The foundation of a strong, long-lasting relationship is trust. It is true for all types of relationships, and especially true for brands desiring to create a loyal customer base. However, the process for building trust takes time and does not happen overnight with one ad, one campaign, or one experience with a brand. Each interaction is important and should always focus on the ultimate customer benefit for maximum effect.
The time required for relationship building and trust varies based on the product category and how emotionally engaging the brand’s proposition and experience is for the customer. For example, a luxury automobile or boat might take years of trust building before someone decides to make a purchase. On the other hand, a candy bar brand may not take too long to trust that it is worth a try.
The more emotionally engaging an ad, social media post, website, or brand experience is, the greater the chance of triggering purchase behavior. Even if a purchase is not triggered, emotionally engaging experiences are stored in our brain for longer periods of time. Researches define this as “brand recall” — the familiarity, preference and trust used on the next purchase decision. In fact, humans prioritize emotionally-engaging experiences for brain memory over facts and figures.
Brand managers who try to speed-up the purchase cycle through bottom-of-the- funnel “calls to action” are often disappointed with conversion results. Mainly because the top-of-the-funnel “brand trust building” has not built up a large pool of prospective customers to convert. Researchers at the International Practitioners of Advertising (IPA) estimate that 60% of advertising should be designated for brand building to successfully build and maintain the pool of brand-predisposed buyers. And the same researchers concluded that emotionally engaging brand advertising is much more effective at creating and sustaining this prospect pool.
In fact, brands at every stage of their lifecycle need to hold a top-of-mind share of prospective customers equal to or greater than the market share they hold. Constant reminders of brand meaning and the need to reinforce positive memories is the primary role of advertising and is critical to maintaining and growing share of mind and, ultimately, share of market.
At any point in time, a basic primary demand exists for any product category. The people who make-up the primary demand for a category need to be aware of your brand, and have a strong reason for considering and buying it. The role of marketing is to increase the awareness of distinctive brand benefits with prospective customers. The best and fastest way to achieve this is through emotionally engaging messages and experiences. Depending on the brand’s relative market share and lifecycle, growing the top-of-mind awareness is often secondary to simply sustaining awareness of positive brand experience.
At the end of the day, brands are simply memories. And memories fade over time. However, the longer emotionally engaging memories stay with us, the better the chances of building brand trust and preference that are critical for long-term growth.
Credit to Jim Cobb (The Bloodhound Group)
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