The battle is over and the winner is the consumer. Aided by search engines and social media, consumers are now one another’s intelligent agents, with the ability to search products and services, read peer reviews, write personal opinions and share information with others in their network about their customer experience. The Economist ‘Path to 2020’ report showed that CMOs worldwide agree that modern marketing is about contextually relevant, customer engagement and experience. The best experience is one that allows the customer to travel along the buyer's journey that culminates in an emotional connection. Unfortunately, most companies are too busy measuring customer satisfaction instead of building emotional connections with their customers.

Why does emotional connection matter?

According to Harvard Business School, an emotionally connected customer is more than double the value of a satisfied customer. An emotionally connected customer visits more, buy more, is less price sensitive, pays attention to what you have to say, and is more likely to recommend you to friends and family. While emotion may sound subjective, it is not impossible for companies to pursue it as a strategy by developing ways to identify what motivates their customers and scaling their activities to appeal to these emotional motivators.

What creates an emotional connection?

The ten most common emotional motivators that affect customer value across all sectors are:

1. Being unique – being different from the rest, not a generic cookie-cutter
2. Being confident about the future – feeling positive that the future will be better than the past or the present
3. A sense of well-being – achieving life balance
4. A sense of freedom – the customer understanding that their buying decision is entirely their own and should not be coerced or forced
5. Excitement – experiencing an overwhelming sense of pleasure and happiness in buying or participating
6. A sense of belonging – knowing that they are part of something
7. Environmental concern – wanting to protect and preserve the environment
8. Be who they want to be – achieving what they perceive as their ideal self-image
9. Security – believing that what they have today will still be there tomorrow
10. Success – knowing that they have found a higher meaning in life beyond financial wealth or social status

Aligning your branding strategies to the above emotional motivators can make your brand's customer experience more likeable and trusted to customers. A professional brand specialist will be able to help your company identify the specific emotional motivators that drive your customers in every stage of the customer's journey both online and offline. Once you know the precise emotional motivator to appeal to, you can then invest in the right touch points that can generate the desired emotional connection with your customers. If you want to deliver a customer experience that is distinctively different from your competition, talk to the experts at MK2 today.