Your mom (or the mother figure in your life) is impossible to judge with something as cold sounding as “return on investment.” How could you place a number on Mom? It’s similar to trying to place a number on small business branding.
With your mom, you could count several things…times she dropped you off at school, how many words of wisdom she dispensed, times she ruffled your hair and more. But let’s be honest. You probably shouldn’t put a number on Mom. After all, it’s more about how you feel.
Putting an ROI on your small business branding is like putting an ROI on your mom. Sure, there are functional ways to measure ROI on it. But the best brands know good numbers come from how they make people feel.
The Elephant in the Room
First, let’s tackle the elephant in the room. Research shows there is an “ROI” related to engaging with consumers and making them feel something. One study displays emotional attachments to a brand account for 76% of variations in loyalty.
That’s important for proving sentiment really matters. But it practically helps you very little when developing a brand that sparks feeling.
Small Business Branding as a Lived Experience
People experience your brand (and any brand) through the lens of emotion. Not columns and rows on a spreadsheet. Even you experience your brand this way.
I recently interviewed a credit union CEO who described the effect of a philanthropic event in his community as the “smiles on employees’ faces.” Not the amount of money given away or the turnover rate (although those were good). The first thing that hit him about the credit union brand was how it made people feel.
When you eat at your favorite restaurant, buy your favorite brand of shoes or open your favorite streaming platform, you experience something pleasant beyond the baseline product. That brand is a lived experience.
The question is…is that how people feel about your brand?
Create an Emotional Brand
So, how do you create emotional small business branding? Here are some techniques:
- Love it yourself. Not a single person will ever love your brand if you don’t love it (and if your team doesn’t love it). Increase team obsession – that’s right, not just buy-in – with your brand. Build your journey map and consumer experience around it. When your brand joyfully exudes from your team, consumers will feel the love.
- Authentically help the community. Like the credit union CEO I interviewed, you need to truly believe in doing this for its own sake. And you need to go above and beyond to stand out. Put care bags for the homeless in your locations. Give staff paid volunteer hours. Spotlight the stories in the press.
- Make something memorable. It doesn’t have to be something big, but it must emotionally differentiate you. For Buc-ee’s, it’s as small as the bathrooms. The gas station chain advertises them on billboards for miles, urging you to hold it and avoid the filth of competitor commodes. The bathrooms help people feel clean and safe. Find your own memorable differentiator.
We usually see the biggest hurdles to emotional small business branding in staff training – coaching staff on how to live and love the brand every day. Book a free consultation, and let’s talk about how consumer experience training will help you solve this problem.
