I have had an obsession for the BMW brand from way back in my late high school days when I started watching the James Bond series. I vividly remember the sleek blue BMW Z3 in ‘Golden Eye’ featuring Pierce Brosnan—and all I could imagine was what a perfect car for me!

You would be right to say that the psychology of marketing worked wonders with me, for since then, my desire for them grew stronger and the hook for me was that the customer promise matched up to the experience—power, protection and general coolness of the BMW as projected in the 007 series. Fast forward, 25 years later and the proud owner of an X5, I am absolutely driving my dream, literally!

Two years ago, one of the leaders in the organization where I work challenged us during team bonding session when they asked why we shouldn’t consider growing our fan base as opposed to our customer base.

I have since been thinking about that statement and in the last couple of months taken keen interest in studying and observing the behavior of fans across different brands.

How do you convert your customers into raving fans?

The legendary Tina Turner once said: ‘My fans want to dance, sing, and laugh. That’s what I work so hard for.’ Taking away from that statement, do brands today work hard enough to give their customers a feel of greatness or do we settle for satisfied customers?

As brands, we measure customer satisfaction (CSAT) which is an important yardstick for customer experience. Although CSAT is a good measure, it must be complemented with other critical metrics.

In general sense, a satisfied customer is one that is comfortable with your service or product but may not necessarily tell anybody else how great the same. So, as brands, we need to move away from customer satisfaction to customer delight and transform customer base into a ‘fandoms.’

A couple of thoughts as to why brands should take a fan-based approach to achieving marketing excellence.

The thing about fans is that they come on their own—they don’t necessarily have to be enticed so when you have fans you succeed faster. Fans build an emotional attachment to a particular brand and once that is established, they give their hearts not just their money. This way organizations can build meaningful and loyal human connections instead of forged connections through products and services sold to them.

Beyond discounts or freebies, fans are interested in the performance of their favorite brand—to succeed beyond just the products and services offered. They take particular interest in the organizational culture and how it translates back to them. So, it’s important that the vision of every organization is executed well and impacts everybody in the organization in a positive way.

When customers become fans, they will stand with brands through thick and thin—so it doesn’t matter when Liverpool last won the Premier league, the club can be assured that ‘it will never walk alone.’

I believe that there are a few tricks that brands in services could learn from the sport industry on creating more engaged and loyal customers. It’s the kind of loyalty that sits between a football club and a diehard fan that any brand dreams of building with their customers.

The connection has got to go beyond buying, to believing. Businesses should be able to ask their customers why they choose them over the next outlet—the answers thereafter should be able to determine if the customer is emotionally connected to the business or not.

Fans promote the brand and do it in a very obsessive manner. I can confidently say that I am doing this for BMW, within my entire household to a point where my children believe mom’s car is best there is. I sometimes chuckle at the statements they make with their peers about cars, and I know its mom talking not them. They actively share somethings about BMWs that they didn’t realize they agreed or disagreed with. This level of commitment often translates to lifetime value and as a result business success.

While fans can’t be bought, it takes a few feats to win them over and a good place to start is with your active customer base. A starting point would be for organizations to look at the proportion of its customers they would possibly consider to be fans.

Winning fans with purpose, is essential to building powerful human connections and to achieve this, communicating the organization’s sense of purpose is an effective starting point.

I would recommend the book Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, a simple, fan, quick read that is filled with all kinds of great business advise.

Good luck in your journey to turning your customer base into a fandom!