The only way to emotionally connect with your customers is to understand them.

It’s really that simple. Well it sounds simple, doesn’t it!  But saying it and achieving it are two very different things.

Many organisations today no longer allow time to develop a strategy and a creative platform from which to execute a campaign. A culture has evolved where a product is developed and marketing is bolted on at the end. Business seems to almost systematically ignore all the interactions that a customer has with a company in favour of the immediate return on investment – sales are placed above relationships and emotional connections.

I’ve spent a lifetime in marketing and what I have largely observed, especially in the last five years or so, is that organisations large and small, stumble from one campaign to the next, bumble through one tactic and on to another, without really listening to what their customers are trying to tell them.

Every day, your clients are trying to reach out to you to tell you how you can help them better, what irks them and what they love – from a passing remark in a telephone conversation, an observation during a PowerPoint sales presentation, or a comment on your company Facebook page, your customers are trying to tell you how to serve you better…

Are you listening? Are you making your customers feel like they are important to you? Are you then responding in a way in which they understand?

At every interaction with your business, you need to talk about your products and services in a way that your customers understand; generally, this will mean that you need to understand what your customers seek from your company specifically – the iPod shuffle was a massive success not because it was the best mp3 player on the market, but because Apple solved a problem – they offered ‘1000 songs in your pocket,’ when their competitors were selling megabytes of RAM. Now that’s an emotional connection! As a music lover, lost in the sea of mp3, I was delighted that at long last there was a company that understood my needs – I remember thinking, ‘these guys get me!’

To emotionally connect with our customers, we must listen, as this tells our customer that we value them. Also by listening, we understand the language our customers are speaking, rather than using acronyms and industry jargon, we can begin to use the language of our customers in our marketing. 

By using language which really resonates, we begin to emotionally connect with our customers, which in turn leads to true brand loyalty.

Are you listening to your customers? Can you hear them say…

‘You get me!’

Connect with a marketing consultant to help you connect better with your customers