“Follow your heart.” “Trust your gut.” “Let your instinct lead.” If you’ve heard of these phrases, you know how important emotions are to the average customer. The most successful brands in the world are built on sentimental value–whether it’s partygoers sharing a Coke, teenagers sketching on their Converse, or athletes winning contests while wearing Nike. A strong brand sells style and emotion, not just products. This is why emotional branding strategies are so effective.

But what even is emotional branding?

In the simplest terms, emotional branding builds and associates your brand with specific, appealing emotions. All humans have needs and desires, and when a brand provides for those needs and desires, they link themselves to an emotion associated with them.

Case in point: When people see Nike branded shoes or apparel, they think of competitive athletes, efficiency, and victory. All of this leads to an association with motivation, which is the main emotion Nike’s brand wants to pass on to its customer base.

You can see many different brands showing off similar appeals, no matter what their product is. Louis Vuitton? Luxury and grandiosity. H&M? Youth and affordability. Walmart? Convenience. The list can go on and on, as almost all brands have an emotional identity to some extent or another. How well you market that identity is another matter entirely.

1. How to Identify Your Emotional Brand

Finding out your emotional brand is key to unlocking your brand’s potential. Here are a few questions you can ask to get to the bottom of it:

1. What do you provide to your customers?: All customers have specific desires that they need to fulfill. How does your product fulfill their desires? How do you differ in your services or products as compared to your competitors? For example, Uniqlo and Zara both fulfill their customer’s needs for affordable clothes, but one feeds into a desire for simplicity and convenience, while the other caters more to style.  
2. What do they expect from you?: From your experience in selling products, what have you reliably given to customers? What kind of advantage do they typically expect from your brand? Are you of higher quality, more affordable, and more diverse than other options?

2. Emotional Branding Strategies 

Once you’ve decided on your emotional branding, these are the strategies you can use to strengthen it:

1. Create a brand story

Storytelling is a common way to build rapport with clients and customers. Brands are essentially personalities for businesses–thus, adding a ‘backstory’ for the brand only further builds character. 

Think about how your brand began. What motivated you or your founders to build the brand? What problem in the world are they looking to solve? How have they struggled to build their business? What have their successes looked like?

A good story arc starts with a conflict and rises towards a triumphant conclusion. You need to make your customers feel like they are a part of that conclusion, especially when the brand story never ends.

2. Build a strong community

Great brands give back to their customer base, and their customers give back in turn. Create social media accounts for different platforms where you can find your people. From then on, you can start interacting with your customer base–making polls, posting humorous or lighthearted content, asking timely questions, etc.

All of this is meant to build a rapport between your brand and your customers. Your emotional branding strategies should be centered around associating good content and a welcoming community with your brand and product. 

These can come in different forms, of course. Some brands, like the fast food chain Wendy’s, found success with their more caustic social media management on Twitter. However, the safer and less controversial method is to just stick to your brand’s positive personality traits and actively post online. You can even consider investing in community managers to build a stronger, more personal community over time.

3. Use visual campaigns

Most managers use visuals in 90% of their branded content, and for good reason. The first thing most people will notice in branded content is the graphic design. These can include anything from color, shapes, symmetry, and more. 

When you’re forming your emotional branding strategies, make the visual campaigns an important part of it. For example, consider what colors you’d want to be associated with your brand. Blues tend to be calmer and more methodical. Greens are more prosperous and resolute. Reds are passionate and driven.

This logic also lends itself to shapes, designs, and other factors. Try focus-grouping your content and seeing which designs work the best for your emotional branding strategies’ interest.

4. Carefully respond to customers

When customers receive faulty products, they typically go online to solve their issues. Sometimes they’ll drop a mention on one of your posts, and other times they’ll complain on their own posts without mentioning your brand.

Eitherway, public complaints show how well-connected a brand truly is to their base. Ignoring these posts may create a level of disconnect between your brand and your customers. However, responding less than aptly may also damage your emotional branding strategies.

In other words, it’s best to respond quickly and courteously. Ask the customer to move your chats to private messages, or connect them to other customer service appeals that may help them in the long run.

5. Stand out from the competition

If all your emotional branding strategies work out, you’ll find that your brand has carved a niche for itself in customers’ minds. This niche is important in standing out from competitors. Some companies, namely the higher-shelf types, draw in people for their luxurious and inaccessible attitude. Others draw in customers for being convenient, friendly and approachable for many demographics.

When building your emotional branding strategies, just keep in mind what your competitors are doing. Are they catering to the same demographic as you, or are they missing out on some key groups? How can your brand attain better emotional leverage with that base? These are all things to consider when winning a customer’s heart–and ultimately, their trust, too.