Being an entrepreneur and small business owner isn’t easy.
You have a million things to do on your to-do list with limited resources in a highly competitive market.
You have to constantly think about how to DIY everything to establish a strong brand identity and gain visibility in the midst of fierce competition.
On top of that, you feel unclear about your ideal customer persona and find it difficult to create effective marketing strategies.
And then you start operating in autopilot mode, feeling overwhelmed because you feel stuck in your brand growth.
You start doing what everyone else is doing instead of focusing on your brand’s uniqueness.
You feel like you don’t have enough time to slow down and evaluate the direction of your brand and business, reflecting on questions like…
Are you really connecting with your growth customers?
Why would customers buy your product or services over your competitors? What would make them care?
Are you growing a mindful brand that is creating a positive impact and bringing ROI?
Do you have strong brand visibility and brand loyalty in a highly competitive market?
Take a deep breath, you’re not alone.
It takes courage to lead a brand and business and you have it in you to carry the task.
Running the business on autopilot can mean that you unconsciously lose clarity on who you are talking to.
You may start to copy the marketing strategies of other brands and forget about connecting with your growth customers, solving their pain points and helping your customers reach their desires.
But when you zoom out to pause and look at the big picture, the questions above point to one core essence about building a mindful brand—which is to understand your customers.
Think about it.
You want to build an online presence, build authentic connections and reach a wider audience.
You want to establish brand trust and credibility.
You want to build your customer’s confidence in your brand experience and nurture the relationship with the audience.
All these center around building an emotional connection with your tribe, and to do that you have to understand what’s in the hearts and minds of your customer.
Mindful branding starts with understanding your customers, not assumptions
Have you ever heard of the saying from Peter Ducker, father of management thinking?
"There is only one purpose of a business: to create a customer"
It's easy to become so focused on the products or services you offer and fall into the trap of believing that if you create a great product or service, people will automatically want it.
Daybreak Seaweed experienced a similar challenge when they came to us.
A West Coast, women-owned, and locally grown seaweed brand, D made delicious and high-quality products in a pretty-looking packaging design.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stand out on the shelves.
As a regenerative food brand, Daybreak Seaweed had a meaningful vision to bring impact to the planet, but it was missing the emotional connection with its growth audience.
The packaging strategy didn’t bring the results they expected to help them grow into a nationwide brand.
What went wrong?
The truth is, it takes more than just a great product or service to build a successful business.
Without a deep understanding of who your target audience is, a brand can end up wasting resources and missing out on opportunities.
You need to understand your audience's needs and desires and create a brand that authentically connect with them on an emotional level.
This is what mindful branding is all about.
Instead of taking the time to mindfully understand your customer’s needs and desires and building a genuine emotional connection with them, you may assume that your audience wants what you have to offer.
And this can lead to a mismatch between what you're selling and what your dream customers are actually looking for.
Going deep into the customers’ hearts and minds to build a customer persona
At Mindsy, we believe that mindful branding can have a meaningful impact on your audience.
By prioritizing self-compassion and intentional action, we create a ripple effect of positive change in those around us.
Behind the busyness, our brands exist to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others. We care about what people feel and think because people’s emotions help us understand how our brand can serve them best. How brands can make their life easy and better.
So as a mindful brand, answering your customers’ needs start with hearing them and understanding them.
If you want to connect with your customers in a mindful way, you have to go deep into their hearts and minds.
When we worked on Daybreak Seaweed, we started with finding the root problem.
Why didn’t the current packaging pop out of the shelf? Why didn’t the packaging design connect with their customers?
We conducted qualitative research and interview people to find Daybreak’s ‘best friend’, a.k.a. growth customers.
We went to grocery stores across several cities in the USA and took 1:1 interviews.
The insights served as a compass, directing us in creating an empathy graph, refining the brand's messaging, and empowering clients to make informed packaging decisions tailored to their unique audience's preferences and needs.
And then to finalize and refine the design, we went to retail stores like Whole Foods, Sprouts, Jimbos, and natural food channels in different cities in the USA.
We asked consumers to compare different packaging designs and gave their feedback.
This is what we mean when we say going deep into the hearts and minds of your customers.
The process is personal, and it goes beyond conducting a survey that maps out your customers’ demographic.
Why not just rely on quantitative data and go the extra mile to do qualitative research?
Because we want to understand customers’ emotions and know their deepest pain points and desires.
We want to create a bond and trusting relationship with the customers.
How to understand your customers and connect with them
Building a mindful brand is a unique journey for every entrepreneur, but there are three action steps you can take to get to know your customers at a deeper level and craft a brand that resonates with them.
1. Do personal interviews with your customers:
Let’s go deeper than a quantitative research.
Doing a qualitative research allows you to adapt your approach and capture the nuances and contexts that make up your customers’ world.
Qualitative research puts the human experience at the center of the research process.
Personal interviews are powerful because it allow you to ask follow-up questions and dig deeper.
It will uncover insights that lead to customers’ pain points, preferred price points, and core values.
It’s beyond surface-value information about their life and background.
You can ask them:
What are you thinking and feeling?
What do you want?
What’s getting in your way?
What’s your day-to-day like?
2. Build an empathy graph:
An empathy graph is a way for you to visualize your customer’s life. It helps you recognize people that are similar to your customer persona in real life based on the insights you’ve collected from your customer research and interviews.
Imagine getting the opportunity to mind-walk in your customer’s life.
You get to understand what motivates them and what they truly need to solve their pain points.
And from there, you can develop a brand strategy and map out the action steps you can take as a brand to meet them where they’re at. That’s what an empathy graph can do for you!
Here’s an example of an empathy graph we created for Daybreak Seaweed:
3. Focus on the Customer Journey:
Instead of focusing solely on your products or services, focus on the entire customer journey.
Think about how your audience interacts with your business at every touchpoint, from the first time they hear or see your brand, to after-sales services, to become advocates of your brand.
Find out what they are thinking, feeling, and doing at each stage. And then reflect on this: What message would emotionally connect with them where they’re at? This is the foundation of your brand strategy.
This customer journey will be your guide to creating a consistent and meaningful narrative that resonates with your customers.
It’s your ‘North Star’ to craft a brand experience that is transformative and impactful to their lives.
It’s the brand strategy to foster a deeper connection between the customer and the brand, building a long-lasting trust and loyalty.
Mindful brands bring impact to people’s lives by understanding and solving their needs
When you understand your customers, you set up a foundation to develop a brand experience and message that is unique to your brand and deeply resonates with your tribe.
Going deep into your customers’ hearts and minds means you can speak directly to them and answer their needs.
So, let’s reflect together. Are you really connecting with your growth customers? Do your products and services mindfully answer your customers’ needs?
If you feel you need more clarity, you’re not alone—we’re here for you.