What is Resonance marketing?
First of all, let’s be very clear about what resonance marketing is not. Resonance marketing is not selling on prices, features, or on services.
Advertising resonance can be compared to the use of metaphors and wordplays combined with a photo or a drawing to involve a double meaning.
Engaging your potential customers with a conversation and message that reflects their values and interest will usually reinforce their desire to do business with your company.
Resonance marketing helps your company to be on the same wavelength as your aimed audience. Especially in China, where consumers are very attached to what a brand can reflect the society’s eyes.
Some recent research has shown that using resonance in advertisements increases the amount of information that the customer recalls about the advertisement and its message.
Resonance = Viral Marketing?
Advertisements that take into consideration this element also help the advertising message to get noticed more easily than other advertisements for similar products.
More information is here and here.
Share good vibes with your audience
Traditional marketing is overdone. You cannot convince your potential consumers just by saying you have the best price, performance or service.
Therefore, the intensification and enriching of a customer relationship by leveraging the « vibe » you develop with your audience are very important. You must give good impressions to your consumers. Make sure you use words they like to hear.
In 2001, Coca-Cola’s leitmotiv was « Life tastes good ». Spontaneous and easy to remember, isn’t it? Coca-Cola is excelling with its slogans. Nowadays, the giant’s slogan is « Taste the feeling ».
Resonance marketing goes deeper than traditional marketing. You must show your authenticity and the values you share with your aimed audience. This will allow potential customers to create an affinity towards your brand. Moreover, it will add value to the customer relationship. And everyone knows that Chinese customers enjoy the authenticity and strong values.
The key to resonance marketing is communication
To excel in resonance marketing, you must excel in communication. You will have to communicate with who you are. You will have to match your interests with your audience’s interests. You will also have to talk about your services and products in order to give to your potential customers the feeling that you have what they need.
It is also important for a brand to share its values. The brand must reflect a good image to its audience. Therefore, you have to be careful about what you want to project to the world about your company. For instance, the most famous car brand around the world is, without doubt, Ferrari. Ferrari has built itself an image of dream-seller. When you drive a Ferrari, it’s as if you were in a dream or a fairytale. Ferrari’s reputation is the best car you can get. And consumers love the idea of it. When they buy it, they feel like they have achieved something very important in their life.
You might think you know who you are, but your audience will make that determination for themselves based on the message you send and the image you reflect.
For instance, Microsoft, the famous American brand, says « at Microsoft, our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential ». Therefore, Microsoft’s audience can be interested in the brand’s products because it would allow them to « realize their full potential ».
You have to focus carefully on your audience in order to know what are their values, personalities, and interests you have in common.
You must know how to contact them. You must dominate social media because it is an excellent way to keep in touch with your consumers. On the one hand, you can show them what’s new in your company.
But on the other (important) hand, you will be able to get some feedback from them. In China, on social media such as WeChat or Weibo for example, you will be able to get some interesting feedback about your products, if the audience has liked it or not, their strong and weak points.
Nowadays, digital marketing is a must. In order to be seen as much as you would want, your brand must be efficient in digital marketing. Some agencies are getting specialized in this field, in order to help other companies to attract more customers.
The example of TOMS Shoes: A Philanthropic company
TOMS Shoes is an excellent example in terms of resonance marketing. They simply sell shoes, but with the message they transmit, they are able to attract many customers.
« Together, we can help save lives ». that’s the main expression you will first see when you get onto their homepage.
The main message TOMS Shoes is promoting is that the company donates a pair of shoes to needy children for each pair that you may buy. This is a great way to use resonance marketing because firstly, consumers want to buy shoes. But secondly, at the same time, TOMS Shoes allow them to help needy children. So the audience will feel like being helpful toward needy children is a very valuable and generous idea.
TOMS Shoes targets a very specific audience. They aim at generous and helpful people. And their strategy is paying because they sold 10 000 pairs of shoes in their first year in 2006, and in 2010, they sold 1 000 000 pairs. Since its creation, the company has given over 10 million shoes to needy people.
TOMS Shoes doesn’t really focus on price or style, they focus much more on mutual help, which is a very good value. With this particular value, they are able to build long-term relationships with their customers.
Our agency is specialized in digital marketing. Please contact us if you have any questions about digital marketing in China.