If your business is trapped competing on price, it’s because they’re not loyal to your brand. But there are ways you can build that loyalty.
In a presentation on the first day of the New Media Expo (formerly BlogWorld) in Las Vegas, serial entrepreneur Dino Dogan –most recently founder of Triberr — says he studied cults to learn how to build close relationships with customers.
Cult leaders sometimes convince people to kill
themselves. Wouldn’t you love to have customers that loyal to your
business, that they’d do anything for you?
Here are four strategies Dogan outlined for building a closer customer bond:
1. Polarity. People love to pick sides in a
conflict. Setting up your company as an underdog in a battle of good
against evil is a great way to get customers on your side. A classic
example was the Pepsi Challenge, in which Pepsi filmed taste tests in
which consumers preferred it to Coca-Cola. When The Gap began, it
exploited the ’60s generation gap by marketing itself as “not your
parents’ jeans” — and became the wildly popular, hipper apparel company
for a new generation. Likewise, Apple’s “I’m a PC” ads set up their
products as the desirable models compared with stodgy old PCs.
Polarizing positioning draws people to take sides — and if you spin
it right, they cleave to your business’s point of view. Dogan’s favorite
is Oprah, who polarized by focusing tightly on a demographic of
housewives and discussing only the issues they cared about.
2. Customer avatars. To build closer bonds with customers, know them well. The ideal, notes Dogan, is to be your company’s ideal customer. Then you’ll naturally come up with products customers want.
If you aren’t a customer, spend a lot of time talking to customers —
and don’t delegate the task to a research firm. It’s like playing
telephone, and a lot gets lost in translation. Do your own one-on-one
intelligence-gathering.
3. Offer status. Humans are programmed to constantly
check each other for social cues about status, from straight, white
teeth to the brand of car we drive. Build the appearance of status into
your product, and customers will stampede to get it. Think of
first-class perks on airlines, for which customers pay more even though
the plane gets there at the same time either way.
Would you pay the sticker price for a luxury
car such as Mercedes without the familiar logo on the front? Unlikely.
Instead, Mercedes has turned its high cost into a positive for
status-seekers: “I can afford the Mercedes,” buyers think, “so I’m a
high-status individual.”
4. Catalyze connections. Bonding customers to your
brand is one thing, but bonding them to each other can take their fandom
to another level. Harley-Davidson’s bike rallies are one of Dogan’s
favorite examples. Hog riders love that Harley offers them opportunities
to hang out with other H-D enthusiasts.
“If we met at a Harley rally,” says Dogan, “that’s a story we’ll carry for years.”
How do you cultivate customer loyalty? Add to Dogan’s list of strategies in the comments.
www.forbes.com
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