People are animals, treat them that way…

Customers react instinctively and emotionally to companies and products as much as on a rational basis. this is particularly true of products and services that have lots of similar competitors, and why brands focus on the relationship and wider meaning of any communications.

To give them an emotional hook, not just a rational one, so they buy your product or service. Make sure you consider:

• A consistent tone of voice
• Appropriate colours and imagery for the audience
• A two way dialogue with your customers to build loyalty and ‘bond’ with a sense of common values

In the onslaught of business degree courses, masters and even doctorates in business studies, and a general consensus that to succeed in business you should be the cleverest strategist, the one with the best systems and processes, and the most up to date IT, it is easy to forget that the one person that is not primarily driven by rational decisions and judgements is your customer.

Just as individuals create strong – often irrefutable – conclusions about people in the first few seconds of meeting, so they make similar judgements about companies and products. What does this product or service say about ME, do I like the people from the company, do they seem to be ‘my kind of company’, are they friendly – just some of the unconscious questions we ask ourselves all the time when making important decisions about purchasing products or choosing suppliers or services.

So what are the key things you need to think about when trying to engage people on an instinctive and emotional level? There are three areas that you need to get right:

The little things: is your message confused? The biggest barrier to engaging with any customer is confusion, and often this is because there is an inconsistency about the message itself. Marketing materials may get it right, but what about your sales force, your ‘tone of voice’ on the web site, your facebook page, your press releases. But more than that, it is the general behaviour of the company that makes the biggest difference. Think about the appropriate responses to your positioning and your message, for example:

• If your message is you care about the customer – how do you deal with complaints, do you put your customer service reps on a pedestal?
• If you message is innovation – can you explain easily how you achieve this, can you communicate that feeling of ‘newness’ and difference or do you look similar to everyone else?
• If you message is reliability – can you explain what lengths you would go to in the event of something breaking down? can you give a live web feed of % uptime/problems fixed?
• If your message is friendliness and accessibility – do you create a company culture that facilitates this? do you engage directly via social media? can people contact or meet you easily?

The impression: get it right at first glance. If you message is clear, you need to make sure it has its own personality, communicated across different media. Same ‘tone of voice’, same visual elements (not just the logo), colour scheme, design style. This gives confidence and clarity to the consumer that what you say is what you mean, and that they be sure that other products and services from you will have similar values.

The sparkle: showing your difference. Every company has its own unique attributes, and hopefully they are intrinsic to how they run and produce their product or service – how can you get that across with an emotional ‘hook’ that sticks in people’s minds. It could be a written message/strapline or musical hook, it could be a shape or colour, a style of photography, it could even be signage or the product documentation, but most likely it will the combination of a number of different elements. It’s a delicate judgement – too many things going on and it seems confused, too few and it seems generic. The most important thing is that it should be innovative, and directly related to your difference or USP.

All these  things are critical if success in a competitive market is to engage with its customers and attract new ones, but more than that, get all these elements right and the clarity of message will enable an easier sales process (everything is clear, everything supports the same objective), a more focussed team (all on the same wavelength, understand the difference, how to communicate it), but best of all, your company will achieve a combination of simplicity, strong character and inspiring engagement. Another way of putting it – become a ‘cool’ brand.