Posts Tagged brand interactions
“Influencing” Brand Touchpoints Are Vital For Your Business, Too.
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Touchpoints on August 18, 2010
I’ve written in the past about pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase brand touchpoints — all those interactions that take place between the customer and your brand before, during, and after the sale.
In the world of brand touchpoints, there’s a special category of equally important interactions, although they’re less direct. Influencing touchpoints are the interactions with your brand that indirectly drive business to or away.
An annual report usually isn’t used as a tool directly in the sales process, but prospects might review this document to gain a sense of stability, progress, leadership, etc. Or not.
Referrals, reviews, testimonials, and other word of mouth and social media interactions are influencing touchpoints. So are your event sponsorships, speaking engagements, community involvement, and goodwill.
Each of these touchpoints — and more — are indirect brand interactions that don’t actively promote your brand messaging, but still serve a vital role in supporting your brand identity and pushing the formation of a brand image. And, in many instances, these interactions are not something that can be effectively controlled or managed.
What you can do, however, is carefully craft your brand identity (which includes identifying the standard by which all of the brand brand touchpoints you identify should be delivered) and then actively manage this brand identity to promote the formation of the desired brand image by your target audiences.
For example, by providing the level of service, product quality, pricing, product features and benefits, warranty service, packaging, etc. that is prescribed within your brand identity platform, you cultivate positive associations that will carry over into your influencing brand touchpoints like consumer reviews, event sponsorships, community involvement, and the others you’ve defined in your touchpoint management list.
You wouldn’t stand up and actively discuss why one should buy your brand during a local United Way fundraiser, but the associations listeners have about your brand will follow you up to the podium.
The prevalence of social media tools widely being used now enables customers to become active brand advocates — for or against – with non-users. Product reviews, user testimonials and recommendations, forums and blogs: each and all have become major elements of the indirect selling process for b-to-c and b-to-b brands.
Each and all are driven by how the brand performs on its other touchpoints.
Identifying, prioritizing, and managing all of your brand touchpoints is simply the best way to stay on top of things, whether you have direct control or not.
What is a “Brand Touchpoint?”
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Touchpoints on August 12, 2010
A year ago, I purchased a new Onkyo a/v receiver. Before making my purchase, I visited several product review websites and online retail sites, looked through various home theater magazines, and even stopped by some good old brick and mortar retailers to thoroughly check out the landscape. I made a short list of product candidates, then set about finding the best pricing. I believed the Onkyo product I eventually bought offered the best feature set for the price, plus I’d owned an Onkyo stereo receiver for the past 25 years and never had trouble so I had no problem deciding to buy another of their products.
A couple of months ago, my new receiver began faultering. I checked the Onkyo website for local authorized repair centers and also confirmed my unit was still under warranty. The warranty service was completed and the receiver worked fine for a few weeks until it faultered once again. Frustrated, I once again sent the unit in for warranty service and, once again, the receiver was repaired. It worked fine until a week or two later when the same problem occurred yet again. I contacted Onkyo directly and was informed that, under the terms of the warranty, if a unit continued to faulter after three warranty repairs, Onkyo would replace the product. So, off my reciever went for the third repair. Within a week, the problem presented itself again and I once again contacted Onkyo to arrange for a replacement. They sent me a pre-paid carton via which I was to return the unit, which I dutifully did. A few days later, a brand new (and upgraded) receiver was delivered to my doorstep.
So far, it’s working beautifully and I expect it to continue to do so in spite of the fluke I experienced with the faulty unit.
During this process, I counted nearly 30 individual interactions I had with the Onkyo brand — brand touchpoints. Everything from online reviews and recommendations, to articles and advertising, to the retailer I experienced as I made my purchase, to my previous experience with product quality, to the product feature set, to the Onkyo website, to the authorized service center, to the warranty, to the customer service rep who processed my warranty claim, to the return shipping box I received — and more.
Each and every one helping me to form an image about the brand that would lead me to become even more loyal than I already might have been, or drive me away (perhaps forever) to one of the many competitive brands I likely could be just as happy with.
As my experience with Onkyo suggests, brand touchpoints can usually be grouped into four interrelated but distinctive customer activity sets:
- Pre-purchase touchpoints
- During-purchase touchpoints
- Post-purchase touchpoints
- Influencing touchpoints
Successful management of these brand touchpoints requires that you:
- Identify all of them you can think of for your brand, considering the four basic sets
- Prioritize them relative to their importance in supporting the creation of brand loyalty
- Develop an operational standard for how the touchpoint should be delivered
- Manage and assess the delivery of them accross the brand organization to ensure the standard is met
This process should be tied into developing your brand identity – your plan for what you want your target audiences to take away from interactions with your brand. How well you perform on managing the delivery of your touchpoints will determine what kind of brand image is actually formed by those audiences.
Why all the trouble? Because, in spite of what you say or do, how your customers and prospects interact with your brand leads to the formation of their image about your brand which determines whether or not they’ll do business with you the first time, or ever again. I’d say that’s worth the trouble.
Miscues During The Sale Can Ruin Your Day
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Touchpoints on August 5, 2010
The brand communications have worked as designed: the advertising, pr, trade shows, sales presentations, packaging, etc. have all brought the prospect to the brink of becoming a customer. The cash register is about to ring and the cork popped.
But then something goes awry. That just-about-to-be-new-customer walks away. Quite possibly forever.
What happened?
Could be any number of things, but the first place to look is at the various interactions that took place during the actual process of making the sale.
In reviewing how you interact with prospects and customers, consider the four categories of activities or brand touchpoints:
- Pre-purchase touchpoints: interactions like advertising and sales presentations that drive brand awareness, differentiation, connection, and consideration
- Purchase touchpoints: interactions that take place during the closing process that drive confidence and validation of the purchase
- Post-purchase touchpoints: follow-up interactions that take place after the sale is completed that drive loyalty, advocacy, and cross/up-selling opportunities
- Influencing touchpoints: interactions that make an indirect impression
If the sale fell apart at the last minute, obviously ask the prospect what happened. Based on the response, dial into the second of these categories of interactions, the Purchase Touchpoints. Depending on your business, here are some things at which to to look closely to see where a problem may exist:
- Sales personnel
- Contract/Bid/Proposal
- Transactional forms and documents: order form, order confirmation, etc.
- Warranty/Guarantee
- Packaging
- Shipping/delivery services
- Production scheduling/delivery timeline
- Checkout procedures
- Engineering services
- etc.
Odds are, you’ll uncover something the close-but-no-cigar-customer took offense with. If not, move on to the broader list of touch points, including those behind the scene influencing touch points. Consider and evaluate every interaction. If you’ve prepared a brand touchpoint management plan, you would have identified, prioritized, and developed a delivery standard for the various interactions that drive your sales. It should be comparatively easy to evaluate the actual delivery of the touchpoints against the standard and make corrections accordingly. If you don’t have a plan, now’s a good time to prepare one.
Once you’ve figured out the problem you can manage a solution so it won’t happen again. And that will make your day.
Madmen & Loyal Brand Customers
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Touchpoints on July 30, 2010
photo copyright AMC
I like the AMC cable tv series, Madmen. It’s set in the early 1960′s New York advertising agency world and seems to deliver an accurate peek into how that business operated back then (well before my time) while weaving in the requisite tv drama of relationship issues, marital affairs, etc.
There’s a natural interest because of the advertising business context, my livelihood for the past 30 years. But there’s something more. There’s a certain visual style, a consistent smartness to the writing, a tight definition of the character roles, a freshness to the plot turns, and a real involvement with the unfolding storyline and the characters. Every time I watch, I have an expectation that my one-hour investment won’t be wasted.
Madmen appeals to me for various reasons, and it continues to reinforce those reasons every time I tune in. From day one, I’ve been a loyal customer of the show. And, until the producers mess up and give me a reason to stray elsewhere, I’ll continue to tune in to AMC every Sunday night at 10pm.
Apparently I’m not alone. The show does well in the ratings and has garnered critical acclaim since it began its run in the summer of 2007. And for uber-fanatics, there are various ways to become even more deeply engaged with the show and it’s characters online and through social media.
Successful tv shows like Madmen are actually no different than successful brands.
Just as for well-liked tv shows, well-liked brands cultivate customer loyalty by consistently reinforcing the reasons those customers became customers to begin with. They do this by carefully identifying, prioritizing, and then deliberately managing the customer interactions with the brand — the brand touchpoints — that drive the sale, reinforce brand loyalty, and foster a genuine long-term engagement.
Customers form a positive image about the brands they repeatedly use, just like they do for the tv shows they routinely watch. Maybe it’s worth thinking about your brands as if they were tv shows:
- Are people tuning in?
- Tuning out?
- Are they regular viewers?
- Hit and miss?
- Loyal fanatics?
- Why?
Getting a handle on this now so you can better manage your brand touchpoints that matter will pay off with brand loyalty later.
Starting a New Company = New Brand Opportunity
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Identity, Brand Positioning, Brand Value Proposition on July 29, 2010
A blank slate. A fresh start. A new company. If you’re at the starting line for sure-fire success with a new venture, congratulations.
One way to pave the way for that success is to consider the kind of brand image you want to have. Do it today. Right now. Because whether you manage it now or not, the simple truth is that an image will start taking root of your company, product, and service. And unless you take control of this yourself right from the start, you might not be too happy with what that image is.
When you contemplated starting your new venture, you most likely decided what kind of company you wanted to be relative to the competitive solutions already available to your future customers. Ideally, you can identify several points of distinction between your company and your new competitors. Maybe it’s the products. Or the pricing. Or quality. Or service after the sale. Or … whatever.
Take all of this stuff rolling around in your head and spend some time writing it down for each of your brands. Then, sit back and craft a vision/values statement for each brand: the irrefutable truth about what your brand unconditionally stands for.
Next, write out your brand value proposition: the basic, functional benefits a customer will derive from using your brand; the emotional/feeling benefits a customer will derive; and, if appropriate, the self-image benefits a customer will derive. Think about the relative role your pricing will play in the benefits equation, too.
Then move on to crafting your brand position. This is what you’ll actively communicate to your prospective customers that demonstrates a distinctive and decisive advantage over your competitors.
Finally, map out the various ways you’ll likely interact with prospects and customers throughout the sales process: before, during, and after. The obvious ways, and the not-so obvious ways. Prioritize these relative to their impact on the sale or customer retention. Then, create a plan to proactively manage the delivery of these interactions — your brand touchpoints — so that they’re in sync with your brand position platform, your brand value proposition, and your brand vision statement.
If you do this, you’ll be in better control of what kind of image the public forms about your brand — because you’ve defined what you hope that image to be and you have a management plan to ensure it happens.
And a strong, positive brand image leads to a strong, positive growth chart for your business. Good luck.