Building an emotional connection with your customers is key to ensure the sustainability and scalability of your startup. In his first article, Mohammed Abdelghafar describes 5 things you should do create the emotional spark.
By Mohammed Abdelghafar
Here’s the thing, your startup is vulnerable. As branding expert Fabian Geyrhalter says, at the very early stage (or at any stage actually), your startup idea can be stolen and better executed, rendering you and your team out of business. You can never rely on rational basis (i.e. your product) to build a sustainable business, you must build an emotional connection with your customers to ensure the sustainability and scalability of your startup. If you’re basing your business growth and existence in the market on being a “logical” purchase decision, you are no different than someone who’s choosing a life partner because they have a decent job.
Here are 5 things you can do today to ensure your customer fall in love with you, stay loyal to you, and choose you as a partner (not a classmate).
1. Dress well, speak well
Ever notice how some people turn us off without even talking to them? We don’t approach everyone at a gathering and say ‘hi,’ do we?
Same goes for brands. We unconsciously skip seeing ads, physical shops, and even social media pages before even examining what they are or what they do.
On an unconscious level, we are always attracted to people and things that are “like us”. Meaning they dress like us, speak like us, and overall FEEL like us.
On an unconscious level, we are always attracted to people and things that are “like us”. Meaning they dress like us, speak like us, and overall FEEL like us.
Make sure your startup’s touchpoints “look and feel” like your ideal customers. Your marketing material, messaging, social media designs, spatial design, and packaging should be cohesive and matching what your ideal customer would be attracted to and would feel like them. Ask yourself who are your ideal customers? What’s their personality like? What brands do they shop from? How do these brands talk? What visuals do they use? It wouldn’t make sense to look and feel like Rolls Royce when you are targeting middle-class college students, would it?
2. You ask them out, not them
So you’ve met this girl you really like, you both got attracted to each other and had a conversation that you both enjoyed. Now what? How do you make sure the relationship carries forward? Exactly, you ask her out!
Once we got attracted to something, we have an inner need to feel safe that we can carry forward and that we can let this person (or brand) forward into our lives. In the purchase process, this is the vital element of trust. Your ideal customers need to trust you in order to carry forward and to make a conversion.
How do you gain your ideal customer’s trust when they haven’t even interacted with you yet? Simple: show, don’t tell. Give your customers a small win.
Now the question is, how do you gain your ideal customer’s trust when they haven’t even interacted with you yet? Simple: show, don’t tell. Give your customers a small win. Let them taste what you offer if you will. Create educational content around the problem you solve, invite them to a free webinar, or even give them a one-feature only version if you have a physical product. All in all, just GIVE THEM SOMETHING. Remember, this is your first date with them, and you’ve gotta pay for the whole thing.
3. Don’t let them down.
What’s worse than you expecting something from a loved one that they end up not doing? How about the last time you paid for something that went way below your expectations? Frustrating right? You don’t your customers to feel like that do you?
The simplest definition of happiness and satisfaction is having alignment between or internal world (our minds), and the external world. When the outer world exceeds our inner world, that’s even beyond happiness. On the other hand, the essence of pain is having misalignment between what we expect and what we get. For brands, this could be one of the worst customer turnover sources.
What should you do then? Under promise, overdeliver. Make sure you never set your customers’ expectations higher than you can deliver through your marketing and messaging, and make sure you give them beyond what they came for. Adding little surprises here and there along the purchase process will ensure that you get yourself a space in your customers’ hearts and that they have an emotional connection with you brand. I mean, we buy with your hearts and justify with our minds afterwards anyway.
Under promise, overdeliver. Make sure you never set your customers’ expectations higher than you can deliver through your marketing and messaging, and make sure you give them beyond what they came for.
4. Build a human bridge
A big mistake that many brands and startups do is that they “act professional”. They appear to their clients and communicate with them in a very corporate and formal way. While this works for some brands, for others, it could be a massive turnoff for many clients.
A big mistake that many brands and startups do is that they “act professional”.
We are always seeking relatability and to feel that we are understood, and there’s no other way to do that as a startup other than being human with your clients. Share the bigger story behind your brand. Why did you launch it? Why does it exist beyond making money? How do you want to help people? Why do you want to help them? How do you do what you do? Share that with the world, and watch your clients bonding with your brand and connecting with it on a human level.
5. Make them belong
We are social creatures. We love being with other people, and we have a deep innate need to feel like we belong. The reason we love the people we love is because they give us a space to fit in, an to be at home. Want to win someone’s heart? Show them that they matter and that they are wanted.
Make your brand an entity where your clients feel like they belong. Pay attention to your customer relationship and make sure you nurture and maintain them after the purchase.
Whatever it is that you do, just make sure your relationship with your clients doesn’t end by the time they get their receipts.
Create a community that your clients become part of when after they buy from you. Personalize their experience by giving them unique codes or names. Do regular checkups on them and ask them how they feel about your product.
Whatever it is that you do, just make sure your relationship with your clients doesn’t end by the time they get their receipts, so your existence in their lives (and the possibility of them telling other people about you) doesn’t fade and to maintain your brand growth through your most powerful asset: people who already trust you and their networks.
