Successful businesses are typically defined by numbers—how many products they sell, return on investment & financial growth.

But the foundation of strong sales doesn’t come from data. It comes from relationships, trust & loyalty built with customers over time.

Knowing how to create an emotional connection with customers is crucial to creating a marketing strategy that converts sales, which is why the Customer Value Journey is the key ingredient to success.

You don’t make sales by asking someone to buy your product out of the gate. You do it by engaging them with small, incremental steps that let them get to you know, see what your band is about & experience the value of what you do.

The steps of the Value Journey are what build a relationship, taking customers from being total strangers who are unaware of your brand to promoters who are ready to spread the good news of your business & how it transformed their lives.

You do this by guiding customers along this path to transformation, but there’s one other thing you need to successfully do this…& that’s to tell your own story.

Knowing how to build an emotional connection with customers comes from understanding your business’s own origins & what drove you to create your product or service.

Think about it. What problem were you trying to solve? What passion did you want to share with people?

Most importantly…how did the whole thing get started?

Having a great product is important…but what’s more important is letting your customers see you as a business with a real story & mission.

So, what goes into how to create an emotional connect with audiences so you can bring life & humanity into your marketing? Take a lesson from John & his crazy socks as he shows you how it’s done.

A Passion For Socks & Emotional Connection

High school graduates have many aspirations for their futures—a college degree, a lucrative first job, getting married. But John Cronin’s goal was different. He wanted to start a business.

John has Down’s syndrome, & throughout his life, he constantly overcame the obstacles & expectations people applied to him because of his differing ability. He decided that his plans for after high school were going to be big, & invited his dad, Mark, to go into business with him.

The team decided to sell socks, but not the plain, run of the mill variety. In high school, John was famous for his diverse array of funny, colorful, entertaining socks & enjoyed using them to make people smile.

Now, he wanted to give customers the opportunity to do the same thing. John’s Crazy Socks was born.

John & his dad started their enterprise by building their own Shopify store, not sure what to expect, & were pleasantly stunned when they learned the business was literally an overnight success.

Along with the store itself, their sole marketing efforts were some Facebook videos of John introducing his business. In their first day in business, John & his dad raked in 42 orders.

Perhaps they could have continued bringing in modest success…but John & Mark knew it was time to go even bigger with strategies that would capture the attention of buyers.

First, John decided to make the sock delivery process into an experience. Every order receives a personal handwritten note & Hershey’s kisses in a box. Big companies, John said, don’t create personal connections with customers. He wanted to make people feel special.

In addition, if orders were placed locally, John took it a step further by personally delivering the socks himself.

The personality & emotional connection behind the brand reveals some of the core values of John’s Crazy Socks, including making customers happy & building excitement about their orders.

But social conscience is another big value, as John donates 5% of his profits to the Special Olympics.

Between John’s inspiring store, entertaining products & message of charity, his store quickly developed a devoted fan base.

In fact, when John’s story was picked up by a national publication called The Mighty that supports inspirational stories of overcoming disabilities & mental health concerns, more than 1,200 orders were placed in a single day, leaving Mark & John scrambling to fulfill them all.

In just shy of 2 years, John’s Crazy Socks brought in more than $4 million in revenue, with 118,000 orders shipped to all 50 states as well as 44 countries.

The company also boosts a year-over-year conversion rate of 15% and 251% for total sales.

But what’s even more valuable than that is the emotional connection John builds with customers on his quest to create opportunities for differently abled people. The company’s staff includes 18 people with differing abilities, & altogether, John’s Crazy Socks has raised more than $170,000 for the Special Olympics.

John’s Crazy Socks is more than just a fun story—it’s about how one guy & his dad with a passion for fun socks built an ecommerce giant & compelled 1,000s of buyers to join him on his mission.

Lessons For Creating An Emotional Connection With Customers

You may not be selling crazy socks, but your business has its own story, & somewhere out there are buyers who want to hear it. Stories are powerful—without John & his goal of creating a place of happiness & acceptance for all people, John’s Crazy Socks is just a pile of colorful laundry.

But with its charitable angle, personal touch & story of overcoming obstacles, it created a mission people could get behind.

So, what’s your business’s mission? What problem do you solve, & what battle do you help your customers win?

The difference between a small business that is only moderately successful & one that truly wins is taking the time to share your story with customers, not only selling them a product, but enrolling them as partners in what you stand for.

So, how do you do that? Our patented formula, The Customer Value Journey, is the ultimate tool for creating not only the path your customers take from becoming aware of your business to growing into advocates & promoters, but also sharing your own mission with them.

But how are you doing with creating that journey right now, with your current marketing? We invite you to take our Customer Adventure Score assessment & find out.

You’ll learn the strongest & weakest stages of the Value Journey for your business & get special trainings & resources to help you start improving your score immediately.

Click here to calculate your score & check it out.