Posted on June 24, 2010 - by Kwame

How To Get Your Customers to Have Faith in Your Brand

Customers follow or ‘unfollow’ brands because of their experience with them. They follow brands because of their faith in that brand. Because they know what they will always be getting from that brand. Because that brand has a unique spot that serves the industry in which they find themselves.

Apple is followed because of their revolutionary and innovative products. Mercedes is followed because customers are assured of luxury and quality engineering. CNN is followed because they are first in news. The list of unique, remarkable brands goes on and on.

Now let’s shift focus to you. What makes your brand unique? Before people will follow your brand, you need to show them something they can have faith in. Something that is difficult to find in your competitor’s products. Something that will stand for your brand; be your brand’s definition.

There are a few ways you can achieve this. One way is to be unique in a remarkable way. Creating a remarkably unique brand image helps you dodge most of the competition. Facebook understood this when they started. They didn’t want to be just another social network, they wanted to be more and they succeeded.

There are millions of businesses trying to copy each other. The sad thing is, most of them die fast. Most become bankrupt because they spend lots of money to advertise their ‘common’ products; products just like the others. This is no way to win. Something has to be different about you.

Building a remarkable brand takes lots of creativity and innovation. Counterfeiters know this, that’s why they spend money producing product look-alikes instead of investing that same money into their own product ideas.

If you want to run a ‘monopoly’ in today’s marketplace, build a unique brand. If you can get your customers to have faith in your brand’s attributes, you have a ‘monopoly’. Apple is running a ‘monopoly’ in their marketplace because they are remarkably unique in everything they do. What can you do to make your business a ‘monopoly’?

The second way you can build a faithful customer base is to treat all customers equally. Treat the $1 item buyers the same way as $1,000 item buyers. When you do this, people become more attached to you and your business will grow. A $1 item buyer could bring you a $1,000 item buyer through word of mouth so why don’t you treat them equally eh?

The third way you can bring in faithful customers is to be consistent at what you are best known for.  If you are remarkable, stay remarkable. Start with innovation and continue with innovation. Complacency is not accepted in business because your customers and competitors are watching you. In fact, your customers are watching you and your competitors at the same time. Once they notice you have stopped evolving, they will move on to the other company that has evolved.

Consistency builds faith.

How do you know if you have faithful customers?

Your customers have the best answer to this question. They don’t have to tell you in words. Their actions are there to assess yourself.

5 ways you can tell if you have faithful customers are:

• They refer other customers to you
• They give you feedback about your products
• They buy from you for the second time…third and fourth times …again and again.
• They defend your brand when people spread negative rumors about it.
• They give you a second chance when you flop. Please Note: Second chances are mostly given to brands that have been consistent at something for a long time and then all of a sudden, slack a bit.

If your customers do this for you, then you earned their trust.

It doesn’t matter if you agree with me or not but your customers are your most valuable assets. Like all your other assets, you need to get them to work for you. You need to understand them in order to leverage them. Don’t focus all your efforts on advertising. Focus a big chunk of your efforts on your building customer relationships too. If you’re in business for the money, you lose focus on the customer but if you decide to be in business for the customer, you build a better business.