In today’s competitive market, brand consistency is key to securing sales and building customer loyalty. You’ve heard of the Sales Funnel, with its top, middle, and bottom portions. But what does that mean?
Let’s break it down into three phases:
- Awareness (Top of Funnel)
- Consideration (Middle of Funnel)
- Decision (Bottom of Funnel)
Ensuring your brand’s visuals, tone, messaging, personality, and customer experience are consistent across these phases is essential to higher sales.
But what happens if, along the way, your brand becomes inconsistent? Does it really matter?
The short answer is Yes, it absolutely matters.
Because your brand should be building authority, trust, and emotional connection at every stage, any deviant in your brand will break this process for your prospect. And if that happens, you’ll either have to work twice as hard to rebuild or you’ll lose the sale altogether.
Navigating the Customer Journey
The most common issue I see are brands that focus consistency efforts on only a few high-level (Awareness) channels.
Doing this creates missed opportunities and lost sales. Gone are the days where customers would purchase after one or two interactions with your brand.
In today’s world, their journey will lead them to encounter your brand across any number of touch points. Not just in the Awareness phase, but in the Consideration and Decision phases also. A comprehensive brand guide that covers tone of voice, how to use your visuals, and an overview of your brand strategy will really help here.
Let’s dive into all the touch points within these phases:
Awareness Phase (Top of Funnel)
During the Awareness phase, customers become familiar with your brand through several channels. Ensure consistency in the following touch points:
- Website: I call this your digital homebase and it needs to exude your brand, through and through
- Social Media: Your brand’s voice and visuals should be cohesive across all active platforms. It’s also a fabulous place to showcase your brand’s personality and authenticity
- Digital Ads: Consistent messaging and visuals catch their eye and reinforce your purpose
- Blogs: Informative content that aligns with your brand’s tone and builds trust
- Print and Traditional Advertising: A unified message with customized designs so the channel you’re creating for is optimized
Consideration Phase (Middle of Funnel)
In the Consideration phase, customers evaluate your brand more closely. Consistency is crucial in these areas:
- Email Marketing: If it’s not personalized messages that reflect your brand, you’re just cluttering their inbox
- Tradeshows: The physical representation of your brand can go miles for brand experience
- Webinars: Educational content that showcases your brand’s expertise and also maps back to your brand messaging and purpose
- Review Sites: Future customers will care more about other customer’s feedback than anything you have to say. See Post-Purchase below for ideas on how to make this a stellar piece
- Community: How you engage with your community can reinforce your brand values
Decision Phase (Bottom of Funnel)
As customers reach the Decision phase, they need to trust that your company can not only get the job they need done, but that your brand is one they’re genuinely happy to work with. Key touch points include:
- Demo Calls: Your internal brand and employee satisfaction is going to be on display through personalized presentations
- Sales Rep Touchpoints: How often and the manner in which your sales reps ping customers sets the tone your customer will expect. If you’re delighting them now, they’ll believe your brand will do so long-term
- Signing Up: Of course pricing will factor in but at the end of this process, your brand needs to make it as easy and attractive as possible for your customer to sign on the dotted line
Post-Purchase Phase (Building Loyalty)
Here’s a bonus consideration: After the customer signs on, maintaining brand consistency is crucial. Don’t be that company who drops focus and leaves customers feeling like they’re nothing more than a sales number! Not only do these keep you Top of Mind but they help ensure positive referrals to future prospective customers. Focus on these areas:
- Post-Purchase Follow-ups: Regular touchpoints with consistent messaging will reinforce brand loyalty
- Loyalty Programs: Show your customer you value them through rewards that align with your brand’s personality and overarching purpose.
Once you have consistency, you’ll need to maintain it.
Once you have consistency, the best way to maintain everything is to assign someone to oversee future messages and materials. Of course, the more channels you’re in and wider your brand, the more time consuming this becomes. Rather than saddle one person on your team who is already wearing a few hats, consider outsourcing this to a fractional brand manager (this is something I offer!) who can dedicate a couple hours each week – or month, depending on your needs.
Schedule a Discovery call today and let’s ensure your brand is being consistently implemented across all of these touch points. We can also explore whether it makes sense to bring a fractional brand manager who can maintain your consistency as you add new materials and communications.
