What is brand perception, and why does it matter? consumers’ perceptions of a brand influence customer loyalty and demand. Measuring brand perception is how business leaders ensure they are having the right impact on their audience.
Your choice of brand is related to your thoughts and feelings about that company.
Other consumers are also influenced by brand perception. A majority of consumers (77%) say that they have made a purchase based only on the brand name.
How people perceive your brand is extremely important in today’s competitive market. People associate different thoughts and feelings with different companies, and that is why people will choose one product over another that has identical features.
Let’s explore brand perception, and why it’s so important.
What Is Brand Perception?
The customer’s perception of a brand is their overall opinion of the brand, based on their experiences and feelings. A company’s reputation is based on a customer’s past experiences with the business.
The way you connect with your consumers on an emotional level is important for maintaining their loyalty.
When people are making a purchase or trying to choose between competing products, they always consider how they feel about the brand. Most customers will do research to help enhance their perception, including reading reviews, comparing options with friends, and chatting with sales people.
If your customers have a positive opinion of your brand, they are more likely to continue using it. How people act towards Apple and the iPhone is interesting. People who own iPhones tend to feel a sense of pride because of the popular perception that iPhones are high-quality and luxurious products.
If customers are loyal to a brand, they are more likely to speak positively about it online and recommend it to family and friends. This improves the chances that the company will grow.
The Core Elements
When you are aware of how the public sees your company, you can start to control the way people see it, and take steps to make sure that consumers are aware of what makes your company different. Companies can improve their relationship with their audience by actively investing in brand building and brand awareness campaigns.
This generally means attending to different aspects of your brand that affect how people see it. Your customers’ perceptions of your company are influenced by several factors.
These often fall into categories like:
Emotional
Emotional connections with customers are often created through a mix of great customer service and strategic advertising. Great customer service can make people feel better about your company, and ads that draw people in can create certain emotions in your target audience.
Visual
Although we’re taught not to judge a book by its cover, we often end up doing it anyway. How you present your brand will have an immediate impact on how customers perceive it.
The colors you choose for your business can have an emotional impact on your customers, just like your logo or website design.
Personality
How your brand is perceived by consumers can be influenced by the personality of your brand. When you read a hilarious tweet from Wendy’s or see an ad from Old Spice, you probably feel happy or amused.
Senses
A company can improve the way customers see its brand by appealing to multiple senses. Some brands also use audio to build a connection with their audience. This can include using jingles or sound signatures.
Some companies use certain smells and tastes to inspire a response, like Disney does.
Why Is Brand Perception Important?
Understanding how customers see your brand, and making improvements based on that understanding is how you make sure you’re creating the right relationships with your target audience. To achieve this, brands want their customers to have a positive perception of them.
The more your customers like you, your company, your products, and your services, the more likely they are to choose you over your competitors. The more time you spend building your brand’s perception, the more you are investing in its equity.
This means that your products are more valuable because they are associated with your brand name and identity.
People who are influenced by a brand’s equity are more likely to buy that product again, even if there are cheaper options available.
This also indicates that you have a greater chance of bring in new patrons to your enterprise because 60 percent of customers tell people they know about the companies they appreciate. As traditional marketing techniques are becoming less effective, word-of-mouth marketing is becoming more useful.
What brand perception are you trying to create? How can you attract potential customers and set yourself apart from the competition? A strong brand can help you attract top talent to your company.
Your company’s brand perception may encourage talented professionals throughout the world to pursue more meaningful roles with your company.
How to Measure Brand Perception
Measuring brand perception isn’t as complex as it seems. It is generally a good idea to commit to regular brand perception measurement as it helps you keep your finger on the pulse of your audience’s attitude towards your company.
By measuring brand perception metrics over time, you can set benchmarks and determine what changes in your customer’s attitudes are driven by improvements.
The best way to measure brand perception is to talk to your target audience. Directly speaking with your customer gives you a beneficial understanding of their thoughts and feelings regarding your brand.
Brand focus groups and forums
Even though it may be old-fashioned, collecting information from people by asking for their opinions on your brand is still a great way to collect valuable information. People who use your products or services can give you insights about the positives and negatives of your brand.
active online communities where people might be talking about your company or the services you offer. If you’re finding it difficult, you can also try to connect with people on social media platforms.
Your social media followers are already interested in your brand, so they may be willing to chat with you. This also applies to the people on your email marketing lists.
Customer Perception
This refers to what the customer thinks of your business or products. It summarizes how customers feel about your brand, including every direct or indirect experience they’ve had with your company. If you keep track of how customers perceive your business, you can figure out what parts of the customer experience are causing problems and make improvements.
In order to gauge customer perception, you will need to collect various kinds of data that are both qualitative and quantitative in nature. In order to gain an accurate understanding of how customers perceive your product, you should consult resources such as product usage reports, NPS® surveys, and customer interviews. If you are not already collecting this data, you should consider using customer feedback tools to help you get this information from your customers.
Why Customer Perception Matters
One third of customers will leave a brand they love after one bad experience, according to a recent survey. This means that in the near future, customers’ views of your brand and how good your service is could be more important than things like how much your product costs, what features it has, or how easy it is to use.
If you’re not investing in your customer experience and perception, you’re at risk of falling behind. According to McKinsey, 50% of customer-care leaders rate “investing in new technologies” as one of their top priorities over the next five years. Many businesses are already taking stock of their support and services efforts.
Since customer perception is important, let’s explore some ways to improve and support it in your business.
Ways to Improve Customer Perception
Look inward.
Are you putting process over people?
The main obstacle that businesses have to face is their lack of customer success. Too much process and protocol can interfere with real, human interactions.
You should evaluate your business approach to make sure it is not impeding your progress. Ask yourself:
- Are you being proactive or reactive in your communications with customers?
- Are you getting to them before a problem arises, or scrambling to collect all the necessary information you need as the problem escalates?
Strike an emotional chord with your customers.
According to Alan Zorfas and Daniel Leemon, the best way to increase customer value is to create a connection with them on an emotional level. This involves understanding what motivates them and fulfilling their needs, even if these needs are not explicitly stated.
Think about how your actions and words carry a lot of weight with customers. To develop strong relationships and promote a positive experience, you must show a long-term interest and dedication to the relationship at every point of contact.
This task requires you to not just listen to a customer’s needs and goals, but to actively try to understand what they are saying and what they might be leaving out.
This attention to detail can be easily achieved if you apply sound and communication expert, Julian Treasure’s, simple listening acronym, RASA:
- Receive
- Appreciate
- Summarize
- Ask
When you “extract” information from customers, you are actually forcing them to listen to you with intent. This also gives the customer the permission to speak openly about their concerns, issues, or complaints. The more information someone provides, the more chances you have to figure out what motivates and drives them, so you can better help them achieve what they want in a kind and considerate way.
Lean on positive language.
Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, a researcher who study positivity, suggests that positive emotions have the power to open us. In other words, these feelings improve our ability to see and understand different perspectives and possibilities.
Some people think it is not appropriate to introduce positive emotions in the business world, because they believe that emotions should be minimized in that setting. customer satisfaction could decline if employees are not allowed to express their interpersonal emotions
People providing services who have daily interactions with customers sometimes develop feelings for them. The expectation from these employees to suppress natural emotions, positive and negative alike, is a mistake,” Yagil explains.
“The expression of natural positive emotions is well received by the other party and is likely to contribute to customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.”
Commit to consistency.
Evaluating consistency is important to ensure its role in your customer onboarding process.
To establish a positive customer perception, you should make sure that the transition from sales to support or customer success is smooth and represents how you want people to see your brand.
It is helpful to have core operating values like respect, integrity, and customer focus to serve as a framework for all of your brand interactions in order to achieve a harmonious experience.
This means that there is no need to question how to act, what to think, or how to approach a customer problem. You just do it. If the company keeps up its good work, customers will begin to always expect a high level of quality.
There should be flexibility in how you adopt and apply these values. This will help you to sound more personal and less like you are reading from a script during customer interactions.
Fill skill gaps before they become evident.
Modern customer success or customer service professionals know how to treat customers like humans — not just ticket numbers. This attitude extends to every interaction with a customer, from the first moment they reach out for support to far beyond the resolution of their issue. The subjects in question know when it is time to take initiative and ask further questions for clarification purposes, as well as what to do when they do not have the answer immediate. The ability to provide excellent customer service, product knowledge, and a passion for the company’s products and services are all skills that are important for creating a positive customer perception.
This approach to customer service and relationship building requires proper training and a commitment to learning. As the industry standard changes to meet the demands of informed customers, people who interact with customers need to keep up.
It is important for both you and your organization to be aware of the skills and service areas that need improvement to stay competitive. You should be willing to invest in software and training to help close the skills gap.
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