Brand love: How to make audiences’ hearts grow fonder

Is receiving brand love like celebrating Valentine’s Day in primary school? Stay with me here. On Valentine’s Day, my classmates and I would craft various pink and red heart-shaped notes for our peers. One-by-one, we’d drop off the Valentines, gently placing them into shoe boxes decorated with glitter, stickers and feathers. At the end of the afternoon, it was a thrill to take stock. What did your best friend write? What did your crush write? How many did you receive? Did you get any candy?

For marketers, brand love leads to the same delighted feelings, but on an even deeper level. It signals the depth of connection they’ve reached with their audience. The affirmation they need that their strategy actually succeeded at building loyalty and evangelizing their mission.

Nicholas Charlier, Head of Global Community and Education at Vivobarefoot, explains: “We’re a footwear company, but we’re really trying to drive awareness, engagement and connection with natural health. The reason we want people to love our brand is because we want them to love themselves, their health and the environment around them.”

If you’re still asking yourself, “What’s brand love (on social) got to do with it?”, the answer is everything. Brands who are able to build lasting, meaningful relationships with their audiences are the ones who will succeed in this new era of business.

What is brand love?

Brand love describes the positive sentiment consumers feel toward your brand that inspires them to engage with your content, buy your products or services, pick you over a competitor and spread the word about your company. It extends across channels and touchpoints—which means each stage in the customer journey should be considered an opportunity to forge brand love.

Brand love has become increasingly important in light of heightened competition across industries and platform oversaturation. Charlier expanded, “There’s so much information on the internet. There are many brands competing for attention. Consumers want to know if brands and products actually do what they say they will, and if they can trust the people behind the products and marketing. It isn’t about short-term wins like viral campaigns, it’s about earning and keeping brand trust, transparency and goodwill for the long haul.”

The elements that drive brand love

Just like in loving relationships between people, brands have to treat love like a verb. As Charlier put it, “Building brand love is like cultivating love in any relationship. It takes honesty, open mindedness, and a willingness to learn and change. It’s your products doing what you say they will, and listening to feedback when they don’t. It’s creating opportunities for connection, both online and in real life.”

Findings from The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ back up his assessment. The report found that consumers are most likely to favor brands on social that have a high quality product or service. Which is a striking reminder for brands that social can’t overcompensate for larger business issues—and providing a top-tier customer experience should be a critical priority.

The report also explains what consumers say are the most important traits of brand content: authenticity and relatability. People don’t really care how lo- or hi-fi content is, or if you talk about your product. They care that you show up for them instead of talking at them.

In fact, consumers say companies should make personalized customer service their first social media priority in 2025, according to a Q4 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey. Charlier underscores how paying close attention to community feedback helps create a thriving brand. “We’re lucky that our customers tell us when we screw up. Because that gives us a chance to take accountability and fix the situation. Listening to your community is what instills brand love. Transparency in everything you do is what creates connection.”

Ways to measure brand love on social media and beyond

Measuring brand love isn’t as intangible as it might sound. In some cases, it’s as simple as repurposing existing metrics. In others, it’s about setting up new measurement parameters that benefit teams across marketing, sales and customer service.

Charlier explained how Vivobarefoot measures brand love, and shared insights into why each metric matters that can inspire your strategy.

Awareness

Whether or not awareness is a vanity metric is debated in the social media landscape. It doesn’t capture intent or directly tie to revenue. But that doesn’t mean it’s obsolete, especially when you need to capture overall awareness compared to competitors. Or, in Vivobarefoot’s case, if you need to educate previously problem-unaware consumers.

“Before learning about Vivobarefoot, many people believe that your feet need to be in overly cushioned shoes that restrict movement, and reduce foot strength and mobility. This has negative impacts on posture, pain and performance, but also how we interact with the ground generally,” says Charlier.

Vivobarefoot educates their community through social content, health professionals-turned-creators, events and more to platform the scientific evidence behind the minimalist footwear movement. That awareness turns into evangelism when people actually try the products for themselves (more on that below).

Charlier sums it up like this: “We have an amazing community who are very passionate about our mission. That brand love has helped drive the growth of our business through awareness efforts.”

Engagement

The Index found that overall engagement is the top way marketing leaders will measure social success in 2025. Engagement metrics like comments, shares and reactions tell a compelling story about your content’s resonance, and can help you understand how your audience engages with your products offline, too.

Charlier explained how important it is for Vivobarefoot to understand how their footwear impacts their customers’ daily lives. “We want to measure how people are engaging with our product, and their overall satisfaction with it. Are they aligned with our mission? Are they practicing that healthy mission themselves? We can answer those questions by seeing how much our community is engaging with online content—through social or our online courses—on a regular basis.”

Sentiment

Yet, engagement alone doesn’t illustrate the full scope of community buy-in for your narrative. That’s where sentiment comes in—the tone people use when they talk about your product. According to Sprout Listening data from December 28, 2024 to January 27, 2025, Vivobarefoot has an impressive 91% positive sentiment score on X. That’s largely to do with how well their brand storytelling resonates with audiences, and how their customers feel when they actually try on their shoes.

“We want to inspire people and empower them to be their healthiest—for them to connect with our message and embody it themselves. Our brand sentiment conveys how people feel about their own health journeys, and the role Vivobarefoot plays in them.”

Evangelism and customer loyalty

Those old marketing adages, “The best advertising is word-of-mouth” and “It’s easier to keep a customer than acquire a new one,” ring true when measuring brand love. It’s simple (and somewhat cliché) but every brand’s goal is to earn customers for life, and to encourage happy customers to share about their experience.

For Vivobarefoot, that starts when customers try on their shoes. “When people start wearing our products, they instantly feel the ground. It’s probably the first time in a long time. Unless we’re on the beach, most of us are never barefoot as adults. It’s an eye-opening and revolutionary experience. The products do what they say they will and create a quality experience that leaves a memorable impression. This moment (and all the moments after) create an emotional connection to our products, which leads to brand evangelism,” Charlier expounds.

When you can translate an emotional connection into brand advocacy, that’s a telling sign that your brand love strategy is working. “Are customers going beyond buying your products and doing more? Are they sharing your content? Are they attending events? Are they buying multiple products? Are they leaving reviews?” asks Charlier.

User-generated content

While audience engagement is welcome and appreciated, user-generated content (UGC) is next-level brand love. When fans create their own content about your brand, it helps you gain exposure to new audiences and engenders their trust. Measuring the amount of UGC that comes pouring in, plus how often that content is engaged with, is a helpful barometer of brand affinity.

“As a footwear company, we make products for a lot of different occasions—training in the gym, hiking mountains, walking the dog and exploring the city. We even have kids’ shoes. UGC helps showcase how our designs work for every occasion in a way that feels authentic to each specific user and their lifestyle. Then, we can take a closer look at how many people are creating content on our behalf, what their engagement rate is and how the conversation about our brand is taking shape,” says Charlier.

(Brand) love is actually all around

Just like the joy of exchanging Valentines, building brand love is about creating moments that make your audience feel seen, valued and connected. Whether it’s through authentic content, thoughtful engagement or products that deliver on promises, those acts of care and consistency spark lasting connections.

When your audience starts to share their love for your brand—through likes, comments, reviews or UGC—it’s like opening a box overflowing with glitter-covered affirmations. The more love you give to your audience, the more your brand’s relationships (and business) will flourish in return.

Charlier sums it up like this: “There are two sides to building brand love. There’s the rational side focused on quality and price. Then there’s the emotional side. The part of the experience that’s influenced by the feelings people associate with your brand and mission. That is the sweet spot.”

Looking for more on what it takes to create a memorable brand experience? Read The 2025 Sprout Social Index.™