Posts Tagged brand interactions
What Exactly is Brand Identity and Brand Communications?
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Identity, Brand Image, Brand Touchpoints on October 19, 2011
A lot of ad agencies and design firms refer to “brand identity” as the tangible visual elements of a brand — logo, typography, color palette, design style – the tactile look and feel of the brand. While this isn’t entirely incorrect, it is entirely incomplete.
Perhaps a better view of brand identity is this: a strategically-crafted blueprint for how you want your brand to be perceived among your customers, prospects, influencers, vendors, employees, and other stakeholders. It includes not only the graphic identity but also many other components as noted below and on this previous Touchpointers blog post.
Components of brand identity
Brand communications is the presentation of this carefully crafted identity to your markeplaces, resulting in the formation of a brand image that drives sales. Brand communications isn’t just advertising, social media marketing, website, public relations, trade shows, etc. It’s also the more subtle ways your brand identity takes root like the professionalism of your delivery and set up personnel, the helpfulness of customer care reps, the ease of navigating your phone system, the clarity of user documentation, and many other types of brand interactions — touchpoints — that can positively or negatively reinforce the formation of your brand image. There’s more to read about brand communications here.
Brand identity is strategic; it takes time and careful consideration to develop a brand identity that differentiates and resonates. Brand communications is tactical; it takes place over time (years), working to create your brand image and drive sales. Many businesses jump into brand communications without first crafting their brand identity, which harkens the old-but-true cliche, “without a map any road will get you there.”
Sure, a great looking logo is cool. But have you crafted a complete brand identity and brand communications program? Today would be the best day to get started.
How to Identify Your Brand Touchpoints
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Touchpoints on October 11, 2011
Your brand — no matter what it is and to whom you sell — has many layers of subtle and not-so-subtle interactions with your customers, prospects and influencers. Identifying each and every one of those brand touchpoints is the first step in making your customers fanatics, your prospects lifelong customers, and your influencers brand ambassadores. It’s a worthy investment of time and resources.
Where to start? Much of this process is good common sense.
First, recognize that you likely have three different kinds of brand audiences, and your interactions with each may vary:
- Prospects
- Customers
- Influencers: a more encompassing group of people who can somehow weigh in on the relative benefits, value, features, purchase-worthiness of your brand. They include everyone from internal employees to outside sales reps, retailers, the press, existing or previous customers, bloggers and reviewers, and many others.
Secondly, recognize there are at least three stages to someone ultimately buying and using your brand, and each one contains different levels of brand interaction:
- Pre-Purchase stage where prospects seek any and all evaluative information available. Consider all interactions that build awareness, convey differentiation, create a brand connection, and drive purchase consideration. Brand audiences here are prospects, inflluencers, and even existing customers (repeat sales/upselling).
- Purchase stage where prospects become customers and seek validation. Consider all transactional and communications interactions from order placement through delivery and set up. Brand audiences here are prospects.
- Post-Purchase stage where customers use the brand and seek validation for a potential repeat engagement. Consider all follow-up activities and programs here, including loyalty programs, warranty performance, product quality, etc. Brand audiences here are customers and influencers.
Finally, recognize that brand interactions are likely company-wide, so consider the various operating departments and functions within your company and the types of brand interactions conducted within each. Finance (billing, credit terms, etc.), customer service (warranty service, touble shooting, etc.), R&D (product trials, market input, etc.), and most likely many others — you get the drift.
Now, (take a deep breath here), map out your complete brand marketing process – from initial product development through post-sale follow up. Think through every single known actual and potential point of contact while keeping the different brand audiences and the different purchase stages in mind relative to the different operating finctions of the company. Identify everything, from emails to phone calls to website, to packaging, to user documentation, advertising, etc. Solicit the assistance of the various departments within the company.
With the internal audit completed, it’s now time to conduct external research to probe customers, prospects and influencers about the buying/using/re-purchasing processes with which they engage the brand on their own terms. The goal here is to completely define the myriad of interactions that make up the brand relationship and their relative role in creating customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
With the internal and external audits complete, you now should have a pretty clear picture of the various brand touchpoints. Next, we’ll kick around ways to prioritize each relative to the role they play in moving prospects to customers, and customers to lifelong fanatics. Yipee!
Brand Touchpoints Drive Your Brand Image
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Touchpoints on April 4, 2011
Visited a local italian restaurant not long ago. Good food and good service, which was to be expected for the mid-range prices they were charging. What wasn’t expected, though, were the folding tables and chairs (think church potluck supper decor and you have it). This little disconnect made me pay closer attention to everything else about the place – the tableware, wall decorations, lighting — all of it. I’m not certain the image the restaurant owners were trying to create, but I don’t think it was “Wednesday night church supper.”
The image for all brands — yours and mine — is formed as a direct result of the experience folks out there in the real world have as they engage with the brand. Brand touchpoints.
Some business owners and brand managers have sweated over every conceivable brand touchpoint to ensure they’re in sync with the brand identity they’ve strategically crafted. They’ve identified them, prioritized them based on their affect on brand image, and then actively manage them to ensure they’re properly delivered.
Most, like my restaurant friends, have done only a superficial job, focusing on the obvious touchpoints of product, advertising, and customer service at the expense of not considering all the other possible, perhaps just-as-important, touchpoints. The result is a disconnect between the desired brand identity and actual brand image being formed.
If you haven’t created a formal brand identity and don’t actively manage your important brand touchpoints in support of that identity, then you’ve lost control of the brand image that your target audiences will form about you. Simply, brand touchpoints drive your brands. And your business.
So, what are you doing about it?
“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.