CREATING EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS
The stronger the connections your customers have with your company, the more loyal they’ll be to your brand. Interactions become more than an exchange of money for a product or service. A relationship is built over a series of encounters with your products, website, service, in-venue environments, and more. The strength of your bond is determined by how well you understand the values of your customers. That’s where empathy comes in.
“If brands don’t invest in doing the hard work of empathizing with their customers...they are at high risk of becoming irrelevant.”
CONNECTIONS START HERE
Empathy—that ability to understand the feelings of another—is what makes us human. It’s what makes us care. And it’s one of the most powerful tools for a business. Empathy allows businesses to figure out whom they’re serving and how to make that person’s day better. By seeking to understand their customers, companies can learn how to serve them in a way that actually builds a relationship and earns their trust, and the transactions that come with it.
When business is on the line, it’s easy to overthink things and jump right into tactics. But in business as in personal life, real emotional connections aren’t created by tactics; they’re created with empathy. For businesses, empathy comes down to understanding your customers and putting yourself in their shoes. Or their hotel room or restaurant booth or stadium seat. Empathy is the key to every deep relationship.
In an increasingly fractured marketplace, automotive dealerships are having the same problem as clothing retailers: creating emotional connections with the people who have the power to keep them in business. What starts as brand confusion or apathy can quickly become a fatal disconnect. Consumers who have no emotional engagement with a particular brand operate outside of preference. They’ll switch affinity when a closer location, cheaper service, or better proposition comes along.
That means if brands don’t invest in doing the hard work of empathizing with their customers in order to cultivate authentic emotional connections, they’re at high risk of becoming irrelevant. So, how can a business actually demonstrate empathy?
UNDERSTANDING WHAT CUSTOMERS HEAR
Music is one of the most powerful and immediate ways to elicit an emotional reaction from a person. But it has to be the right type of music, and in order to know what the “right” type of music is, empathy becomes critical.
Music is powerful because it both unlocks our existing memories and causes us to create new ones. As soon as you hear a piece of music—whether listening to something you’ve heard before or listening to something new—you’ll be taken back to a time or place or develop an emotional connection to one. That’s precisely what brands want.
Nothing else works in this way. No other marketing strategies or formats connect or evoke emotions the way music does. Music plugs listeners directly into the brand, creating a powerful experience that deepens the listener’s connection. And that listener is your customer.
MAKE MUSIC A PART OF YOUR BRAND STRATEGY
Music—like colors, logos, graphic elements, and typography—can act as an integral part of your brand strategy. It can then be used as an element of campaigns, promotions, product launches, events, store environments, and more.
Does your brand have a strategy for music? We can help.
EACH MOMENT MATTERS
Take a minute to think about the music that has been important in shaping your life. What was the first CD you bought? The first concert you attended? Which album do you associate with your high school years? What song played during your first dance at your wedding?
Music sticks with us. When someone walks into a store and the music is right, it’s magic. Spirits are uplifted. Connections are made. In this kind of perfectly tuned environment, people are more relaxed and feel more at home. And brands have an opportunity to build on this connection to improve communication and interaction with their customers.
Emotionally engaging audiences builds the brand-customer relationship. Anytime a company moves beyond a transaction, a customer feels at home, understood by the brand. It’s no longer commerce; it’s connection. It’s not just transactional; it’s personal. And anytime a brand moves beyond tactics, it can inspire these emotional connections.
RELATED CONTENT
RELATED SERVICES
LET'S TALK
* All fields below are required
Thank you for contacting PlayNetwork
A member of our team will be in touch soon.