Creating ‘brand fans’ can boost sales

Attracting ‘brand fans’ should be a retailer’s number-one priority, according to one business consultant.

Speaking at the kbbreview Retail and Design Conference at kbb Birmingham, Chris Burton (pictured), founder of business consultancy Brand Success, claimed that customers who recommend your brand can create up to a further 60% of sales.

Brand fans typically create eight times their own lifetime value, he said, and account for 150% of a company’s profits [that are reduced back to 100% by lower margins or losses on sales to other customers].

Creating these brand fans will help a brand to maintain profitable and sustainable growth that will accelerate over time.

“These brand fans are so valuable, that attracting and creating more of them should be your number-one priority,” he said.

“No doubt your business has created, and is creating, customers who recommend your brand,” he said. “But think of the growth potential for your business if you could consistently create more brand fans.”

In order to create more fans, Burton claimed that dealers need to surprise customers with an unexpected experience and/or delight them by exceeding their expectations.

Burton offered five key steps to help attract brand fans:

  1. Identify when your brand is at its best through a combination of expertise, assets and skills;
  2. Identify two or three groups of high-value customers who will become the main focus for your brand;
  3. Review steps one and two to find out what your brand does best for each of the most valuable customer groups;
  4. Everyone who works for your business is involved in bringing your brand alive and will influence the customer experience and your brand’s ability to create strong recommendations;
  5. Continually measure brand fans’ recommendations so you can manage them and increase their number by adapting your brand fans’ customer experiences.
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