If You Can’t Create A Feeling Inside Of People, Then You Don’t Have A Brand. Four Insights For Marketers

People decide which brands to buy and which ones to stick with based on how the brands make them feel. That’s why great brands aren’t in the business of selling products—they’re in the business of forging close emotional ties with their customers. So, it’s important for you as a marketer to understand how to create emotional customer connections in order to create powerful brand “feelings” that are internalized by your customers. Do that and you will have created a powerful brand. Here are four insights to help you craft a brand from an emotional customer perspective:

1.    Ground your brand identity in emotional values that set you apart from the competition and resonate with your consumers. Product values just become a commodity over time whose price almost always goes down. An emotional brand feeling has people believing there is no substitute for your product.

2.    Give long-term customer relationships priority over short-term sales. While this is a widely accepted strategy, the pressure to demonstrate immediate return on investment and the traditional managerial imperative to reach for top-line revenue goals leads companies to put sales ahead of customer relationships. Marketing leaders need to resist sacrificing long-term brand value by prioritizing short terms sales.

3.    Use your brand—not product categories—to determine your business scope and scale. Your focus on creating deeper emotional bonds with customers should drive future product innovations and brand extensions. Apple started by selling computers; now they sell a variety of lifestyle devices that has people saying, " I love Apple."

4.    Perpetually ask and answer: “What business are we really in?” ?Virgin Airlines is not an airline company; they are a brand that is about making good friends during relaxing, luxurious, and affordable experiences. With this level of commitment to redefining emotional consumer expectations, it challenges the norms of its industry category and has created a powerful brand.

Most brands have the same business goals as most companies do: long-term customer loyalty, retention, and satisfaction that generate a continuing revenue stream from existing customers. But great brands achieve their goals by forging personal and meaningful bonds with customers. An emotional connection is what separates brands from companies that are just selling products. And customers are able to "feel" the difference. 

Some of the content and thinking from this article came from my book Brands and Bulls**t. Excel at the Former and Avoid the Latter: A Branding Primer for Millennial Marketers in a Digital Age If you really want to understand the core elements of how marketers can build an emotional brand, read the book.