Using brand rituals to foster connection and loyalty

You don’t have to be religious or spiritual to engage in the practice of rituals as a small business owner. A ritual can be defined as a series of actions which are either performed in a specific order or with a specific cadence, or both. However, rituals are not just the daily tasks of your life, for rituals often come with a sense of importance, solemnity, and purpose.

For a small business, you have the opportunity to turn tasks like a monthly workshop, a social media series, an onboarding process, a packaging process, a newsletter, etc. into powerful brand rituals that connect you with your customers and build brand loyalty.

For this post, I’ll use the example of an email newsletter since this is something all small business should have and be using!

Be known for something

My best advice for turning your business tasks into brand rituals is to make them your own. How do you or how can you do this action differently from everyone else? How can you apply your branding and messaging to a task so that it becomes a ritual only your brand can own? Brand rituals should be an extension of your branding and be used to shine a light on your unique talents and most important values.

Some ideas to turn your email newsletter into a brand ritual that allows you to be known for something: craft a unique but consistent newsletter structure, use a clever and on brand newsletter name, and share topics that include your unique point of view.

Demonstrate your consistency

We buy from those we trust and consistency creates trust. Choosing a schedule that is reasonable for you and reliable for your audience. For an email newsletter, this doesn’t mean sending out a letter every week if that’s too much for you to take on, but rather choosing a regular cadence that is doable for you.

Include your community

Many rituals are done alone, but they do not have to be and can be more powerful if they are used to create connection points with your customers. You can make your customers feel like they are part of the process, part of a community.

To include your community into your email newsletter, you could do things like answering questions from your customers or featuring members of your community.

Social media is also a great way to include your audience in your rituals. If you’re doing something that would generally be behind the scenes, how can you bring your audience in or educate them? You can also do a social media series as a brand ritual and include your audience’s feedback, experience, etc. into that process.

Serving your audience and purpose

As I mentioned, rituals often have a sense of purpose. As a business owner, this means that rituals are an opportunity to lean into your ultimate purpose whether that's serving your audience or leaning into a value that you share with your audience.

When writing your email newsletter (and coming up with the newsletter structure), make sure you’re doing more than writing about your business. Write with the purpose of serving your customers and sharing your values.

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