These days everyone is in search of some sort of relatability in order to appeal to their target audience and create a loyal customer base. Small businesses in particular must look for ways on how they can make their business more relatable in order to gain customer loyalty. This article provides the definition of relatability, why it is important for the businesses and how one can construct a relatable brand by scrutinizing competitors’ strategies and providing practical recommendations.  

The concept of relatability

Relatable means being able to relate or be understood between two entities. In the business context, a relatable brand resonates with its target audience by:  

  • The reflection of values, feelings, or events  
  • Providing solutions that fit the customers and their lifestyle  
  • Finding ways to communicate as a friend or someone that can be trusted  

Relatability is creating a level of comfort that makes customers believe that they are dealing with a company that understands them.  

Importance of relatability for a Business

Raises Emotions  

Emotional relatability relates to a degree of similarity between the customer and the brand. This bond is often the key to making a final decision in case of a conflict between two or more business ventures.  

Fosters Customer Loyalty  

By doing this, customers are inclined to associate with your brand that in turn they are likely to remain loyal to it. Customer loyalty does not only entail the customer coming with another business but also recommending other people to do business with you.  

Strengthens Brand Identity  

An appealing brand has a coherent and genuine image of what the brand represents and what its consumers like. This clarity helps in the development of strong branding in the long run.  

Boosts Engagement and Sales  

If your brand is able to communicate directly with customers, they will be interested in your marketing messages whether it is through social media or an email. It results in sales and customer loyalty since the company is in a better position to offer what the client wants.  

Elements of Branding to Help You Create a Familiar Brand Image

Understand Your Audience  

To make your brand relatable you must begin with the basics of understanding your audience. Start by:  

  • Analyzing demographics: Demographic characteristics, geographical location, hobbies and preferences, and buying behavior.  
  • Creating customer personas: State the goals, issues, and likes of your target market.  
  • Listening to feedback: Utilize surveys, reviews, and social media to learn about customers expectations.
  • It is advisable to use tools like Google Analytics and insights in the social media networks to gather important information about your audience.  

Show Authenticity  

First and foremost, relatability comes from the real. The customers are always able to pinpoint situations whereby the brand in question is overdoing things.  

  • Share your brand’s story: Share your story, convictions, and difficulties.  
  • Use real images and testimonials: Real images are preferred over the fake and standardized images.  
  • Be consistent: Make sure all your messages are consistent across all channels.  

Humanize Your Brand

Customers deal with personalities not companies. Small businesses can create a human touch by:  

  • Informing followers on social media about members of the team.  
  • Using social media to post photos or videos of what goes on backstage.  
  • Being friendly and adding some personality to the company’s answers to customers’ questions.  
  • Most small brands thrive by sharing unfiltered, behind-the-scenes reels about the business or the team, or the process of making their products, or real-life customer stories.  

Align with Shared Values

Today’s customer wants products from companies with similar values. Brands can demonstrate this by:  

  • Supporting social causes: Support those causes that are of interest to your target audience.  
  • Practicing sustainability: Practice responsible packaging and responsible sourcing.  
  • Promoting inclusivity: Design campaigns for various minority groups.  

Craft Relatable Content

Sharing stories makes your audience find reflections of themselves in your brand story. To achieve this:  

  • Use everyday language: Don’t use a lot of technical or business terms.  
  • Tap into emotions: Design campaigns that would make people feel happy, remind them of something good or make them feel sympathetic.  
  • Share user-generated content: Contribute and share positive feedback, pictures, videos and experiences of the customers. Nike and Airbnb are good examples of companies that successfully implement relatability by implementing customer stories in their advertisements.  

Stay Active on Social Media

Making your brand more relatable is another area where social media is very effective. To maximize its potential:  

  • Post regularly: Consistency makes your audience stay with you.  
  • Use interactive content: Dialogues through polls, Q&A sessions, and live videos are interactive.  
  • Respond to comments: A quick reply makes the customer feel that you are interested in what they have to say.
  • Learn about branding and identity design to use appealing content for social media.  

Embrace Transparency  

Adherence to this principle fosters credibility as well as enhances the relatability of the contents. You can do this by:  

  • Sharing your processes: Wherever the concept of product development starts and ends.  
  • Being honest about mistakes: Customers are always grateful when the brands accept their mistakes and do everything possible to correct them.  
  • Providing clear information: From price to shipping or policies, it is always important to be as clear as possible.  

Small Business Branding Tips 

Small businesses have several advantages in the process of creating relatability, they are small and easily accessible. Here’s how to make the most of it:  

  • Focus on community: Do business with the local people via a product launch or partnership.  
  • Offer personalization: Make your products or services customized to the customer’s requirements.  
  • Show appreciation: They say simple things such as cards or letters of appreciation or even better, offering discounted prices to loyal customers is enough.   

Misconceptions To Avoid

However, things that people can relate to can be a downfall to the brand image at times as well. Here’s what to steer clear of:  

  • Over-promising: Do not overpromise the kind of value that your brand can offer to customers.  
  • Being too casual: It’s good to be relatable but don’t become messy.  
  • Copying competitors: This means it is important not to copy other brands.  

Develop Brand Identity using Relatability  

Creating an appealing image of a brand does not necessarily mean that it has to be flawless, it should be real, close to the target audience, and should have the same set of values. Together with the tips of the story sharing and creation of interesting materials, the tips mentioned above will help your business to build the necessary link with the customers.  Consequently, relatability is a powerful lever that small businesses can use to drive growth, strengthen customer allegiance and guarantee sustainability.  

Find out how to enhance your branding solutions for small businesses with the help of professionals. To learn more about other ways to improve your branding initiatives, read through our information and develop a unique brand that will capture your audience’s attention.

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