BRAND LOYALISTS: IMPORTANCE OF FANS IN BUSINESS, AND HOW TO CREATE THEM

A fan is usually associated with a sports team. But brands need fans too.

With a sports team, there are different extremes among fans. On the one side you have Die Hard fans who will support the team no matter what they go through. The team can be in its worst phase, but the Die Hand fan will always be there, come rain or shine. To Die Hard fans, the team is more than just an outing on a Saturday afternoon. The team is their passion! They will defend their team in the pub, will actively comment on social media discussion groups, will wear the latest jersey and show off team colours with pride.

Then you have the Fair Weather fan. This group of fans will turn up to watch the team for the big cup match and follow them when they are at the top. But when times get hard, they will probably move on to the next team or just quietly disappear. Then of course, there are fans between these two spectrums.

Die Hard fans are very valuable to their club, sometimes spending a substantial part of their time and income following the club. They will influence others and be a walking advertisement or ambassador for the club. Many a times their passion is also passed onto their next generation.

Brands also need Die Hard fans. It is one thing to sell a product to a customer and quite another to get accepted as a brand by a larger community. The characteristics of a Die Hard fan for a brand and for a sports team are similar and brands need to learn from sports teams how to maximise the value of these Die Hard Fans.

So what are the characteristics of Die Hard fans for a brand?

1. Be an early adopter of a new product and technologies.?
2. They will populate social media with positive feedback, even defending the brand to others.
3. They will also be a fan of the company’s management, often creating personalities out of them and trying to personally engage with them.
4. Whatever a brand brings out as accessories or merchandise, they will own and wear it with pride.

There are three strategies for Die Hard fans.?

1. Creating an advanced level of affinity among normal brand loyalists to turn them into Die Hard fans.?
2. Keeping them active and engaged with the brand.?
3. Getting the most value out of your Die Hard fans.

Creating Die Hard Fans

Sometimes this can happen by default that a brand suddenly has a set of Die Hard fans but you can’t leave it to chance. It is also down to a fan’s personality to be a Die Hard fan. What you can do is maximise the possibility of creating Die Hard Fans by creating a brand experience that delights customers. An experience that is personal and more importantly, memorable to them. This experience will forever be in the customer’s mind. For instance, a Director of one of our dealerships was driving home late one evening. He came across a customer stranded as his car had broken down. This dealership did not sell the car and it was not his responsibility to stop for the stranded customer. He called a technician to attend to the car even before the customer had the chance to call Roadside Assistance. That action alone has now created a fan. It is now down to the personality of the customer if he becomes a Die Hard fan.

So what are you doing in your business to create Die Hard fans of your brand?

Keeping them actively promoting your brand

Now that you have created a fan (we will now just refer to them as fans), how do you get them to become brand ambassadors? Firstly, identify who they are and positively engage with them to make them feel special. This is not only the responsibility of people on the ground but also of the Management and the Board of Directors. Invite them to events, give them early information of new products, and engage with them personally. Brands need to make fans feel special.?

When visiting a dealer once, I met a customer who had problems with his car. I sat down with the customer and heard the issues. Not only did I promise him a resolution but I gave him a small gift of a model vintage ?KODA. The following day, this was all over social media and the user groups were populated with positive stories regarding my interaction and the small gift. Now he regularly posts information about his driving experience and also answers other customers’ queries on the product. We have a fan who is actively promoting the brand

How Die Hard fans help a brand

Once you have created Die Hard fans and engaged with them, the job of creating value from them is easy. So that brings me onto the next and one of the most important areas, social media.

Do not underestimate the power of a fan on social media. Facebook groups, Twitter and other social media platforms can build your brand but also destroy it. Die Hard fans will promote your brand and also defend it.

Customers are referring to social media as part of the buying process; this is particularly the case in India. You will regularly find prospects joining Facebook groups to get opinions from owners. There are two things that will happen here. Firstly, your fans will comment positively about the product. Secondly, when unhappy customers post their grievances, a fan will try to offer solutions and also counter others who troll negatively on the grievance. This can be very powerful as a customers’ buying decision will often be made by social media engagement.

I often draw a parity between a social media discussion group and the popular travel review website Tripadvisor. If a restaurant has 10 reviews and 4 are bad you won’t visit it but if a restaurant has 100 reviews and 4 are bad then you will, and that is exactly what you are trying to create with fans.

A word of warning - don’t create fake fans. This is a dangerous game to play and can backfire. You will get caught sooner or later. You can, of course, encourage your fans, but don’t create fake fans.

Die Hard fans in a crisis

Every brand, just like every sports team, goes through times of crises. Your Fair Weather fans will desert you or even turn against you, but your Die Hard fans will be loyal. As long as they believe the way you are handling the crisis is right, they will defend you. It is at these times that you need them the most. During such times, people trust fans more than they trust you or your management.

In conclusion, fans are crucial to a brand and Die Hard fans even more so. It takes time and effort to create fans, but the payback is many times higher than any effort in traditional advertising. Engage with fans, look after them and they will defend and promote your brand to the hilt.

I am happy to have created many ?KODA Die Hard fans in India and I love personally engaging with them. It is always a pleasure to meet them at dealers and events and see the love they have for the brand. We will keep on delighting them and giving them more reasons to promote the love for the brand.

So get out and start creating fans and soon you will have Die Hard fans by your side. It’s fan communities that make the difference between a successful brand and an iconic one.?