Brand Impressions Count!

What does your branding say about your company? Branding is more than just about colour, font and visuals; it goes way deeper than that. Your brand is everything about your company and it is represented by every member of staff, whether you’re in the marketing department, sales department or accounts. As marketing techniques have expanded and as each company engages in more and more areas of communication with their customers, so the breadth of customer brand perceptions and experiences widens and each area of a business has a role to play in supporting brand ethos.

Gone are the days when the accounts team could act as a separate entity from the rest of the business. If there is day-to-day contact with the customer then their involvement with branding is just as important as the MD or the sales team. And if you’ve got the wrong person answering the phone in the first place, within seconds an impression has been made as to whether the brand lives up to its promises or not. Think of the disparity between some of the major utility companies and their brand messaging and the reality of customers holding on the phone for several minutes, having pressed at least four option buttons in the process trying to get through to another human being and being told all the while “thank you for holding, your call is important to us”. Loyalty, trust and belief go floating out the window.

A brand has to be something tangible, not just imaginary. It has to represent what you as a company stand for and what you believe are the real needs of your customer, not just in terms of the product or service that you supply but the way everyone in the company interfaces and engages with them. All team members need to be involved in this and it is an ongoing commitment. And all team members should be involved in creating ideas on how the customer experience of your company can be enhanced to such a degree that they will keep coming back to you again and again and again. If you get this right you will already be stealing a march on your competitors and making your brand first choice in the customer’s mind for repeat business.

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