Creating a Marketing Plan, Part Three: Bonding with your Customer

This is the third in a four-part series on Creating a Marketing Plan for your arts business.  See Part 1: Who Is Your Customer?  See Part 2: Where is Your Customer?

Part 3: Bonding with your Customer

Branding. You’ve no doubt heard of it. Especially if you’ve read anything on business or advertising.

If you ask people what branding is, most will equate brand with a logo. Or the fonts or colours of a company’s print material. They’ve just described the company style guide.

Consider this question: What are you doing to create an emotional bond with customers? This is the real goal of branding.

You create emotional bonds with customers in the same way you do your friends and family members: by speaking their language, spending time with them and really caring about their troubles and triumphs.

Your branding/bonding messages, to be successful, must touch the hearts of your clients.

Remember that picture of the ideal customer you had to construct in Part One? Recall that picture and imagine you’re bonding, having a conversation with your Ideal Customer.

What will you say? How do you start the conversation? Perhaps with a question? What kind of language will your customer understand?

Remember people have been trained to shut out “ad-speak” so all those catch phrases you hear on TV commercials will probably not work for your customers.

Because you know what your customers care about you can speak to them in their language. For example, if you know health matters to your ideal customers, using “healthy” words like “wellness, abundance, energy” will attract their attention.

When you’re crafting messages for Facebook, Twitter and other media, remember that you’re creating bonds with your customers. Speak to them like the human beings they are.

The success of social media is evidence that you need to be vulnerable and willing to share, to be human. For so long, the company/customer relationship was virtual communication rather than real communication.

New media has empowered consumers and they’re ready to vote with their dollars. Gone are the days when ads talked to us (or over us or around us) and there were few opportunities for feedback or dialogue. 

As you create your messages, invite your ideal customer to “sit down with you, have a coffee”, and a conversation. If that person were in front of you, you wouldn’t shout, “On sale! Limited time only! Get them while you can!” and other offensive talk. So why do we think that will work when we’re not face to face?

Ask questions.

Find their pain and pleasure points. What problems do they have that they’ll gladly pay you to fix? What experience can you deliver that will bring them so much pleasure they become Raving Fans? Give them that experience.

With this in mind your marketing messages are sure to hit their mark!

In Part One we looked at Who? Part Two was Where? Part Three is What? Part Four is How? We’ll look at creating systems so you can build and implement your marketing plan.

S2 Seminars, Grow Exponentially – use both sides of your brain!, is a partnership between Shelley Goldbeck and Susan Cramer. To learn more about running your small business, contact us today.