3 Tips for Involving Customers With Your Brand

The Challenge: Companies need to involve customers with their brand by providing emotional connections that drive engagement and purchases.

Here are 3 tips to help you achieve greater brand engagement.

Tip #1: Customers project how they see themselves in your brand attributes.

In an, E-Score study on the Rankings of America’s Top Brands, it was noted that, “a… brand’s attributes and personality can be an extension of how the consumer wants to represent [themselves] and connects to what they expect to achieve from a product or service.”

Tip #2: A purchase is a viewed as a form of self-expression by consumers.

In a study from University of Geneva on Brand Value and the Respective Role of Brand Sensitivity, Situational Involvement and Enduring Involvement it concluded that there is a predominant role in how a customer views their self-expression as it relates to a brand purchase;

• Interaction is a predictor of purchase intent.

• Customers’ situational involvement (linked with anticipated usage) may have a higher impact on the brand purchase intention than the actual perceived value of the product.

Tip #3: There has to be an emotional component to engagement in order for involvement to take place.

It was noted in the International Review of Management and Business Research study, “Investigating the Role of Brand in Forming the Consumer Involvement” that in order to understand consumers’ behavior, knowing the structure of consumer involvement is highly important

• Brand reputation, loyalty, awareness popularity, and perceived quality all have a significant correlation with consumer involvement.

Online retailer, ModCloth has put these key facts into action by developing a customer base that is highly engaged and involved. They have come up with unique strategies for turning customer insights into innovative website features and relevant content;

• CEO Eric Kroger had this to say regarding customer involvement, “Our vision and where we believe the industry is heading is retailers who align behind distinct communities of customers, and those retailers understand those customers better than any other retailer.”

• From the moment that a customer arrives on the site they are invited to become a part of the ModCloth Community.

• ModCloth’s “selfie” gallery on their App (featuring shoppers wearing the company’s clothes) has increased in terms of involvement by 60 percent since it was launched.

• The company announced that it has surpassed  $100 million in annual revenue last year—well over 40% growth year over year—and it largely attributes this success to a focus on the customer and its fostering of a highly involved customer community.

3 Key Takeaways from the strategies ModCloth uses to involve customers:

• Individualized product recommendations based on actual visits and viewed items.

• To strengthen the connections, when shoppers arrive on site from social networks, the retailer displays the product or promotion that prompted the click, while also introducing these visitors to its overall brand. 

• The company makes sure it presents customers with personalized, yet fresh, relevant products and shopping features on every visit to give them a reason to keep coming back.