Strategic Consulting Agency. Fort Lauderdale Web Design, Branding, Digital Ad Marketing Agency, CRM Software

You may have heard the term “archetypes” before. Or maybe not. But they are critically important to the success of your business.

Why? Because archetypes define psychological mind states that customers have when looking for products, services, and businesses.

People make “buy or don’t buy decisions” based on emotions and feelings. Archetypes are simply ways of expressing a set of emotions that instantly attract a certain type of customer.

Tap into the one that best defines your brand and you can successfully attract more customers, better clients, and people who are ready to BUY RIGHT NOW.

Okay, this is a lot. But it will become clearer when I describe the 12 brand archetypes and the demand triggers they execute in the right customer:

The Amazing Magician

• You can make the impossible possible
• People connect on a spiritual level with your brand
• Customers are attracted to your personal style and actions

The Magician/Alchemist/Healer archetype is appealing to people who want fast, dramatic change. A brand example would be Apple.

The Ordinary Everyman

• You seem like the guy or girl next door
• You offer people a connection to a community of like-thinking individuals
• Customers feel like they understand and share your viewpoint

The Everyman appeals to customers who strive to be understood and appreciated. The perfect brand example would be Wal-Mart.

The Iconoclast

• You aren’t afraid to tell it like it is
• You don’t have a lot of patience for fools
• You speak from a position of authority … and have the credentials to back it up!

The Rebel/Iconoclast appeals to people who aren’t satisfied with the way the world is and want to change it in their image. A great brand example would be Harley-Davidson.

The Wise Teacher

• You freely share knowledge
• You are passionate about keeping people informed
• Customers admire your intellect and opinions

People who are attracted to the Sage/Mentor/Teacher value wisdom above all else. Brand examples would include The Wall Street Journal.

The Brave Explorer

• You have the courage to boldly go where nobody else has gone before
• You invite people think of themselves in a new and exciting way
• Customers want to be like you

The Explorer/Guide/Seeker archetype appeals to people who are passionate about experience life first-hand. A brand example would be The North Face.

The Entertainer

• You are skilled at making people laugh to forget their problems
• You show people how to enjoy and appreciate the now rather than worrying about later
• Customers love to be around you

The Entertainer/Performer/Comedian appeals to people who like to have fun. A brand example would be Old Spice.

The General

• You get the job done on time, within budget, and above expectations
• You cut through the static and get right to the point to deliver success
• People feel willing to ignore distractions and trust in your proven abilities

The General offers customers seriousness and significance. A brand example would be BMW.

The Lover

• Following the heart is more important than thinking too much
• You forgive people for giving into temptations and desire
• People feel a strong emotional connection to you

The Lover/Caring Friend appeals to customers who value passion over logic. A terrific brand example would be Haagen-Dazs.

The Loving Mother

• You are reliable, caring, and emotionally available
• You give without worrying about receiving anything back in return
• People are impressed with your ability to serve

The Caregiver/Servant/Mother appeals to people who want to be cared for. A brand example would be the American Red Cross.

The Fierce Warrior

• You can achieve amazing goals even when they seem insurmountable
• You offer people toughness combined with keen intellect
• Customers feel like you will inspire them to be responsible

The Hero/Warrior/Protector appeals to customers who want to achieve specific goals or outcomes. A great brand example would be Nike.

The Innocent

• You remind people of when times were simpler
• You exude optimism and hope
• People are attracted to the purity of your beliefs

The Innocent appeals to customers who want to simplify their lives. A brand example would be Coca-Cola.

The Innovative Creator

• You have the ability to show people something new and exciting that they never could have imagined on their own
• You teach people a craft they can use to improve their own creativity
• People want to be around you because they feel inspired by your vision

The Innovative Creator appeals to people who want to believe in something bigger than themselves. The best brand example would be LEGO.

So which archetype best describes you?

Every brand is unique. But the approach Lytron  takes to helping clients discover and understand their specific brand follows a predictable pattern.

Here is the step-by-step branding process we use to create flourishing, successful brands for our clients. While there are many variables – after all, your brand is distinctly about you! – the strategy is proven to be successful.

Step 1 – Connecting with Our Clients

In order to understand your brand, the branding professionals at Lytron  have to understand you. What makes you tick? What do you want out of your business? What do YOU see as your road to success.

Getting to know our clients is the first and – arguably – most important step in the collaborative process of crafting your unique brand. Generally, we begin with a 15- to 20-minute phone call in which we get to know each other and gain an understanding of how we can help each other successful achieve your specific objectives.

Step 2 – Let’s Talk about Brand Design

After our discovery call, it’s time to start thinking visually. How do you envision your brand “looking” like?

We often encourage our clients to visually brainstorm in one of a number of ways:

• Creating a vision board that builds a roadmap to what your specific version of success looks like
• Building a Pinterest page with brand design you like
• Filling out a questionnaire that includes answers that help us navigate your brand to where you genuinely want it to be
• Participating in a 60- to 90-minute Skype chat to get “down and dirty” into branding strategies, ideas, and concepts.

By the end of all this prep work, the Lytron  team generally has everything it needs to get going on your unique and successful branding for your business.

Step 3 – Defining Brand Assets

The next step is identifying the special features of your brand that make it unique. These can include specific products or services but also things like your personality, your company culture, and even your aspirations and hopes for the future.

You define your business by focusing on what makes it unique and identifying the factors that will make prospective customers and clients choose it from among all the other competitors.

Step 4 – Brand Building

The next step is truly magical. Combining our expertise with your passion for your business, Lytron  collaboratively creates a unique and consistent branding strategy for your business.

This can take a variety of forms including everything from logo design, marketing strategies, blog and social media posts, and everything in between.

While the basic steps tend to be universal, where they take us together is always magical. And at Lytron , we can’t wait to get started on our journey together with your business!

Do you want to hear a secret? How about seven of them?

Today, I want to talk about brand psychology. Specifically, the seven most effective ways to use the way most people think to attract new, high-quality clients and customers to your brand.

As you already know, your brand is the most important thing to your business. More important than the products or services you offer. More important than where you are located or what industry you work in. It’s even more important than the size, scope, or profitability of your business.

That’s because your brand represents you: Your values, your passions, your strengths, and your potential.

So naturally, you want to attract people to your brand because it means they have genuine connections with you (and your business). And that leads to long-term rewards, long-term revenues and profits, and long-term SUCCESS!

So how about those secrets?

Secret Number 1 – People Are Motivated by Their Emotions

When most people choose a product, they measure its cost against competitors, conduct an analysis of its benefits vs drawbacks, and compile a spreadsheet on short-term vs long-term value, right? WRONG!

People almost always buy impulsively. And they make buying decisions based on EMOTIONS rather than LOGIC. They only use logic later to justify their decisions.

That’s the way people have been making decisions for thousands of years. It’s simply human nature. And this truism plays a critical role in the success or failure of your business and here’s why:

If you want to convince people to buy your products or services, you need to appeal to their emotion FIRST and their logic SECOND.

Another way to put it is like this: Win their heart and their head will follow.

Secret Number 2 – Humans Are Prone to the Mob Mentality

We all like to think of ourselves as individuals. We think for ourselves, make decisions based exclusively on our own thinking, and aren’t influenced at all by other people, right?

WRONG!

People are by nature social animals. So they are ALWAYS influenced by other people. In fact, we rarely do anything without first consulting … or at least thinking about … what other people would do in the same situation.

Consider the case of picking a restaurant. Imagine you are driving down the street looking for a place to eat because you are very hungry.

You see two restaurants: One has a line out the door and the other looks completely empty. Which one are you going to choose?

Will you pick the empty restaurant because you can get seated right away and satiate your hunger more quickly?

Nope! Most people are much more likely to get in line at the other restaurant. Why? Because there must be a reason why it’s so popular!

It’s human nature to pay attention to group think. We want to be part of the pack. We choose to benefit from the wisdom of the group rather than trying to figure out each little detail of life on our own.

And this plays into your business because …

Secret Number 3 – People Want to Be Part of Something Bigger than Themselves

When people make buy decisions, they usually aren’t just buying an individual product or service. Instead, they are buying into a BRAND.

That brand represents something about themselves: It proves that they are cool, they are smart, they are tuned in, they are successful, they are beautiful, they are loved, and so on.

Specific branding is tied to archetypes, which are proven mechanisms that provide buyers with a shortcut to specific values.

So if you want to connect with more customers, you need to create a brand that offers the same values that your prospective customers are actively searching for.

And you can use these archetypes as a sort of shorthand to make those connections.

Secret Number 4 – People Are Attracted to the Next New Shiny Thing

Okay, let’s just get one thing out of the way: People have short attention spans.

They are attracted to shiny things. New things. The next thing. The next new shiny thing.

And guess what? With the rise of the internet and online social connectivity, people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter every day.

What does this have to do with your business? Plenty!

It means the window of opportunity you have to attract people’s attention to the products and services you offer is getting smaller and smaller by the minute.

So the way to short-circuit the problem of short attention spans is by selling your BRAND, not your PRODUCTS.

Remember: Brands are feelings. Products are solutions. So when you sell people based on their feelings … they become open to the possibility of using your products to solve their problems in the long-term.

Secret Number 5 – People See Patterns Everywhere

The way our brains work is to cut through tons and tons of stimuli and data by using patterns to get to the most important information.

The human mind is constantly working to identify patterns. It’s how we learn to understand the world around us. It’s what keeps us safe in dangerous situations. It helps us navigate everyday life. And it’s the way we can attract new customers to our brand.

How? By aligning your brand messaging with the kinds of patterns people are looking for.

When people see familiar patterns that coincide with specific emotions, they will instantly and permanently be connected to your brand.

Secret Number 6 – Familiarity Breeds … Attraction

There’s an old axiom that goes, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” In other words, the more time we spend with something, the more we learn to hate it.

But that’s not always the case. At least not when it comes to branding.

Marketers have known for years that the more exposure audiences have with a specific brand message, the more comfortable they become with it.

Think of that jingle that always gets caught in your head. You probably haven’t heard it just once. More likely, you’ve seen it on a TV commercial or heard it on the radio thousands of times. And now it’s part of you.

The same holds true with your brand messaging. Your brand needs to be constant as well as consistent.

Okay, finally …

Secret Number 7 – People Crave Excitement

This final secret has to do with the reward system that is built-in to everybody’s brain.

People live their lives in a state of continual reinforcement. They want to feel that the decisions they make are the right ones. And the best way to satisfy this need is by offering rewards.

What kind of rewards? The most effective ones are those that are attached to specific emotions: Love, sex, hunger, and fun.

All of these cause the body to naturally release a hormone known as dopamine into the bloodstream. Dopamine is what makes us feel good. It makes us feel safe. And it convinces us that we made the right choice, regardless of what that choice was.

7 Secrets to Cracking the Brand Psychology Code-  If your band can make a genuine emotional connection with your prospective customer to the point where it causes their minds to release dopamine, you’ve already won!

7 Secrets to Cracking the Brand Psychology Code – So there you have it: The seven biggest branding secrets based on psychology, physiology, and most importantly .. basic human nature!

7 Secrets to Cracking the Brand Psychology Code – But there’s more. Lots more. To get even more attuned to how you can use your brand to connect emotionally with customers to create raving fans for life … call the branding experts at Lytron  .

The other day, I was thinking about a specific nutritional supplement. Like most people these days, I immediately went to my phone and Googled it.

Not surprisingly, I instantly got connected with literally thousands of businesses wanting to sell me that specific product.

And that caused a lightbulb to go off in my head:

Consumers today have a practically unlimited number of choices.

And that got me thinking about how businesses can stand out from the crowd of competitors to get people to choose their products from among all the thousands of others.

The answer? Emotional Branding.

How People Choose

When people make buying decisions – either online or in real life – the use three basic criteria:

• Personal Perspective
• Psychological State
• Emotion

The most important of these for the people offering products is emotion. If you can find a way to get people to create an emotional attachment to your product, your business, and your brand … then you already have succeeded in capturing the marketplace.

Think about the brands you use in your everyday life. Maybe you prefer Coke to Pepsi. Maybe you drive an Audi rather than a Kia. Or perhaps you like the Green Bay Packers over the Detroit Lions.

Now think about why. Without exception, it’s because you have a deep-seated emotional connection with that specific brand. After all, it’s only human.

Basic Human Emotions

Think back to the Psych 101 class you took in college. Science has identified eight basic human emotions:

• Fear
• Anger
• Surprise
• Joy
• Sadness
• Anticipation
• Trust

If you can connect one of these emotions with your specific brand – preferably not fear, anger or sadness! – you can tap into your prospective customer’s primary human emotional need.

And then you can create a resounding message that creates a genuine connection with buyers.

Emotional Branding Creates Uniqueness – Creating good ties

So how can you create these emotion bonds to transform passive shoppers into customers who are fiercely loyal to your brand? There are a number of effective strategies:

1. Reverse Engineering – Choose one of the “positive” emotions from the list above then work backwards to figure out how to get your brand content to invoke that emotion in buyers.

1. Offer Solutions to Everyday Problems – People are going online to find solutions to universal problems. If you can figure out ways to offer up your brand as that solution, you’ve already won.

1. A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words – Great images make it easier for people to connection emotionally with your brand than dense written content. Images that offer universal solutions — such as life contentment, professional success, happy relationships, and so on – can draw people into your brand and start building those valuable trust bonds.

1. Build a Perfect World – People are naturally hopeful about the future. When you can show how your brand can help make people’s future better, most will be open to buying into that future – especially if you can paint a visual image that connects.

1. Overcome Objections – Simultaneously, most people are naturally skeptical. Identify potential drawbacks to people choosing your brand then preemptively explain why they are invalid.

1. Use Your Storytelling Skills – Finally, create emotional bonds by sharing personal stories about your brand, your company, even your personal life or your happy customers. Stories offer immediate connections with genuine emotion.

Whew! That’s a lot to get started. To learn more, get together with Lytron and start creating emotional branding for your business.