Latest Healthcare Marketing Insights


Back To Blog Home

Customers or Brand Advocates?

May 26, 2011

What holds more value; a lifelong customer or a customer that campaigns for your brand? What do you think resonates more with customers; service and accountability or price and product? As we’ve gone over in the past, brand equity can completely erase the aspect of price, as many customers are willing to pay extra for the sentiment associated with certain brands, but what if you’re just starting out? Determining the best practices for increasing your brand equity and acquiring brand campaigners as well as customers is a key to brand marketing success.

Understanding Consumer Relationships

Going back to our original question, what holds more value; a lifelong customer or a customer that campaigns for your brand, brings us to a paramount aspect of brand marketing. Customer loyalty means more than just business profit, it means you have a consumer who’s always in your corner. They will promote your brand, spread word of mouth advertising, and advocate for your brand. A business brand must be about more than the product, more than the business, but an entire experience that will stay with each customer.
The Brand Experience

In order to build brand recognition and equity, the experience must be unique. If you own a bike shop, as Chris Zane of Connecticut does, you know that buying a little pink bike is more than just buying a little pink bike, it’s buying an experience. It’s not just a product, it’s the “first real freedom that kid has ever experienced away from the parental grip,” explains Zane.

Market research and sentiment analysis can help your Scottsdale marketing firm evaluate how customers feel about certain products, which can help you to better understand your audience and what kind of brand experience they’re looking for.

Take Las Vegas, for example, where individuals willingly throw away thousands of dollars every hour. Major casinos have taken customer relationships and brand equity to an entirely new level, and have perfected every single aspect of brand marketing, right down to the shampoo and soap. When an important gambler walks into that casino they are assigned a personal concierge to assist in their every need, usually the same concierge for each visit, which builds an unbreakable bond and lifelong advocate.

While Las Vegas is on one extreme side of the discussion, small businesses and local medical offices can apply the same principles to elicit the same reactions from clients and customers.