Emotional Engineering: Key to Building Lifelong Customer Relationships

Through social media and digital devices, today’s consumers are more informed, cautious, and selective than ever before. In a seamless blend of online and offline life, they can decide when, where, and how to engage with brands. They can change their minds if they want to and organizations are fighting for their attention while keeping track of the changing behaviors, new values being forged, and communities simultaneously being co-created in order to stay relevant.

How can emotional engineering help engage today’s customers and how do we make that happen in today’s digitally connected world?

For this topic, I reached out to Dev Glover, a digital entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and author of the DOING YOUR DREAM book series.

“When we think about the word emotion, we think about feelings, intuition, perception, etc. Engineering, on the other hand, is related to something logical, structured, specific, and comes with very specific outcomes that have to be delivered in order for it to be deemed successful.”

“Colors may actually trigger specific emotions for you. They may be emotions from your past or aspirational emotions that you would like to embody. Whether that be a certain type of influence that you have or a certain type of wealth or status that you have.”

“What I would ask organizations is this: What are we in a position to give our unique audience that no one else is in the position to do? What is our value: both on the tangible level and the intrinsic level? Among the basic human emotions, what does this product or service most consistently attempt to provide? Now, once we answer these questions, then the strategies and the tactics come after.”

“What does our consumer, what do they want, how do they want to feel, how do they think, what do they aspire to? And then how do we package our products, services, and brand around those notions? These were the questions that these two brands answered and responded to very well.”

“It is all about connection with the consumer. It is an ongoing dialogue between the organization and the consumer.”

“And what is really, really interesting is that we’re seeing just more and more of that even from consumers who are in their teens. Huge brands are being built specifically for the teen market. We think about things like TikTok for example, which first found a mass appeal among the Gen Z market but found a way to expand to a much broader market. And it was designed specifically for teens, designed for them to have fun, for them to have engagement, through the use of very, very short video engagement, something that was unique to them.”

“But a lot of times, organizations want to capture the entire market on these platforms, which is really not very, very smart because it’s not really sustainable.”

“What is a more sustainable approach is to really figure out your specific target market and apply demographic and psychographic analysis. That takes work over time and that work never ever stops. So the connection as it relates to technology today and the need for connection is really just basic human nature. We hear the word tribe, a lot. Belonging to a tribe definitely has its feeling of being included. That can be a very, very powerful thing. And that’s what organizations should strive for when engaging with their clients online: make them feel that they belong.”

“How do you communicate to them in a consistent way where you are serving their needs first before you may even ask for them to buy your product or buy your service? Show them that you care first. A lot of people have that backwards. A lot of people I have worked with have that backwards.”

Because the digital world is continually shifting, Dev provides this advice on the intersection of digital communications and customer engagement:

“One of the things that I mentioned in one of my books is whether you’re a business, small or large creator of any type, entrepreneur of any type, you have one goal: that is to stand out way ahead of your competition. You want to be seen as the number one provider of your product or service bar none.”

“Perhaps the overarching goal is to create raving fans. If you can create people who will walk on the water for you, for your products or service, if you give your customers creative, consistent, and powerful value that they would emotionally feel horrible to go to someone else for the product or someone else for the service you have given them – that is a testament that your emotional engineering and online communications have worked,” Dev concludes.

Dev Glover is a digital entrepreneur, author and speaker. His is the author of the DOING YOUR DREAM book series, exclusively at Amazon, which includes two titles: DOING YOUR DREAM: 7 Steps to Creativity, Entrepreneurship & Wealth! and DOING YOUR DREAM, THE POWER QUOTES: 25 Quotes for Passion, Power, Purpose & Profits!