Brand stories are born out of great customer experiences
A voracious eater yet attractive lady friend of mine became Zomato’s star and story. Zomato is an Indian restaurant search and discovery service where people can also review the restaurants they have visited. My foodie friend shared her experiences not leaving almost any eat-out unreviewed. Soon she became one of the top Zomato customers to share useful feedbacks which became popular. Zomato got in touch with her to create a story with her as an example of how useful customer feedbacks can be beneficiary for all parties. Old and new restaurants invited her to try their new dishes and share her comments. At the same time complimenting her with free dinners or drinks on occasions!
There are several types of customers you will come across. You can think of brand loyalty as a sequence of engagement, where customers move across a scale, from reasonable responses to strongly emotional ones. Turning customer loyalty into stories can also in a way be looked as turning actual tangible people into brand ambassadors.
Brand stories begin after a sequence of engagements
I think I need you
The customer has made his choice above other brands and selected you. But that is not where a brand stops. The effort towards brand commitment has just begun. Prove yourself effective over every touchpoint the customer comes across. Meet his expectations, exceeding them will prove even more conducive. Be there for him so that he can trust you. You have to take additional steps to guide them to a greater level of involvement with your brand.
I keep coming back to you
This level of commitment reflects brand trust and intensifies loyalty. Loyal customers will come back to you again and again. Thus you can be grateful to your brand’s value-added component which seems to be working. They can be different for different brands and their customers depending on the context. Loyalty is crucial in branding. It is a significant step if you want to turn your customers into brand ambassadors.
Now I want the world to know
When someone is ready to appreciate and promote you to others, to be an ambassador for your brand, you have obtained a client in your brand mission. Another voracious reader this time, a friend of mine, was in so much appreciation of the new Paperwhite Kindle with greater storage, the waterproof and bluetooth features, the convenient size to carry around, that she almost convinced me to have one. Me who had vowed once, not to go digital with books. But then Kindle’s brand advocator got me. At least, is making me think.
Well, at least in this case the aim of NPS proved right. She promised to recommend Kindle to others which she did and successfully too. We can call this an ideal example where NPS does indeed guarantee customer loyalty.
When you can engage your clients in marketing your business, their genuine testimonials and recommendations are far more powerful than a pitch from your brand, or a salesperson. Passionate clients can grow your reach really fast. This point of commitment concerns customer experience. It is beyond the material offerings and the value-added features that worked before. It is about how your brand makes your customers feel.
Ways to create great brand stories of your customers
Look out for your customers and know them well
Your brand’s super fans are just around the corner. If they have not yet reached out to you directly, they must be using your Twitter or Instagram handle. Or they are maybe circulating your company website to their friends. The point here is to be sure to cover all mentions of your brand name across the internet-web and social media, with and without your brand’s handle. Try and gather all possible information about how this person uses your product. How do they engage with your brand? What is their background? If they belong to the industry what is their function within their company, and to what potential are they using your product?
A good initiation when developing a relationship with a current customer is to ask for feedback on the product and their experience. You are not only gaining marketable insights, but also creating an affinity. Depending on their response, you will likely be able to collect a few quotable words as an authentic testimonial for your website. In case they have an exciting story, you can even request them to attend an interview with you for a full-length article.
Behind the scene moments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zVW80T1myA&feature=youtu.be
When we at graphility conduct interview sessions with our Creative Director, Hector Hurtado, we often record videos or capture images to give people the feel of how we work. When Marta Hurtado conducts her soul portrait photography sessions, we shoot behind the scenes to show our clients the efforts we put behind those lovely creations. We make our customer’s experiences a part of our brand stories by recording the moments we share with them.
Customer creativity
You can encourage your customer to create content through some contests or user challenges. Or any other tactic to encourage customers to add unique photos or create a product pitch for your brand. Organising a competition will not only improve engagement but also promote word of mouth about your brand. People will flaunt their creativity to friends and family, which means plenty of organic social shares.
Building a community
Building online communities for your brand can be a great way to advertise and promote loyalty and craft brand stories from it. Create groups focused around your brand where customers can participate, interact, share stories and even invite their friends to join.
Surprise your customers (in a pretty way of course)
The more you interact with your customers, the more you will make them feel like their feedback is important to you. One way brands can make fans feel honoured is to bring them into the “inside” environment by inviting them to try out new products and launches. When you involve your biggest advocates, you are giving them a chance to suggest and share news about your brand with their networks.
This is a powerful marketing move which many brands have realised over time. An example is Snapchat, which launched an initiative that lets users transform their lives into an advertisement; as a result, millions of people became brand ambassadors overnight. When users capture a photo, they can stamp company names on it with taglines called “sponsored geofilters” thus making it appear that users are in a company advertisement.
This way for the companies, the venture lets them turn any customers into surprise brand ambassadors, while they share their joy of enjoying a Big Mac for example. In the process, a sticker of the burger is tagged over their pictures. This also helps companies reach places where there is no television.
According to Snapchat, each campaign has earned between 30 to 50 million views per day.
A complete brand
Making your customers a part of your brand stories reflects trust and authenticity, two fundamental aspects of branding. For customers to reach to the level of becoming brand ambassadors you have to put in a lot of genuine effort from your side. It is maybe easier to reach influencers to spread the word of your brand. But letting a real customer who has personally interacted with you do the same holds much more value. Narrate their stories to the world, people like hearing true stories from real people.
When real people, customers are made a part of the brand story, the whole experience becomes all the more genuine and sincere. Any questions or comments are welcome.