What in the world is Brand Affinity, anyway? Most of us think about branding as our logo, color, fonts and maybe our talking points. And those are definitely part of every business brand. But successful brands - REALLY successful brands - have captured their magnetic essence, that build unbreakable bonds with their customers. They have tapped their brand affinity.
If you just took the Brand Affinity Quiz, you are already ahead of the game. You know what your brand affinity factor is. But now you need to understand why it is so important and how to use it.
Have you ever asked yourself, "What makes my brand so special?"
You know you need an elevator pitch, and a unique selling proposition, but you feel like you wind up sounding like everybody else in your field. That's because if you are like a lot of brands, you will share your business category and some variation of one (or more) of the nine most common differentiators:
Customer service
Innovation
Value
Expertise
People
Size
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Patented product/solution/process
Sure, you know to add the problem you solve. But still. It just feels "blah."
That’s the problem. Everybody wants to claim the same approach. How many of your competitors are claiming the exact same things you are? Just look at their websites. If you are claiming the same ones, that’s no differentiator, unless you really are the biggest or the best.
What Customers Want: Brand Affinity
Even if you are the biggest or the best in one or more of those nine categories, your brand still might struggle. The reason is your customers want something MORE PERSONAL than effectiveness. They are starving for an emotional bond with you that they can believe in and trust. Differentiators are about you, not the customer, and successful brands flip this. They make their uniqueness about the customer, not them.
Your customers are actively looking for what only your brand can deliver. At the same time, they DON’T want to be sold – or forced through your funnel, or stalked through LinkedIn invitations. They want to be seen, known, heard and, most of all, they want to matter to you. They want to connect with you. In fact, they want to identify with you, and see themselves in you.
How to Create Brand Affinity
Beyond brand awareness…beyond purchase…beyond loyalty…there’s this thing we call “brand affinity.” It’s elusive, and can be difficult to create if you don’t understand the latent affinity you already have. Brand affinity (or at least the potential for it) is baked into every brand in one of seven ways. When you understand your unique affinity, and leverage it, it is like marketing pixie dust, immunizing you against the competition and the market conditions. Seriously.
Although this is true, most brands slog it out as a commodity. If you find yourself saying one or more of these catch phrases, you are in commodity purgatory:
It’s a tough market.
We just can’t seem to break through the noise.
We need to get to market faster.
Our training/hiring/on-boarding/morale/retention/sales/ production is not delivering results up to par.
These phrases blame outside forces. The competition. The customers. The market. The economy. What they clearly describe is the experience of COMMODITIZATION. And the answer is Brand Affinity – which emanates from a clear relationship to your values and the purpose of your brand. When you are clear on these foundational ideas, you inspire a deeper and more meaningful relationship with your customers.
Your answer isn’t more tactics, as much as we love them. We can all agree that tactics are vitally important. But they are growing in complexity, volume and frequency at unprecedented rates. It can be overwhelming to keep pace with, if it is even possible at all. And your brand’s tactics aren’t working – it likely isn’t the tactics that are broken.
The Impact of Brand Affinity
Research done by an excellent agency, MBLM, has shown that brands with strong brand affinity (they refer to it as “brand intimacy”) have:
Higher Revenue
Greater Growth
Longer Lifespan
While brands without Brand Affinity are:
A Commodity
Subject to Conditions
Volatile
Affinity with a brand is self-identification with the brand – in other words – the customer sees them self and the brand as integrally connected. They don’t just drink Starbucks coffee. They refer to themselves as a “Starbucks drinker.” Brands who build affinity create a strong difference in one of seven key factors that are not that all-to-familiar list of “innovation” “expertise” “value” – but create an emotional bond that is far stronger. One that is unstoppable.
An important note here – all brands have some percentage of all seven factors. It is just that some have closer to 100% of 1 or 2 factors, and closer to 10 or 20% of others. Once you understand which factor best aligns with your brand, your purpose, your values and your product or service experience, then you can begin to amplify how you promote it.
7 Brand Affinity Factors
Here are the seven Brand Affinity factors, and their descriptions.
See where you think you rank, and download the 7 Brand Affinity Factors to share with your team:
Nurture These brands are centered around moments of pampering and gratification
Aspire These brands project an image of perfection, elevation or value that resonates deeply.
Exceed These brands deliver not only beyond expectations, with superior service, quality, and effectiveness, they also deliver above the levels of their competitors
Remember Brands that create a resonance with warm, positive memories or experiences
Elevate Brands confer improvement to the customer through their use, so they feel smarter, more capable, more connected
Practice Brand becomes an integral part of daily actions or habits
Serve Brand is actively making the world a better place.
If you want your own brand to be unstoppable, this is where you begin: Brand Affinity. Your brand already has one or more of these factors readily available. Once you start leveraging these core strengths, you are likely to see an immediate return for the investment of time and passion. No competitor can be like you when it comes to Brand Affinity.
To understand more about your own Brand Affinity, how to find it, and what to do to leverage it, email me at Stacey@InsideOutSmart.com.