Why LOVE Should be the Center of Your Marketing Strategy

Relationships. 

Humans need them to survive. Love it or hate it, no person is an island. And those relationships also have needs. They need attention in order to thrive. 

Every healthy relationship, whether it's a friendship, marriage, sibling, or business partnership, takes love and nurturing to ensure you both want to continue knowing each other.

That's because at the core of any long-term relationship is trust.

And guess what...the same goes for the relationship between your business and your customers.

It takes nurturing, trust-building, and time. And to be honest, a lot of business owners hate to hear that last one. Because you CAN try to buy love from your customers (just like you can try to buy the love of another person). 

You CAN throw $50,000 a month at Facebook ads to quickly grow a massive list, and see instant "success" when you convert a small percentage of those people. Because due to the volume of ads you run, you WILL achieve a certain level of success. That's a simple mathematical fact.

However, you'll also spend a huge sum of money doing so.

Most likely, too much. (Like water down the drain). 

AND! That method doesn't build relationships. You get no customer loyalty. 

It's not sustainable, nor is it scalable. 

At the end of the day, people choose to repeatedly do business with those who they like and trust. And those are the brands they recommended to their families, friends and neighbors -- or anyone who will listen. Why? Because they trust you. They feel understood by you. They know you. They love you.

It's this kind of love that creates avid, dyed-in-the-wool brand advocates on one side of the spectrum and on the lesser end, happy repeat customers. 

But there's no loyalty like that without trust. And there's no trust without love. 

That's why you need to work on building love into your marketing strategy if you want to grow a scalable, sustainable and successful business.  

This is how I work and consult with my clients, and this is what I am going to teach you today.

Just like any meaningful relationship, there is no overnight success.

Developing a relationship takes time.

But you can shorten the time relationship building takes, if you go about it correctly.  If done well, you'll be able to establish meaningful relationships between your brand and customers faster than before.

And, this is important, the rate at which you are able to establish a relationship between yourself and a stranger, is the rate at which you can scale that relationship.

To help get you started, in this article I will share 3 key concepts that I recommend you follow. If you do, you will be well on your way to winning more and more customers' hearts. 

Here Are 3 Keys to Help Build More Love in Your Marketing Strategy

Want these 3 tips as a downloadable PDF? Enter your details below and I'll email it to you right away. 

Without further ado, let's get started...

Key to Building Love in Your Marketing Strategy #1

Customers want to feel understood. 

Your customers, like all humans, want to feel heard and understood. 

They want to feel like your brand "gets" them. 

You can accomplish this by first focusing on them, not you.  (No one likes a braggart and no one likes someone who just asks for things right off the bat).

That's why your first communications -- whether it's a landing page, welcome email, or paid ad -- should NEVER start off with talking about you. Instead, your messaging should be laser-focused on your target audience. 

Empathy is the key to truly understanding your customers' needs and desires.

What are their problems? What irks them? What are they trying to achieve? What are the challenges that prevent them from achieving that?

By intimately understanding what their problems and challenges are, you are better poised to communicate how your business or brand can guide them to success and help them achieve what they envision. 

Before I tell you how to do so, here's a little exercise you can do to check your messaging.  

Check these questions below and compare them to your landing page, website, or the last 5 emails you sent.

If you answered yes to ANY of the above, then it might be time to overhaul your messaging to help make your customers feel understood.

As mentioned above, the key to this is to have a mindset of empathy.

You can accomplish this by creating distinct avatars of your ideal buyer including their demographics, their goals, what they value, what they fear, and what their pain points are.  

Not only will this help you understand your potential customers' point of view, it puts you in a much better place to position your business as the perfect solution to their problems.

And of course, always treat them as humans, not numbers or email addresses. 

In line with all your emails asking them to buy your product and to attend your next event, ask yourself, "When is the last time I emailed this person just to tell them I appreciate them being interested in my content?"

I'll say it again -- we are humans, we crave connections and we want to be understood. Trying to understand your prospects and speak to that will go a long, long way. 

In my professional opinion, this is one of the best things you can do for your marketing strategy, which is why it's the VERY FIRST thing I take clients through in my agency's proprietary process, the Marketing RAMP®. If you want help making your marketing really shine, my team and I can always walk you through the framework to ensure you're set up for success.  Click here to learn more. 

Key to Building Love in Your Marketing Strategy #2

Customers want to feel in alignment with the brand they're buying from. 

Prospects and customers want to feel as if the brand they're doing business with is in alignment with who they are. 

This means they believe you're both working toward the same goal.

They feel as if your values mirror theirs, and because of this, they're more inclined to do business with you. In fact, they feel good about it. This is one of the reasons why they tell other people about it. 

So, how do you let them know you're in alignment with them?

You show them. 

I know, I know, I just said NOT to talk about yourself from the get-go. But there is a way to share this information, you just have to do it with finesse.  

For example, say a prospect opts in for a lead magnet or signs up for your newsletter. At this point, perhaps they've read an ad or a landing page, and they feel like you understand their pains, which is why they've opted in -- you've won a bit of their trust. But you want to be sure you don't abuse that trust by immediately asking them to buy something or give you more information. 

What you want to do is let them know they made the right choice by choosing to go deeper with you.

This can be accomplished a few different ways, but for the sake of simplicity, the example I will share is something called an "Indoctrination Campaign." This is a stage in every customer journey that should be addressed in your marketing strategy. The "Indoc Campaign," as I like to call it, is essentially just 1 or 2 emails. 

The first email should welcome them, explain who you are, why you're running your business, and then tee up the second email.  The second email should deliver something of value. It should be something like a fun quiz, a video training, a mini-course, or an article or PDF of a related topic -- just something that actually adds value.

When it comes to communicating all of this, here are some do's and don'ts. 

Key to Building Love in Your Marketing Strategy #3

Customers want to be surprised and delighted.

In this final tip, I am going to share something with you that is going to increase engagement, lower customer churn, and transform the health of your email list. 

It's called infusing points of delight. 

Now this might sound like something big and fancy, but you'll be pleased to know, it's quite the opposite. 

Before we look at how to add delight, let me first cover thing that detract from customer delight...

For example...

If you are emailing your list sporadically, or rarely adding value to their day, or making it a one-way conversation, or just bragging about how great you are... then you are providing no sustenance, no reason for the prospect or one-time customer to stick around. You're just another business who clutters up their inbox and wants something from them. 

The Key? Differentiate Yourself with Points of Delight.

What does this mean? It means you deliver exceptional experiences at every point in your customers’ journey.

Everyone loves a delightful experience and your company should be focused on delivering the best possible experience for your prospects and customers in every stage of their relationship with you. 

Great experiences with a product or brand drive emotions of joy and satisfaction that we never forget. Customers WILL remember and share those experiences...typically as raving reviews or referrals to their friends, family and coworkers.

And yes, infusing points of delight is about building love, but it's also about building value. Because the better the experience someone has, the higher the perceived value of the brand.

And people are willing to pay more for better experiences.

So how do you infuse points of delight? 

Keep in mind that it's more than just meeting customer needs in the moment.

It means giving them little things when they don't expect it. Surprising them with a small gift, a short message, or even just using a communication method that is unexpected and because of such, delightful! 

Infuse points of delight will set you apart from your competition, demand attention and make your brand stand out as best-in-class.

It will also nurture the love that builds authentic relationships that last a lifetime.

And that's why "infusing points of delight" is an entire step in the Marketing RAMP®. By establishing the what, where and how from the get-go in our clients' marketing strategies, they're able to see the complete customer relationship, and the steps they need to take to ensure that happens.

Of course, you can just randomly send out points of delight as you come across ideas...but, that's kind of like throwing $50,000 at paid ads. Sure, "things" will "happen," but will it be effective on a long-term basis? 

Most likely, no. 

As a strategy-first marketing consultant, I believe having a clear strategy to success from the start is the only viable, scalable solution.

And that's what drove me to develop my proprietary process, the Marketing RAMP®.  This process contains all of the steps above, PLUS it gives you a complete blueprint of your customer journey, broken down into stages. This means you get a marketing blueprint that will meet changing buying behaviors with the right action at the right time. Interested to learn more?  Schedule a call with me or my team to get your questions answered.

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