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  We like to think that customers are purely rational people. If they have a need, they look for solutions, weigh each alternative, and choose the one that’ll work best for them. And we can get their attention just by offering the best product out of the pack.
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In reality, providing them with the best product may not be enough to win their loyalty. That’s because they aren’t merely rational. They are also emotional individuals, like everyone else. Winning them over will require that you be emotionally intelligent too, i.e. you can tell how they feel at vital moments before, during, and after engaging with your business. This ability to ‘read’ customer’s feelings is called Emotional Intelligence. If you are an emotionally intelligent brand, you’ll know when and how to communicate with your potential and existing customers. So you’ll be able to respond to their emotions as you do their physical needs.

The Benefits Of Being an Emotionally Intelligent Brand

Here are some of the benefits your business could reap when it responds appropriately to its audience’s emotional states.
  • Gives you a more in-depth understanding of your audience
  • Aids the establishment or strengthening of your relationship with prospects and customers
  • Makes you a more rounded solutions provider, increasing the likelihood that you’ll be the preferred option for potential customers
  • Has the potential to increase your conversions

Creating An Emotionally Intelligent Brand

If you would like to make your brand more emotionally intelligent, here are the steps you need to take:

Build An Emotionally Intelligent Team

It all starts in-house. Unless your team gets good at tracking people’s sentiments, they won’t fare very well when engaging customers. Individuals can become more emotionally intelligent by paying closer attention to how they feel, and how their feelings change in response to events and the environment they’re in (e.g. stressful or pleasant situations). They can also reflect on how others respond emotionally to their actions.
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Some people may be better at evaluating people and picking up emotional cues than others. But most individuals can learn this skill over time.

Define Your Audience

It’s important to define the demographics of your audience. But you should also take heed of their emotional triggers too. What things inspire positive emotions in them? What do they find offensive? These questions are more closely tied to your targets’ psychographics—their values, interests, opinions, and lifestyles. Members of your audience are likely to have roughly similar motivations across the board. Discovering and using this information in your favour may bring you immense benefits.

Speak Your Audience’s Language

This reaches beyond meeting your customer’s physical need for a specific solution (the product you sell) to addressing their longing to be understood and appreciated. When your brand uses words and images that your audience’s demographic can relate with, it piques their interest in you. This is called mirroring. You’re mirroring their ‘in-group’ language back at them, to win their trust and (ultimately) loyalty. This presumes that you have studied them closely enough to know what they identify with. Remember, the ‘language’ of 20-25 year-olds differs markedly from that of middle-aged chief executives.

Meet Your Customer’s Need For A Solution

Have a great product by all means. Customers want that. But when you speak to buyers, emphasize the benefits (solution) that the product brings instead of dwelling on features. Here’s why this is important. The first approach (benefits) puts the customer at the centre of things (as they should be). The second (features) is basically self-hype. Somewhere in their subconscious, customers will note this. They will gravitate towards a solution, and away from the hype. Do what you can to meet their needs—whether it’s for a product that solves their problem, a fix for a faulty product, or just the desire to be heard and appreciated. If you’re going to win in all these instances, you’ll have to be a listener.

Practice Active Listening

As we’ve already said, listening is crucial to displaying emotional intelligence. What we’re encouraging here is active listening. This means focusing fully on what the speaker is saying, trying to understand their viewpoint, and responding empathetically. When you do this, you’re better able to engage within the context of how the customer or prospect is speaking.  This in turn increases the likelihood that you’ll solve the problem that the speaker has.

Final Words

In today’s competitive business environment, you need to provide more than just products and services. People want solutions. They also want to be understood. By building an emotionally intelligent brand, you’ll meet these needs, and gain an edge over your competition. Featured Image Source: LearnLux Blog
Got a suggestion? Contact us: editor@connectnigeria.com
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This article was first published on 31st May 2021

ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.

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