize all touchpoints and functions
It’s critical to optimize emotional connection across all tasks and touchpoints—from product development and marketing to sales and service. Major investment areas are stores, online and omnichannel experiences, merchandising, and message targeting.
Opportunity
There’s a lot of value left on the table and a tremendous opportunity to transform satisfied customer emotion connected ones, and when companies discover that, they find a new source of growth waiting to be tapped. It is important to take a systematic approach, and there is not a predefined formula to build a brand to make an emotionally connected customer. So it is vital to apply tactics, measure, and learn lessons. It is also challenging to measure emotionally connected customers and the growth of the organization. Some of the key metrics to be considered are lifetime value measures such as annual spending, churn, and tenure.
Managing Director Analytics & Digital at Ayruz Datamarketing, He is the Co-Founder of Ayruz and MobME Wireless. He holds an MBA, Strategy and Entrepreneurship (University of Strathclyde) and B-Tech in Computer Science from Cochin University.