People make decisions to purchase a product or service based on emotional triggers that release positive outcomes in their life. These are core emotional values. What are the core emotional values that connect with your next customer?
What are the core emotional values in your brand?
When we assess a brand, our goal is to evaluate how it conveys the solution the business offers, versus what the brand tells their audience. The purpose of this article is to give you the tools to help you read the story of your brand from the perspective of your audience and find your core emotional value.
Here are a series of questions I give to my clients to help find their core emotional value:
· What is the issue your product or service resolves?
· What type of people face that specific issue? What do you know about those people?
· What type of financial challenges are included in addressing their issue?
· What are the negative impacts of their specific issues? Who else does it effect?
· Why does your specific product or service address this issue better than anyone else?
· How would your audience know that from your brand touch points? (logo/website/social media)
· Do you believe the story of your brand is delivered in every aspect of your touch points?
The goal of the exercise is to drill down to the simplicity of the moment. The moment your target audience becomes a dedicated customer because of the positive emotional feeling they get from the resolution of their challenge.
Why is the core emotional value important?
Today, consumers are engaging with brands that they can connect with on deeper levels than ever before. They want to know that you understand their challenges and know your solution can address it. Businesses must adapt to telling the story of their brand in every aspect of their marketing and audience touch points. Between your website and social media your audience now has increased access to your brand. The diversity in channels to reach your audience can highlight the disconnection in the story of your brand.
Addressing your emotional core value will help you create a voice and tone to your brand that maintains cohesion across all channels of your marketing. It will also make sure the conversation your having with your target audience speaks to their need for your solution.
Give me an example.
To emphasize the important of a core emotional value we like to provide an example. Let's say you're a criminal defense attorney. You can't guarantee a not guilty verdict in all cases and you need to define your positioning in a an extremely competitive market. So, what are you really selling?
Sitting down with one of our clients it became clear that based on the situations involving our target audience the product we were actually selling was fear reduction. The brand can convey this in many forms that connect with our clients marketing strategy. There are steps in the process, information, decision benchmarks, and zones of comfort.
Establishing communication to aid in the support of the mental state of the criminal defense client was critical to establishing a brand story that would speak directly to the reduction of fear.
The solution.
We outlined our clients processes and made sure they accounted for the causes for fear and opportunities to address elevated emotional moments. We included a script signature in their redesigned brand representing their personal touch. Additionally, changes to their brand images reinforced the feeling of support our clients legal services provided and spoke in a voice that was soft and reassuring. We implemented an email communication process to remind client of the results of past court appointments and made them aware of upcoming appointments.
It was critical that our client was viewed as the expert and in control of their case at all times. We related this to a time before Google Maps. Before we could use technology to find our way around an unfamiliar area people would act on instinct. Areas unfamiliar to our eyes would illicit feelings of fear. A lack of vision and unfamiliarity are significant causes to the emotions of fear. Taking every step possible to reduce those emotions would help us distract from the fact that the outcomes in legal cases could be negative. Causing legal clients to provide negative references regarding our clients services.
What they were actually paying for was someone to support, guide, comfort, and clarify. The core emotional value for our client was the fear, and our mission was to reduce it.
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