Finding the perfect match is no easy task. People are complex, and we all have certain preferences and different ways of communicating.
The marketing profession revolves around relationships. In order to experience any long-term success, marketers need to foster enduring, trust-worthy, real relationships between the brand they represent and their target market. “Love” may be a strong word in this case, but being present while showing empathy and understanding resonates with all of us – both as people and as consumers. Of course, resonating with your customers also goes hand-in-hand (lovingly, even) with a desire to maximize the value of each of those customers.
Harvard Business Review research across hundreds of brands populating dozens of diverse categories revealed that the most effective way to maximize customer value is to move beyond mere customer satisfaction and connect with customers at an emotional level – tapping into their fundamental motivations and fulfilling their deep, often-unspoken emotional needs. That means appealing to any one (or more) of dozens of “emotional motivators” – such as a desire to feel a sense of belonging, succeed in life, or feel secure.
On a lifetime value basis, emotionally connected customers are more than twice as valuable as highly satisfied customers. These emotionally connected customers buy more of your products and services, visit you more often, exhibit less price sensitivity, pay more attention to your communications, follow your advice and recommend you more – everything you hope their experience with you will cause them to do. Companies deploying emotional-connection-based strategies and metrics to design, prioritize and measure the customer experience find that increasing customers’ emotional connection drives significant improvements in financial outcomes.
But, how do you actually speak the language that will emotionally resonate with your customers?
Gary Chapman, author of the book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, simplified the definition of love by observing people and narrowing how they express and receive love into five categories: Receiving Gifts, Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, Acts of Service and Quality Time.
These tactics do not just apply to romantic partnerships or an emotional love. Knowing how a person wants to be acknowledged or shown affection in a friendship, mentorship, or even a business relationship eases tension and builds a stronger foundation.
Today’s marketers can also leverage the concepts outlined in The Five Love Languages to effectively increase engagement and brand loyalty among their target audience.
Click here to download the infographic and find out how to translate those languages into brand acts customers will understand, appreciate and truly care about.
