It’s an age-old truth in the world of sales that for people to spend their hard-earned money on your brand, they first have to know your brand, like your brand, and trust your brand.
When they do, they’re more than willing to pay top dollar for your products and services, even if another brand offers it cheaper.
Today the new catchphrase floating around the brand-o-sphere that essentially means the same thing is the term ‘brand intimacy.’
According to the latest research, people that feel an emotional connection to your brand––otherwise known as brand intimacy––are more willing to pay higher fees for what you offer than they might otherwise.
Why? Because they know you, like you, and trust you! It’s a relationship, not just a transaction, and that’s really the key sticking point to always keep in mind. Intimacy comes with relationships.
How to Measure Brand Intimacy
When critiquing a brand’s intimacy level with consumers, a scoring system is used by marketing firm MLBM. It’s based on three metrics.
- The percentage of customers that are emotionally connected.
- The progress of the relationship through what they call the three stages of intimacy––i.e., sharing, bonding, and fusing.
- The brand’s performance is related to the intimacy archetypes mentioned below. The higher the score, the better a brand’s overall performance.
How to Build Brand Intimacy
An emotional connection with your customers isn’t something that just happens immediately. It’s something that’s built over time through several interactions.
Not unlike relational intimacy with a significant other. You don’t just meet someone and feel an instant, lifelong bond. Typically bonds like that are built through multiple points of contact and engagement.
According to MBLM, there are six archetypes of bonds when trying to create brand intimacy. Think of them as characters.
By investing in these characters, you can work to create an emotional bond with your customers, a bond that, when done right, grows stronger over time and results in loyal, lifelong customers.
Six Brand Archetypes
Below are six brand ‘characteristics’ to laser focus your time and investment on:
- Fulfillment––meeting the need of your customers over and above their expectations.
- Identity––refining your image into one that customers resonate with deeply, one they feel represented by.
- Enhancement––providing products or services that help your customers become smarter, more empowered, and capable as a result of using them.
- Ritual––inserting your brand into a customer’s daily routine. Maybe they read your brand’s blog regularly or receive a regular newsletter from your brand.
- Nostalgia––prompting your customers to remember something fondly, especially if your brand is connected to their childhood in some manner.
- Indulgence––catering to someone’s desire to experience something gratifying and fun. Indulging them, if you will.
Of course, there are other things to keep in mind when building brand intimacy as well. Don’t just try to understand who your customer is; try to anticipate what they want and need before realizing they want or need it!
Not only does this build a strong connection with your customers, but you will also likely find that speed of innovation begins to happen organically, as a bi-product of being so closely aligned with your consumer. You’ll get quick and relevant feedback that allows you to respond and evolve just as quickly, plus spark new ideas on ways you can better serve them.
You should also always look beyond the short-term transactional value of a customer and keep in mind their lifetime value. When you focus on the lifetime value of a customer, it keeps them coming back every time.
Even better, they often start recommending you to all their friends and fam! Word of mouth will never go out of style because it truly is the best kind of advertising. Word of mouth, brand intimacy, long-term loyalty… sounds like a recipe for success to us!
Need help looking to build better brand intimacy? Give us a call.
See Also:
Keep it Simple: The Beauty of Brand Simplicity
