Guest Post By: Tara Hornor (Learn more about Tara at the end of this post)
It is the recognition of a brand that makes the company, service, or product what it is. In our increasingly visual society, it’s difficult to build brand recognition because of the plethora of competition. Without the consumer’s ability to visualize a brand, however, it is destined to fail. In today’s business environment, marketing efforts such as direct mail and SEM establish the brand and present it to the public at large. If an effective brand building strategy is created through marketing, the brand succeeds. If the message isn’t clear, the product, service, or company fails…period.
Creating a clear brand experience for customers requires aligning the organization’s touch points with the brand. A perfect alignment allows for a perfect consumer brand experience. Companies intentionally create a customer experience and connect it with their brand, or consumers will simply create their own impression. Companies can choose to create a brand, or sit passively by while the brand is created or forgotten.
Companies that fail to create strong relationships with consumers through brands are destined to fail. If these companies aren’t willing to create strong relationships with consumers, a competitor will. Here, are five starting points to consider when determining if customers can visualize your brand:
Can You Clearly Articulate Brand Identity?
A clear brand identity sets the expectations for a company’s products and services. It defines the company’s core values. This starts with a focused perspective on what it is your brand provides – the value it brings to its customers. Colors, graphics, fonts, and other marks of your brand will naturally extend from this identity.
How Valuable are Your Customers?
Companies that are aware of the value that each consumer brings are capable of understanding the importance of ensuring that the customer can visualize the company’s brand. Current and past customers are far less expensive than the creation of new ones. But you won’t understand just how valuable this relationship is without understanding the actual fiscal value of a customer over their life.
What is Optimal Customer Experience?
This is vital for creating a holistic consumer brand experience. Companies must create consistent and compelling customer experiences to be successful. If a company can’t define optimal customer experience; it can’t sell it. Ultimately, the complete experience with your company is part of the brand that is visualized by customers. It’s not just a logo and recall of your products and prices.
Cultivate Consumer Relationships
Consumer relationships are vital to the success of a brand. These relationships should be treated respectfully. Companies should listen attentively to customers and learn from them, striving to build upon the wins and losses. Don’t be scared of bad experiences, but always respond aggressively to improve.
Be In It for the Long Haul
Brands are strengthened over time. They aren’t developed overnight. Learn from customer interactions and recalibrate the brand experience as needed. Brands are the product of collect consumer perception and are always defined by deeds, not words. Therefore, continue to monitor your marketing messages along with your actions as a business to make sure together they develop your company identity the right way.
A company’s brand is how consumers experience a company, its products, or services. Successful entities recognize that brand management is the responsibility of the organization. Companies can choose to deliver an effective brand experience, or not.
Tara Hornor has a degree in English and has found her niche writing about marketing, advertising, branding, web and graphic design, and desktop publishing. She writes for PrintPlace.com, an online printing company that offers business cards, retail catalogs, posters, brochures, custom postcards, and more printed marketing media. In addition to her writing career, Tara also enjoys spending time with her husband and two children. Connect with @TaraHornor on Twitter.
