Every company seeks to have a recognizable brand that resonates positively with consumers. After all, the majority of your marketing dollars should aid in influencing a long-lasting relationship with your community outside of the products and services you offer.

What better timing for the United States Soccer Federation to capitalize off brand enthusiasm after an exciting USA Women’s Team World Cup win over Independence Day weekend? 

For professional sports, creating fans begin with illustrating your value proposition — what do you offer to the team or as an individual talent? A game-winning catch or tie-breaking shot can instantly propel you to the hearts of viewers to whom you were a nobody before, but become your biggest supporter afterward. Read on to learn how to harness this excitement and connection with your audience to cultivate brand enthusiasm for long-lasting fans.

Findings on Emotional Connections and Shoppers

Here is what a Psychology Today article says about general shopping habits:

• fMRI neuro-imagey shows that when evaluating brands, consumers primarily use emotions (personal feelings and experiences) rather than information (brand attributes, features, objective facts).
• Advertising research reveals that emotional responses to an ad has greater influence on a consumer’s intent to buy an ad (more so than the ad’s content).
• According to the Advertising Research Foundation, ‘likeability’ is the measure that best predicts whether an advertisement will increase a brand’s sales.
• Positive emotions toward a brand have far greater influence on consumer loyalty than trust and other judgments.

3 Tips to Creating Loyal Fans

To harness that support beyond the game, after a big sale, or long past an open house or launch party, capture the hearts of your community before running to their pockets.

1. Illustrate Connections, not Consumerism

Although the exact number is debatable, traditional advertisers once believed that the public is exposed to anywhere from 750-5,000 ads daily. With the prevalence of paid social media ads, content marketing ads, traditional advertising in print and television and now mobile, there are thousands of opportunities for exposure to new products each day.

How to break through the clutter? Build your brand’s messaging from your values and illustrate that message though a value proposition.

Why do millions of young people and “sneaker heads” continuously buy and collect Air Jordan sneakers nearly 20 years after his retirement? Michael Jordan is one of America’s greatest basketball players who has established a brand of the premise of being the “best” which translates from his personal career to thousands of Nike Air Jordan products.

Create a quality brand with clear value and customers will continuously seek experiences to connect and engage through purchase decisions or community interaction (social media, website, live events, etc). Have you ever seen an ad for the latest shoe release? Loyal fans will advertise for you.

The legendary orator Tupac once asked, “Who do you believe in?” Well, in this case its not about “who” in which your belief lies, but in “what”. The key component of cultivating brand enthusiasm is translating your brand’s beliefs and value to building connections that can be harnessed after the sale.

Don’t stray away from the value or benefit your brand offers in lieu of another. Whatever you decide your business is best at, stick with it. Companies who can’t decide on a value or message to adhere to seem inconsistent and will easily confuse or betray their brand’s audience.

If re-branding, feel empowered to build upon already established values, but never leave them entirely. In keeping your former values as the foundation of your new brand, you’ll add new consumers to the fan base without abandoning your day one fans.

2. Reward Long-Term Relationships

Consumers can be fickle. Its a buyers’ market and rivalry is real, but very necessary to create demand and manage supply. With so many competitors in any given market, consumers that stick around deserve credit. Similar to the outrage felt when new wireless customers will receive a better deal on a cell phone before existing customers; remember that those that stay have earned dessert, so serve it!

In your owned assets such as your website, social media assets or email lists, offer special products or brand experiences to your community. This reassures fans that their time and money is appreciated and in turn, they will continue to eagerly support the efforts of the brand.

Examples of customer appreciation options: exclusive concert event pre-sales or meet & greet occasions before or after live shows, authentic sports memorabilia giveaways to fan community, promotional coupons, etc. Give special behind the scenes content or custom, timely messaging to demonstrate commitment to connecting with your audience.

3. Use Your Resources

Be where your consumers are. If your fans are on social media, be on social media. If your fans go to music festivals, be present at the music festivals. Research your target demographic and solidify your presence wherever they are. Experiential marketing and content marketing are the tactical tools you can use to take brand experiences to the next level.

The Nike Training Club offers a free app providing fitness ideas and training exercises from Nike trainers and top athletes. This resource helps Nike fans pursue fitness, personally connect with the brand and showcases Nike training talent. After each workout, users can receive a branded image to share on social media about their fitness session, thereby promoting the app and brand. Users will feel good about working out with the app and subsequently relate these positive emotions to their interaction with the brand. Fitness users are always looking for new workouts and inspiration to stay healthy and Nike fills that void by providing an highly valuable app experience — for free.

Putting It To Work

Now that the basics have been covered, get hands on with defining your brand and crafting messages that resonate with the emotions of your audience. Make time to create brand value, use your resources wisely and don’t neglect showing appreciation to your consumers to keep them coming back for more, naturally.

In the end, you will have cultivated enthusiastic brand fans and harnessed a thriving community of supporters that will help your business excel above the competition.

By: Chuniq Inpower