Brand engagement goes way beyond loyalty programs and price strategies; it involves recalling the consumers’ internal values and a cosy sense of familiarity worth investing time and money. Taking a proactive role, the engaged customer doesn’t act solely as recipients of the brand message but becomes brand ambassador. Brand Engagement is a process. Only when a high level of awareness has been reached, the company can work its way up to the next step effectively leveraging it.
The dynamic of Brand Engagement
The dynamic of brand engagement involves important psychological and emotional aspects such as the sense of pride and identification of being associated with, and/or using a specific brand or the sense of belonging and shared values. These elements are able to create in the customer’s mind a fair exchange for what she or he is willing to pay; this is also the reason why engaged customers are less price sensitive and more likely to stick around. Brand engagement is a long-term plan and the result of a carefully crafted strategy directed to a specific portion of the customer base called “Zone of Affection”. In doing so, marketers it will maximise the investment and create a cascade effect where the engaged customers will turn into brand promoters creating involvement with the portion of undecided/indifferent customers.
In terms of revenues, the difference between an engaged consumer and a not engaged consumer may be a staggering 40%.
Companies that operate at this level of brand engagement, create marketing activities, programs and messages that are no longer about specific products or services but reflect the values and beliefs of the brand. Just promoting a number of random and unstructured activities that may or may not be in line with the corporate mission and vision, will probably increase brand awareness but will most likely have no effect on the level of brand engagement. Patagonia is probably one of the best examples of successful brand engagement. The corporate mission build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to protect nature is consistently recalled in the company personality, products, actions and programs. The brand has, in fact, created a constant momentum of activities and actions that highlight the brand mission, values and beliefs; so much that in 2011 the campaign “Don’t Buy This Jacket” encouraged people to consider the effect of consumerism on the environment asking them not to buy the brand’s best-selling jacket.
Monitoring the progress
Monitoring the progress in brand engagement is the hardest part of the process.
There is no metric that really gives us a clue of the progress made (or if any progress has been made at all). It may be relatively easy to analyse the level of online engagement, but restricting the monitoring activities solely to the online channels will inevitably give a distorted view of the situation. On the practical side what managers can -and should- do to increase brand engagement is making every possible effort to achieve the greatest level of consistency in the marketing plan. A coherent and consistent vision, mission, communication strategy, the right partnerships and marketing channels will reinforce the brand message giving a holistic view of the situation. Here managers can easily spot gaps or inconsistencies in the brand narrative while generating a positive reinforcing loop creating a strong appeal to the target market.
Once you have the basics covered, it is time to launch the campaign.
