Do your customers really know who you are?

Mad Men marketing is dead – the days of hyperbolic mass marketing campaigns born on Madison Avenue are over. Nowadays, sales promotion has only temporary benefits. Direct mail response rates are often below 1%. Traditional marketing is simply no longer working.

There are only two effective answers. The first is to better know and get closer to your customers. Customer-centricity. The other is to differentiate yourself through your brand.

Branding and customer-centricity

Yes, customer-centricity is essential. You have to know who you are dealing with, and especially the needs and pains of your audience. But branding and storytelling come first.

The burden of proof lies with us. In all actions – both internal and external – it is (y)our responsibility to live your brand. Not just the logo. Behaviour. All communications. All your products and services. HR. Company premises. How far you go depends on your ambition, but the more you embed your brand and appropriate behaviour across all your touchpoints, the stronger the light of your brand beacon becomes.

Honesty is the new hyperbole

The most effective branding is now all about honesty and transparency. Consumer and citizen groups have had enough of the froth and are grappling for handholds for their interests and attention. These handholds are organizations that communicate and live a clearly defined identity.

Through identity-rich, on-brand communications and action, you give your audience a clear opportunity to choose you. You need to let them know who you are and give them the chance to belong to something in which they believe. Through these shared values, you forge the holy grail: mutual loyalty and long-term, engaged relationships.

Compelling, loyalty-generating communications

By clearly understanding your brand and its DNA, and by strongly embedding those values in your organization, you will automatically generate clearer and more compelling communications. The result is the attraction of like-minded individuals who, because they identify with your story, are loyal to your values and not just your products. This generates loyalty that last beyond spontaneous purchases. They will come back time and time again. And importantly, they will tell their contacts, because they are happy to be associated with you.

We’re all attracted to stories, and they are still one of the most powerful tools for attracting your loyalty group. The strongest stories are ones in which we identify with the main protagonists. This is our job. To ensure we communicate in such a way that we attract those who have the potential to believe in us.

Bottom line

In the end, we are trying to create lasting (profitable) loyalty through clear-cut and transparent communications based on your brand DNA with your audiences.

I am sure you have a story to tell. And if not, let’s get you on the road to making one. You’ll find a description of my Brand New process here.