Imagine if your doctor gave you some advice. She tells you to take a specific quantity of aspirin, twice daily and every day for four days. That, she informs you, should reduce any swelling in your ankle and relieve any pain in and around your lower leg.
You hesitate, evaluating the advice that you’ve just been given. Perhaps it could be great advice, you think. Perhaps. If indeed you had a swollen ankle. But you actually arranged the appointment with your doctor because you had a spot on the back of your hand that you wanted to get checked out to determine if it was a cancerous melanoma. You weren’t experiencing any pain: in your hand, your ankle, or elsewhere. And there was no swelling, neither in your hand, your ankle nor anywhere else.
“Possibly wonderful advice,” you ponder, “if it had been relevant to your circumstances.” In the event, though, it wasn’t. The recommendation of consuming aspirin held no relevance for you. Under another circumstance it might, but not this time.
Unless you perceive your doctor as some form of infallible or near-infallible guru whose advice you’ll never question under any circumstance, you’ll almost certainly dismiss the advice you just received. The advice ━ the communication from your doctor ━ really didn’t connect with the issue that you had. The doctor’s communication did not meet you where you were in your thinking and your needs. You perceived that there was simply no relevance to the matter at hand. As it was, the advice didn’t resonate with you. At least for this occasion. (And you might even question whether your health professional is fit for your purposes of requiring sound, relevant health advice in the longer term.)
Communication Relevance In Branding
But what about with your brand? Does communication regarding your brand resonate with your customers and your priority audience? Does it ring a bell for them and meet them where they are? Importantly, does it ring the right bell for them? If it doesn’t, your priority potential customers and your existing customers will most likely turn down the volume that they hear. Or cease listening. Or disconnect entirely.
Relevance of communication to the people you most need to connect with is vital. Continued relevance of communication to these same people, if you are to create repeat business and loyal customers, is also essential.
This means that, with brand-related communication, you need to orient your communication very specifically to the thoughts, feelings, and concerns of your priority audience. It needs to hit the right notes for them. Your communication doesn’t just need to be relevant to your customers and potential customers, it needs to “sound” relevant to them. And if it doesn’t, the people you need to reach will likely either switch off, or they might not even switch on in the first place. If their attention is not attained and maintained, your communication will be of no value to them. Nor to you.
Consequently, it’s important to understand as precisely as you can who your existing customers are. And who your priority potential customers are. You need to have your brand communication focused appropriately and consistently to each. You need to understand your customers and priority potential customers exceedingly well. How do each think? What do they feel? What are they motivated by? What issues do they have, particularly insofar as your product or service can resolve or ease their issues and their problems? And what are their preferences as well?
When you can know your customers and potential customers in considerable detail, you can potentially not just tune your communication, but fine tune your communication, to match how they think and feel, and particularly in accordance with what will likely trigger them to purchase, as well as to positively recommend your brand to others. Where you also may have different categories of customers who are motivated differently to each other, or who may buy different products or services to each other, you will likely gain considerable benefit by tailoring the tune of your communication precisely to each category.
Carefully attune your brand communication to the people you most need to reach in order to trigger the actions you want them to take (and that they will want to take). Then maintain that relevance in your ongoing communication. And, over time, as you increase your revenues, and develop repeat business and more loyal customers, you’ll be raising the value of your brand simultaneously.
The value of your brand is very much a result of how well your brand communication rings the right notes for your customers and potential customers.
Lloyd Conrade B.Bus.
Chief Visionary Officer
