Creating a meaningful interaction between people and products

June 24, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

In the good old days, brand marketing looked like a piece of cake, didn’t it?

All a brand owner needed to do was to use what we used to euphemistically call “mass media” which meant using the loudest volume level possible in order to be heard above the white noise of the competition.

Fast forward to today and that’s hardly a recipe for success!  Successful brands need to find ways of creating an enduring and mutually rewarding relationship with customers, clients, prospects and supporters.

As I’ve written in my latest book, The Art of Influencing and Selling, real relationships are difficult to form and even much more difficult to sustain. If you want a relationship to work, you need to be actively engaged. And yet few brands invest in building strong relationships and yet it’s probably one of the most strategically important aspects of marketing and communications today.

Most marketers understand that engagement is the key to success but don’t have a formal approach in achieving it – and in many cases, neither do their agencies.

When you strip it down, what really makes a difference is the ability to add value and build trust.

Successful engagement requires turning on ‘receive mode’ and not remaining in ‘transmit mode’. And in practical terms it means that brands need to stop talking about themselves and begin to ‘actively listen’ and communicate with their audiences about things that matter to them.

If brands engage with audiences in an open dialogue that’s authentic, participatory and a valuable experience, then customers, clients, prospects and supporters are able to exert more control over their involvement with the brand.

And as a result, these relationships will lead to loyalty, commitment, advocacy and ultimately an increase in incremental new business and profits.

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