Branding is one of the most critical parts of developing your business and the public perception of your company.
Effective branding gives you a competitive edge by differentiating your company and your products and services from your competition. Your brand lets people know who and what you are, and what you stand for, and determines what image people have when they hear the name of your company. Consumers are exposed to a flood of promotional messages every day, from all media types, often without recognizing it, making it vital for you to uniquely brand your company and cut through the noise.
One of the most difficult aspects of branding is that what you believe you’re conveying to your ideal audience might not be resonating with them as you imagine. And it’s very tough for a company executive to objectively gauge whether your messages are landing with your customer base as they should be. This is where there is a prime opportunity to engage with your outsourcing partner in order to get third-party feedback about how your branding efforts are actually translating to the market. Here are some of the areas to explore together, so you can refine the image you’ve created and better meet the needs of your customers.
Who Are You?
As the CEO or operation manager of a company, you probably have a laser-sharp idea of your company’s differentiators and competitive advantage. But don’t just assume that your definitions of your brand are being adequately communicated to others – or that your marketing team has the same view you do. No matter how strong or weak you think your branding efforts have been to date, it’s a good idea to conduct an informal branding audit from time to time (with the help of an objective third-party).
When reviewing your branding messages, ask yourself what the top three messages are that you want consumers to receive? Do you want your company known as the innovator in your industry, or known for being mature and reliable? Do you market a premium product with a premium price or a product that provides quality at a low-cost? No company can do everything for everyone, so it’s imperative that you determine how you want your business positioned and who your target market is. Ask your BPO partner to help you dive deep into your market perceptions and customer insights. They should be able to provide you with data and feedback that’s very useful.
Is Your Message Consistent?
Consistency adds immense value to your product or service, and creating the right brand perception attracts consumers that recognize the worth of your product, and will turn into brand ambassadors. Inconsistent, or mixed messages, will negatively impact your public persona, confusing customers and giving the impression that your company is unpredictable and disorganized.
How Do Consumers View Your Brand?
Brand perception is critical. Learn how customers see you, by listening to what they say on social media sites and product review sites. Furthermore, ask your outsourcing partner if they have any tools they can use to help you gather even more insights. At Conectys, we use a proprietary, cloud-hosted customer engagement and analytics automation platform called ConectysOS to give real-time customer feedback to our clients. Through this platform, we automate customer satisfaction surveys (like NPS surveys), first contact resolution and customer effort scores. We then combine these with voice-to-text processing and relay our findings, in real-time, to our clients so they can make necessary changes to their external communication to fix or improve customer relationships and public perceptions.
Once you have a better understanding of your customers, and how they feel about interacting with your brand, your marketing team can reshape your messaging and branding efforts to respond to your audience’s needs. Find the points that connect your company to your target market, the points that impact and resonate with them, to help get your message across. And if you’re struggling to keep up with content moderation, outsourcing that service can aid in ensuring your brand messaging is consistent and appropriate.
What Makes You Special
When a customer chooses you over your competitor, what encouraged them to make that choice? Your business is unique no matter what your core focus is, and this is what drives your customers to your brand. Get clear on what makes you special in your space, and make sure your brand messaging reinforces these points as well.
Brand interpretation is critical to sustaining your company, and your branding efforts create the message you want to the customers you want to attract. Careful analysis of your brand, and help from a third-party like your outsourcing partner, can help you learn what customers (and prospects) really think of your company. These steps will help you lead your company in establishing brand messages that accurately match reality.
To learn more about how outsourcing services can help your company share a consistent message by supporting your customers or clients, contact us today.
