In a world where there is an abundance of information, the only way to successfully capture the attention of our audience is not through rational stimuli. We can only relate with our customers by capitalizing on an emotional attachment, an instinctive connection, and a sensation of familiarity.
This is essentially what is meant by the term “experiential branding.” The question is, how can one get their hands on it? Furthermore, in an industry such as the fashion market, which places a greater emphasis on aesthetics than on practicality, inciting an emotional response in customers appears to be a particularly challenging task.
It’s possible that some industries have an easier time making an emotional bond with their target audience than others. In point of fact, in accordance with the pyramid of needs proposed by Maslow, human beings satisfy their desires in a specific order. At the very base of the pyramid, we discover our physiological and basic needs, such as the need to feel secure and safe. At the very apex of the pyramid, we consider the need to actualize our maximum potential and satisfy our desire for self-actualization. As a result of the fact that the fashion industry is in the business of selling social equity, its products have a tendency to be situated in the upper layers of this design.
However, such objectives are not going to be accomplished overnight. On the other hand, a brand is only able to develop a value pyramid that culminates in the delivery of aspirational values if they engage in a method of continuous optimization, which is the only way this can be done. In this article, we are going to talk about how a management step-by-step process can be used to reach the invention of a trademark brand experience for a company.
A fashion label, before beginning this journey, must create and establish effective communication centered on what the label is and how it assists its customers. You are now prepared to follow the brand relationship blueprint that will be discussed in the subsequent sections of this article once it has been determined what your company does and how it provides services to its clients.
Craft the Ideal Purchasing Experience for the End User
Beginning with the provision of actual, useful assistance is the first step in developing an emotional attachment to your brand. The first necessary step in accomplishing your objectives is to improve the effectiveness of your service. The following is a list of examples that illustrate how this should be done at your company:
Time Saving
Develop time-saving processes for your customers to use when interacting with your brand so you can better serve them. The greatest luxury of all is time, and as such, its management ought to be handled in a responsible manner.
Make Procedures Easier to Follow
You have an obligation to make things simpler for your customers. Which procedures are available to you to put into place so that your customers do not have to do “all the hard work”? At the very least, do you offer an incentive to customers who “go the extra mile” to purchase your wares? These are a few questions that you should probably give some thought to.
Putting Forth Less Effort
Because attracting new customers is both time-consuming and costly, the only thing a customer should be required to do once they enter the store is consider the payment method options available to them. Everything else that has even the slightest potential to impede the process of checking out should be avoided.
The ‘large blue bags’ sold at IKEA are a good example of how the seemingly insignificant details can sometimes have the greatest impact. It is abundantly clear that the accomplishment of this first breakthrough is dependent on the two aspects of modern fashion retail that are known as the technological factors and the human elements.
Omnichannel Dispersion
Combining the physical and digital aspects of the shopping experience yields the highest possible level of operational effectiveness. Simple functions like “reserve in store,” “store locator,” and “check sizes and availability” can make a significant difference in how your company manages efficiencies, both internally and in relation to the customers it serves.
Design
The expansion of the e-commerce market has made it possible for companies to form direct relationships with the consumers who buy their products. It is imperative that this be done while keeping in mind the excessive amount of advertisement and commercial content that we, as consumers, are subjected to on a daily basis. The layout of your digital experiences should receive the same amount of consideration for detail, if not more, than the design of your physical stores. This is because technology platforms have become an unavoidable component of your brand, and as such, they need to be maintained.
You will begin to have access to data as you create the technological infrastructure that is necessary for maintaining and supporting your brand. This is very important for us to do in order to formulate the next stage of our strategic plan, which will be covered in the following paragraph.
The Development Requires a Mixture of Qualitative and Quantitative Management
Let’s take a look at the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are positively affected by an experiential branding strategy before we move on to addressing more major operations of how you can establish an emotional relationship with your clients.
Strategy for Creating an Emotional Brand
The generation of leads Something that sticks in your mind is called a memorable experience. The rule states that we all discuss a lot about significant experiences we’ve had throughout the day, and memorable shopping experiences are not an exception to this rule.
As we discuss the things that have left an impression on us, we unwittingly become advocates for the company’s brand and propagators of the message it wants to convey. This undeniably reverts into a method of lead generation, which is accomplished through word of mouth. Because it comes from a person’s own validation and recommendation, this is among the most powerful ways for our brand to attract new customers.
How Often One Goes Shopping
An addiction to shopping can develop because of the sense of indulgence and fulfillment that it provides. Our behavior will change as a result of addiction. Because of the low prices they offer, fast fashion businesses are able to deliver a powerful emotional impulse to their customers. Customers are encouraged to make multiple visits to a store each month as a result of the consistent shelving rotations and product rotations that are carried out by the company.
The greater the emotional attachment between the store and the customer, the more likely it is that the customer will continue to visit the retailer and make additional purchases. This will result in a rise in their lifetime value, which means that a company will profit more from each new customer that it acquires.
Retaining Existing Customers
A long history of good experiences will generate a lock-in in customer behavior, favoring loyalty over longer time periods. It is common knowledge that retaining existing customer results in a lower overall cost than obtaining a new one. Let’s take a look at how this can be accomplished now that the advantages of developing a unique and emotionally engaging brand experience have been established beyond a reasonable doubt.
How can you make an emotional connection with your customers and make them feel like they were part of the experience of your brand? The key to evoking an emotional response in a customer is to provide them with an experience that is unique and extraordinary. We might not recall what we ate a short while ago, but if we ate dinner with a famous person, we would definitely remember every aspect of the meal, down to the tiniest particular.
One way to differentiate yourself from the competition is to offer incentives to your consumers. Even better, if you wish to leave a lasting impression on someone, one of the best ways to do so is to surprise them. The very concept of surprising one’s customers is extremely broad and may require additional elaboration or explanation. To exceed one’s own expectations is what it means to surprise someone. It is necessary for us to have an understanding of the specific customer profiles that communicate with our brand in order to have an understanding of the expectations. In this context, developing a strategy for experience – based and sentimental branding begins with a concise chart of both who our consumers are and what functionality they get from our product lines.
Create Values That People Aspire to Have and Incorporate Them Into Your Brand
Getting to this third step requires developing a personalized and customized approach to serving the customer. A person’s aspirational values are unique to them and delve deeply into their specific goals in life. These values shift from individual to individual. As a result, this stage involves the process of mass personalization.
A company, on the one hand, is going to need to target a market segment that is sufficiently broad. This is the home stretch of your product marketing, as it is now centered on the development of a customer relationship management, which is inevitably intended to make each and every consumer an activist of the brand.
At this point in the process, a fashion label will need to establish a link between the technological and physical assets of the business and the human element of the product delivery in order to be successful. The experience of the product is inevitably a fusion of all of the intangible and tangible preconceptions formed by a consumer before, during, and after the experience of making a purchase of the brand’s product or service.
