How good is the relationship between your brand and its clients?
Companies that address whatever it is that’s on their clients’ minds are relevant and will have better results, at lower costs. You may think that makes perfect sense because that’s how you build a relationship. But which medium has the highest scores on relevancy? Is it television that broadcasts your commercials and allows you to bring across the right emotion? Is it print; the newspapers that have their radiance of authority? Is it the billboards? Is it your website?
It’s none of these. Because it is… Google. The relevance of Google on this scale is unique: they build relationship on a large scale. For your brand, if you choose to look at it that way. You can almost turn it into a formula: Google + your brand = relevance for your brand.
There is nothing complicated about a relationship
Which immediately raises the question: how do you, as a brand, build relationships? Is it really building what you are doing? And what is a relationship with your brand supposed to look like?
There is nothing complicated about a relationship. Just think of yourself talking to friends and acquaintances. Do you talk in staccato bursts with the smallest amount of words, sounding like an official announcement? Or can you be friendly, with a little bit of attention? Is it all ‘talking’ or is it also listening and reacting? Are you really looking for topics that he or she is interested in?
Time and attention are what you give to relations. The traditional mega campaigns, executed through mass media, can do that, but they remain one-way traffic. There is no listening involved. You bring a message across, which must be done sometimes. And depending on your tone it can be positive for the relationship. You are broadcasting something good. But sending a message, like one-way traffic, is not the right way to build relationships.
1 on 1
Relationships are built 1 on 1. The internet, telephone, physical mail… The internet takes its unique place in this row because it is a giant reservoir of opinions about products of friends and acquantances of your client. Imagine all those voices… Together they have infinitely more authority than mass media, ‘sending’ their messages.
The internet — in all its forms, from blog to platform — is the ideal place to build. It’s no longer about bringing a message and selling, but about building relationships with your target audience. Listen to what moves your clients. And that’s not a luxury only brands like Nike can afford. What would this landscape look like for your brand?
But is it new? Somewhere else on our website we call it ‘Let’s just talk to our clients again’. And talking to your clients… that’s of course as old as the world. Successful brands want to know what moves their clients. The difference with yesterday is that all this knowledge is now lying around for you to pick up. It’s a wonderful time!
Harriet Onderstal | Vibes for your Brand
Aanbevelingen
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‘Vibes for your Brand is creative, surprising and reliable. More than that: the understand the interaction between people and you can see that in their work for brands. They came up with our name Switch to Silence and that says something about their ability to understand what we’e doing and who we want to reach. […]