Branding and the importance of consistency
One of the key aspects of branding a business or product is to ensure that your product or service is consistent. It’s not enough to have a consistent image across your stationery, shop front and product packaging. You have to be consistent in every point of contact with your customers. This means ensuring that your clients experience remains positive in relation to the branding that you are trying to develop.
Customers can build strong emotional attachments to brands and some are highly motivated by the experience of the brand. If this experience is not consistent then you risk losing valuable repeat customers. One of the key rules to running a successful business is that it is far easier to keep a customer than to replace one. Your branding must deliver what it promises and what you customers expect because if it doesn’t your customers will look elsewhere.
McDonalds is perhaps the ultimate example of the importance of consistency in branding. For many people a BigMac is a food experience that they can rely on. There is no real gamble that their hamburger will not taste good and hence no real chance of disappointment. And after all why would we want to disappoint our customers?
The same stands for any restaurant that wants to develop its business. Regular customers may put up with one over cooked steak at their favourite restaurant but do it twice in a row and they are almost guaranteed to be trying the new place around the corner the next time they decide to eat out.
Everyone within your organisation has to buy into the brand and understand the experience that customers are expecting. Your employees need to understand that delivering the right experience is essential to their own jobs and you should look to reward employees who are actively branding your business in the right way.
Product branding – The quality of the product or service must be consistent
Price branding – The price should be consistent with the experience. Customers who pay premium prices expect premium products or exceptional services.
Promotion branding – The brand image and message needs to be consistent with the price and the quality of the product.
Place branding – The location of your business needs to be consistent with the product, price and promotion. Sometimes where your business is based can be essential and in the case of restaurants, shops and attractions, your internal décor also fits into the experience.
When businesses lose sight of providing a consistent experience to their customers, they lose the focus of their branding. When this happens they risk losing repeat custom and will almost always be chasing new business. This means that all their efforts are focused on replacing lost customers rather than building a larger customer base.
