Contrary to popular belief, a brand is not a logo, a name or something that your marketing department ‘thinks up’ in a boardroom. A brand is how people would describe your company or your product to another. It’s shaped by the sum of all of their experiences and interactions with you – at every level of your organization. Did they call your office and get a bubble gum-popping, nail filing receptionist who couldn’t wait to get them off the phone so they could continue talking about last night’s cliff-hanging episode of The Bachelor? Did they receive an invoice loaded with SURPRISE! charges? Did pink tulips show up on site instead of the Tahitian sunset-colored orange lilies that precisely matched their client’s logo? If so, they might be telling a different story about your company than you want them to. Just like ‘that’ girl in high school, it takes but one person or experience to change people’s perceptions of you.
Although we can’t control what people think about us, we have the power to influence it. The first step is to understand that your marketing department is but a tiny sliver of the perception pie…and that every person within your organization, every system you have in place and every communication that leaves your office either reinforces or changes what people think about you.
Here are 10 questions to get you on the right path to building a positive reputation:
- Do you know ALL of the customer touchpoints (definition: every point at which your company interacts with your customer) within your organization?
- Have these touchpoints been optimized to reinforce your brand positioning?
- Do you train every new employee on your brand so they clearly understand how you want to be perceived? Does every employee understand their role in your customers’ experiences and how they can shape this perception?
- Have you made your positioning easy to understand & remember? (Side bar: I can’t tell you how many companies I’ve worked with that have vision statements, mission statements, brand positioning statements, etc that are 3 or 4 paragraphs long. If you can’t sum it up in a sentence or two, you can bet your employees and stakeholders won’t remember it).
- Do you continually challenge yourself to ensure you are staying relevant and meaningful to your customers?
- Do you regularly ask your customers what they really think about you and show them how important their feedback is to you?
- Do you have systems in place to act on these learnings?
- Have you tied achieving brand perception into your employee’s bonus / incentive plans? (Side bar: An incentive should be tied to something that employee has direct control over).
- Do you meet regularly with frontline employees to reassess what you need to do to influence perceptions of your brand?
- Are your employees empowered to elevate their customers’ experiences or do they cower behind SOP (standard operating procedures)?
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