People come to us because they want more clients. They’re frustrated because they’re doing everything they should be – posting to social media, maintaining their website, advertising – but they aren’t getting any traction. People just aren’t engaging with them online.

If this sounds familiar, you aren’t alone.

And once we dive into what’s preventing engagement, we often find that it boils down to one key thing: human connection. And the lack of connection could be what’s holding you back.

Why, as humans, we connect with brands

We’re hardwired to connect with things that spark our emotions. And when it comes to brand marketing, your ability to elicit someone’s emotions determines your ability to engage and convert them.

Most brands are falling short – way short – of doing this. And if you’re reading this – there’s a good chance you are too.

And the reason? Because you haven’t clearly defined your brand ‘why’ and, as a result, you don’t truly know your audience.

Who is your primary audience, and why should they care about you?

At Radiant, we like to refer to a brand’s primary audience as their Brand Companions™. In a world filled with buzz words and terms that dehumanize individuals, we feel that Brand Companion really gets to the heart of what a brand’s primary audience is, and helps makes tangible the relationship you should be building with your audience.

Your Brand Companion™ should share your same values, align with your purpose, benefit from your products or services and truly connect with everything your brand stands for. Finding and engaging with this type of audience is really how to find long-lasting love and loyalty, i.e. brand success.

And in order to successfully do this, you must first define your brand “why”.

Connect with your Brand Companion by addressing your brand’s “why”.

Just like you might really get to know yourself before seeking out a life partner, the first step in creating a strong and healthy relationship with your audience is by really taking a deep dive into your own brand. If you don’t understand yourself, your values, the most important benefits of your offering to customers, then there’s no way they’ll be able to see and understand it either.

So first, get really clear about why you started this company in the first place. Identify:

• why you’re passionate about it (your personal journey to creating your business)
• the purpose you hope to serve
• the value you want to bring to customers

Tip: Before getting to the steps for how to establish your brand why, watch this incredible Simon Sinek video to learn more about how “first why, then trust” works between you and your customers. 

A good way to nail down your brand “why” is to follow this format:

1. In your journey to get here, what did you observe about the marketplace? What challenges were you seeing?
2. From those challenges, what realizations did you have that showed you how you could possibly change the situation? Was it experience you had? Skills you possessed? Technology you could create?
3. What did you create from those realizations that is now the offerings you’re providing to your companions?

Once you’ve figured out the core of your wellness brand, work on your brand storytelling; create messaging on your website, social sites, and emails that share those values with potential customers in a compelling, emotional, and attractive way.

Side bar: A great example of a wellness brand who understands who they are and works to connect with their primary audience is the company hims. Hims creates expert level brand storytelling. Check out their site here to see what we mean.

4 things you really need to understand about your Brand Companions.

Establishing your primary audience leads back to your understanding of your brand’s “why”. If you know who you are, you can start to build an idea of who your potential Brand Companions should be.

In order to start building that ideal persona that you’ll be “talking to” in all of your content and messaging, you have to establish four essential elements of your ideal customer:

Pain points, challenges and needs

What is their current situation? Why is it less than ideal? Is there a specific challenge they’re facing or unmet need? What is something they’ve been dealing with that your product/service could help them overcome? Why are they having trouble finding a solution?

Goals

What do they ultimately hope to accomplish by solving their challenge or meeting this need? What is their ideal end result? Do your company’s goals and their goals align?

Success

What would they consider to be a “successful” result? Not feeling pain anymore? Able to play with their grandchildren? Go back to their favorite hobby of playing tennis? To finally have smooth skin in time for their wedding? If you’re in a new market, your audience may not even realize that their pain point is solvable – or what type of ‘success’ is even possible. In these cases you will need to educate them on how great life can be if they overcome these challenges.

Values

When it comes to health and wellness, what’s important to them? Do they prefer companies who give back and are highly active in their community? Do they have to use products that are vegan and/or cruelty-free?

Example questions to ask your potential brand companions.

An important and often overlooked step in creating your Brand Companion profile, is to actually talk with prospective buyers to get inside their heads. This can be done by either interviewing your current customers (in-person or over the phone) or by assessing data trends in your contact database, or sending out a survey to everyone.

Here are a few questions we ask during our interviews to help get you started:

1. What is your main challenge with XYZ as it relates to our product/service?
2. What are you currently doing to address this challenge or solve that problem?
3. When searching for solutions, what is most important to you? (provide them options to prompt their thinking if necessary, but do your best to avoid putting thoughts in their heads or speaking for them!)
4. Give us an example of a brand you really love. Why do you feel connected with that brand?
5. When researching a wellness company, what do you look for? What values speak to you?
6. What interests you about our specific product/service?
7. Why wouldn’t you buy our product/service? (this helps reveal hesitations you may come across during the sales process, so that you can address them head on. It’s a tough question to ask sometimes, but you need to know!)

Download this complimentary guide for additional questions for your brand companion interviews.

How your brand’s message can encourage engagement with your companion.

Once you’ve identified your wellness brand’s primary audience, the next step is to create content and messaging they want to engage with.

To do this, you’ll want to go back and review the Brand Companion persona that you created for your wellness brand. Pay attention to how they speak, what words they use, their pain points, what they’re struggling with, and the types of values they align with.

Use those findings to create messaging that speaks directly to them; messaging that shows them who you are, that invites them in and helps them to envision what their life would be like when using your wellness product. Make sure all of your content is this specific: on your website, social media channels, blog, videos, giveaways, and more. Use their words to describe your offerings and how you want to help.

The better you can communicate with your primary audience, the easier it will be to encourage engagement and, hopefully, attract more valuable customers to your wellness brand.

Are you ready to finally connect with your dream client?

Download our free Brand Companion Guide – in it, you’ll receive more easy-to-follow steps and a comprehensive template to help you find (and convert) your perfect Brand Companions^TM today.