Companies hire marketing firms for many reasons. Some are obvious. They want to freshen their brand, broaden market awareness, increase lead generation, drive sales and “take it up a notch.” Many times companies decide to reach out for help in marketing when they want to gain a foothold in a new market, have an upcoming anniversary, notice a drop-off in sales or need a whole new brand and direction. While all these goals and needs are important, there is no “silver bullet” marketing technique that will stun the customer base into handing over their business. Before results can be measured, we need to step back and evaluate why we want those results. What is our real motive and measure of success?

Effective marketing requires a “long game” approach, where both parties sit down and assess the big picture and long-term goals before diving into the details. It’s more than listing sales goals and last year’s YTD numbers. It’s about asking key questions such as the following:

• How does my company’s brand, big or small, make a difference and impact in the world?
• How does my company’s vision align with the vision of my employees and my company’s culture?
• What does my brand provide customers and employees beyond a product or service?

Answering these macro-level questions is the start of building Brand Love. Surprisingly, many times a mission statement is just words on a wall, not a company culture and daily vision. Brand Love embodies that mission statement with a sense of purpose and connects employees and customers around that purpose.

Brand Love is when a customer experiences a bond with a company’s values and mission through its messages. This is marketing at its best. It’s when the message goes beyond selling and connects clients to the real reason and vision of that company’s driving goals.

Brand Love is achieved by building on brand loyalty and can be accomplished through a variety of marketing objectives. This is where the marketing professional can dive into the details.

Good marketing helps create brand loyalty. Many companies have a good, solid marketing plan that helped gain a loyal following. Great marketing helps create Brand Love. Fewer companies achieve this kind of recognition. Brand loyalty is when customers trust your services and reward you with their repeat business. Brand Love engages the clients, tells a story and offers a clear, concise vision that is more than a product or offering. It creates a partnership with its customers and enables trust, security and hope in its brand. This keeps a customer for life and protects against the commoditization of the company’s product or the clients coming and going with a particular salesperson.

This is a good indicator whether or not a company has achieved Brand Love. If a key salesperson leaves a company and takes much of his or her book of business, then that company hasn’t done a good job at creating a partnership and trust with its clients.

Building Brand Love requires more than bullet points on a sell sheet. It requires a vision that aligns with the goals and internal culture of the company and a vision that is consistent, transparent and relevant. No touch point is too small to build Brand Love and tell the company’s story.

One exercise I conducted with a client helped differentiate between brand loyalty and Brand Love. As a team, we came up with 10 different touch points or marketing techniques to unroll our recent campaign, such as lunch and learn sessions, sales flyers, social media, event engagement and electronic blasts and contests. Each one of these techniques was designed to provide helpful information about our product and would help create brand loyalty.

Then we created two columns and explained exactly what we wanted to achieve through that technique and how each would create both brand loyalty and Brand Love. This exercise was really helpful in showing the difference between the two. It forced us to look beyond the obvious marketing tool and “take it up a notch.” One is based on logic – on features and benefits. The other is based on emotion – on engagement and instilling a sense of purpose. The insight gained through this exercise was immediate. Now with each new marketing objective and message, we think first about what we can do to make it a little better and increase our Brand Love. It’s taking the marketing techniques from good to great.

The overall goal is still achieved. We broaden our market awareness and increase our lead generation, but we also deliver our message with an extra level of care. We try to surprise and delight our customers rather than just promote or sell to them. While it may not be the “silver bullet” of marketing, Brand Love safeguards against commoditization, creates a community with the client base and adds to overall long-term goals.