The Super Bowl is a huge event that has broken its own viewership record five of the last six years. In 2015, it had an average viewership of 114 million people, or over one-third of the U.S. population. While most people tune in for the game or the half-time show, the rest of us tune in for the commercials.
With an average price tag of $4.5 million per 30-second ad, why are companies spending their entire advertising budget on a single commercial? Brand exposure.
The Super Bowl has a huge audience, and it gives smaller companies the same level of exposure as the Coca-Colas and Apples of the world. But he fact of the matter is that all of the money in the world can’t buy consumer love.
That takes a strong brand.
An Explanation of Brand Psychology
Without customers, a brand has no value. To understand your customers enough to create a foundation of a brand, you need to get inside their head.
That’s why it’s important to understand the underlying psychology behind a consumer’s choices.
Purchases are usually based off of one or more of the following factors:
- Brand identification (Apple)
- Internal state (lonely from not being able to contact friends)
- External state/social context (all of your friends have iPhones)
This means that a decision to purchase your product or service is dependent on many variables.
Aesthetics and Personality in Brand Psychology
A brand is much more than just how you speak to a customer, it’s just as much about how you present your business.
Something as simple as color can make all of the difference. In fact, color increases brand recognition by up to 80 percent. This isn’t to say that you should choose the brightest, most noticeable color there is, because brand appropriateness plays a huge role in what a customer chooses to buy.
A company’s font selection requires just as much thought as its color. No one over the age of eight wants to go into a shop that uses Comic Sans on their storefront, and no one will take a website that uses Curlz as its default font. The smallest details matter.
In 2016, this has never been more true. The gap between company and consumer is more narrow than ever, mostly due to social media. When a customer tweets at a restaurant, they expect a response. These days, a customer wants to get to know the brand as much as your company wants to understand its customer.
They want to know your beliefs, your values, and how you handle complaints. They want to feel comfortable enough with your brand to consider it a friend. You’re on their social media, so they need to like you. That’s how brand loyalty is born.
If you don’t remember anything from this blog post, remember this statistic: 80 percent of your future revenue will come from just 20 percent of your current customers.
How to Build a Better Brand
While there is no set formula to creating a better brand, understanding brand psychology and how your customer makes decisions is a crucial first step. Keep these points in mind when creating your own brand:
- Meet your audience’s needs. Every person you reach is a potential customer. Make sure they know that you have the answer to their problem before they have the problem.
- Don’t forget about the aesthetics. Whether we like to acknowledge it or not, we’re a looks-driven society.Spend time figuring out what colors, fonts and themes work for your company.
- Be likeable. Customers expect more than ever from brands. They want to consider you their friend, so create a personality that resonates with your customer.
