What Does Love Have to Do With marketing?
Personally, I think it is essential to be a little smitten with a brand you are doing work for, otherwise how are you going to help other people fall in love with them?
How do you fall in love with a brand? Easy. You ask question after question until you get to the essence of why they are creating the product or offering the service, and how their approach makes them truly unique. If you haven’t helped them discover their remarkable, than you probably aren’t feeling butterflies when you hear their name.
Sometimes people are too close to themselves to know what makes them different. That’s where market research, key stakeholder interviews, surveys and focus groups can help you really dig into the market and how they stack up.
Just as important as what they do best, is why. For example, I have a client who does restoration. They restore things after an emergency like a fire or flooding. What they do better than any other restoration company is restore as many items as possible and get as much insurance money as possible—those are great benefits. But the reason they are so good at this is because one of the founders grew up in a family of commercial cleaners. His background is in helping people clean individual items and restore them back to new—as opposed to most restoration companies who were builders first, so they are more concerned with building walls than they are restoring all of your precious items.
The other founder has an insurance background. She knows the importance of documenting, following protocols and meeting timelines in order to maximize the amount the insurance company will give their clients.
The founders are both passionate, intentional people who care about their staff. This creates a culture of people who care, coupled with areas of expertise. If you can’t tell, I fell in love. The benefits of how to do the job right are great talking points, but the amazing humans behind the mission is great storytelling. Great storytelling is how we build our tribe.