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Many brands want to build brand love. But building brand love is hard.
It takes long-term commitment and a clear sense of who you are as a brand—including the things that you will and won’t do—and staying consistent to that, even under significant challenges and pressures. But why is it worth it?
As our research has shown, if you reach that pinnacle, it’s hard to unseat you. And you’ll benefit from the advantages that result from being in that spot in customers’ hearts—in terms of broader customer lifetime value, advocacy, and new customer acquisition, to name a few. The people who are true lovers of your brand will share their positive experiences with their friends, family, acquaintances—even social media followers—during the right moments.
If you don’t choose to lean into brand love, you’ll start to compete as a commodity—and you’ll have to organize your business to compete in that way. There’s nothing wrong with that—it’s a valid strategy. But when you go the commodity route, the business landscape becomes very winner-takes-all, and your strategy focuses more on the cost of production and providing your products or services at the right scale.
On the other hand, focusing on building brand love with customers can reap amazing benefits. Here’s why: the core foundation of brand love is a relationship between the brand and the individual, and that’s a two-sided coin—the customer has needs, wants, hopes, and dreams, and you the brand have to be grounded in those things, since love is a mutual action. A brand that has a true sense of who it is and what it stands for resonates with likeminded individuals—and that’s where you find enduring brand love that serves your customers and your business appropriately. When you grow the love with your customers, major brand considerations become easier—it’s easy to make strategic decisions about the business, decide what kind of communications you’re going to put out, and know who you are actually trying to understand.
In our independent consumer research, we identified the key facets that define brand love, providing insights into what nurtures or deters customer-brand relationships. We found that there are three core areas crucial to fostering brand love: quality, customer experience, and trust. Investing in these areas can lead brands to win the ever-elusive brand love from customers.
To dig deeper into our research and get our expert recommendations on growing brand love, download the report.