Emotional Intelligence for Your Brand – Why It Matters & How to Nurture and Develop it.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional Intelligence refers to our ability to recognise and regulate moods, actions and desires to fit a specific situation. It allows you at the right place, at the right time, to target your customers and get to know them at a deeper level.

You must first consider the feelings of your consumers when they want your product to create a lasting relationship. To do this, consider the experience of your customer with your product before she reaches out to you.

• What are the reasons for her to start searching for you?
• What psychological factors affect her desire to have your brand?
• What pleasure is she going to receive from using your item?
• How is your product going to fix her issues?

When you have an understanding of the road your customer is on, you can then establish your customer persona. One main element of the buyer identity you build is knowing the emotional causes of your customer.

Social listening tools such as Mention, Topsy, Hootsuite and Social Mention give insight to what your audience is passionate about.  With these insights, you have a solid starting ground to formulate your digital marketing strategy.

 

Find Ways to Forge a Connection

The next step in using emotional intelligence includes linking what you have experienced with the identity of your customer base during your time of self-reflection. Now is when you’re going to start thinking about your marketing plan and how to forge a relationship with your audience. As well as the voice you use on your social accounts, you may want to think about the type of content you share on social media.

You should also understand what you have heard about your audience and try to find a way to make useful items that help with their key points of pain and sell them. There’s a lot of data-driven work going into creating an audience link, but you have to find a way to make it more personal and engaging.

During this time, it’s important that you also self-regulate. Every once in a while, you have to be willing to take a look at your brand and marketing to ensure that you still uphold your reputation and provide outstanding service while creating concrete ties.

 

How Brands Can Tune Into Emotional Intelligence For More Effective Marketing

 

Put your money where your mouth is.  

Identifying social problems that people care about is often much simpler than providing actual, actionable solutions. For instance, more and more brands speak about mental health and how important it is to raise understanding of mental health, but they do very little to actually increase customers’ access to mental healthcare, including their own employees.

Consumers today are savvier and have access to more information than ever before about brand ethics. Companies that gain notoriety for not compensating their employees adequately or offering benefits that are important to preserving healthy mental and physical health will simply not champion issues such as mental health without ultimately providing benefits that epitomize hypocrisy. 

 

Assume the risk of taking a hard, true stance.

The fear of pushback is one of the main reasons brands are afraid to take a stance on social issues. However, you can not take a stand without assuming the necessary risk, especially today. If they don’t see that you’re able to deliver the message at all costs, including the cost to your bottom line, customers obviously will not trust the sincerity of your message.

If the message of your brand is “safe” or “generic,” instead of a genuine attempt to shift the needle on social issues, it will sound hollow and be used as a money-making device. The reality is that (particularly large) brands have the potential to shift the needle on social problems. If your advertisement is not affiliated with actual change, consumers will notice – quickly.

 

Articulate What Motivates Your Campaign

Any effective marketing strategy begins with a target. When you develop a target, your motive is created. Would you like revenue to increase? Increase Web traffic? Retaining clients?

The primary aim of your marketing activities, whatever the target is, is to accomplish that goal. At what cost to your audience, though? You will start to think differently about what’s in it for your audience by being frank about what you try to accomplish.

Emotionally smart campaigns don’t get a view of the tunnel. It’s not about being done at all costs. When developing relationships with your audience, it’s about achieving your objectives.

 

Communicate Like a Human (Social Skills)

News flash: Every business is made up of people (and maybe a dog or two). Every successful business has a human personality and voice for the brand.

Is your human nature coming through as you speak or do you sound like a faceless corporation talking to your audience?

Emotionally smart individuals are well-liked. They know how to talk to people, make deeper ties, and develop a friendship.

One of the greatest challenges to achieving emotional intelligence in marketing is ‘corporate voice’. To make sure the human personality of your brand shines through, you need to be intentional in every piece of marketing.

 

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence is a critical component of developing a company that is connected and available. You have to go far beyond the stuffy exterior appearance that many businesses have and aim for a distinctive brand identity that can forge positive business and community relationships. Consumers want a business that looks and behaves like a real person and not just a logo to make purchases. Tapping into the cornerstone of emotional intelligence is not an easy feat. In the end, personality represents the brand. Inspiration may occur overnight for brands, but it takes time to motivate clients to feel the same way about a brand. 

Brands have a chance to create something truly special by harnessing self-awareness, empathy, inspiration, social skills, and self-regulation. As a consequence, businesses will build a sense of emotional commitment to their clients that lasts well after the end of the campaign. We have to be able to go beyond just product advantages and master the emotional side of our business as personalised marketing becomes more common in today’s society.