A brand is so much more than just a logo or a clever tagline. It’s the image of the company, the perception people have of it, and the relationship your clients have with it. If you want to create a successful brand, you need to make sure all your points of contact and marketing touch points are on point.
That there is cohesion and that everything is on brand.
What Is a Point of Contact?
This can be an individual or a department in your company that interacts directly with your customers. When it comes to creating a consistent customer service experience, ensuring that your points of contact are knowledgeable and fully equipped to provide the best possible experience is of paramount importance.
Examples of Points of Contact:
Customer Service Department
Your customer service department could be in branch, online or a hybrid of both, or you could outsource this function to a professional and knowledgeable call center virtual assistant. So not only do the points of contact need to be uniform and consistent, but so too does the experience of customers interacting via the different communication channels of your business.
Customer Communication Channels
These include the way your customer service representatives interact with your customers via:
- Your Website & Live Chat
- Phone
- Social Media Channels
- TikTok
Salespeople
Very often, the first interaction a potential client has with your business is through interacting with a member of your sales team. It is critically important that your sales people are conveying the right impression to potential customers. That they’ve received adequate training, that they are friendly and personable and that they have an excellent understanding of your business, your products and your services.
Managers
If a customer has a query that your customer service team weren’t able to, or authorized to resolve, the query would then be escalated to a manager. So your managers are also points of contact for your business.
A client coming to your website and interacting with a client service representative via live chat and a client who is speaking to a manager on the phone should be having the same experience. And someone interacting with your company on a social media channel needs to have the exact same brand experience.
How do you do this? You consolidate it all into a brand style guide and you create SOPs – standard operating procedures.
What Is a Brand Style Guide?
A Brand Style guide is basically an instruction manual for all your employees and subcontractors on how to present your brand to the world.
It should be very detailed and should address all the visual details and includes your brand’s voice, tone, the language you use, the words you choose, the personality and messaging.
Details of Your Brands Identity
- Your company logo – the full logo, secondary logo and icons
- Defines your color palette – providing the hex codes so your employees are able to duplicate the exact shade of aqua on company documents.
- Typography – which fonts, font sizes and spacing to use
- Images and image guidelines for artwork, illustrations, and photographs
- Design elements
- Voice and tone – the language you use and the emotion you want to convey
Now, as an entrepreneur who is just starting out, points of contact and marketing touchpoints may not be front of mind. You have a host of other tasks that require your focus – we get that. These are things that you’ll pay attention to ‘later’, right? The thing is, it makes more sense to do the following.
Start with the End in Mind
This way you make sure that you have the basics covered, that you have a clear idea of what you want and a vision of how you plan on achieving it. By having a brand guide from the beginning, it makes you consider the kind of brand you want to build and it ensures you start creating your brand from day one. This makes it easier to build on as you grow.
Standardization
This brings us to standardization.
Is your sales person using Times New Roman in his emails and his name in red, size 16 , while your customer service agent prefers Tahoma , size 10 and pink?
Standardize your company email signatures. And it doesn’t have to be difficult, Hubspot’s Free Email Signature Generator is easy to use and creates a professional email signature in minutes.
Employees and contractors should be provided with Standard Operating Procedures or SOPs – which outlines the preferred way of doing things.
Provide them with the letterhead template you want them to use.
In terms of other points of contact and touchpoints, ensure there are standardized templates for your newsletter and all marketing collateral, including social media templates.This all ties in with your brand, and creates cohesion.
Does everyone have clear guidelines regarding what language to use? Is communication clear, easy to understand and free from jargon?
Why Are We Doing All This?
We’re doing this to reinforce the impression your brand creates in the mind of your customers. By keeping it consistent and repeating it throughout all your points of contact, you’re creating a strong connection with your audience.
Revealing your brand’s personality and reinforcing it regularly helps you to stand out from the crowd. And this engenders loyalty – people love buying from brands they love.
The Brands We Love
If you’re in need of inspiration on how to do this really well. Go and have a look at the brands you know and love, and what they are doing well. If we look at Nike, their brand identity is positive, motivating and inspiring. Their ‘Just Do It’ slogan encompasses grit and determination.
There is a Smoothie company that operates in the United Kingdom, called Innocent . Their tagline is ‘natural, delicious drinks that do good for the planet’. Check them out on Facebook . All marketing touchpoints and points of contact reflect the brand and their values. From their ‘About Us’ to the fonts they use, and a social media marketing team that are pure genius.
You Don’t Have to Do It Alone
Book a Discovery Call today and let’s talk through your requirements. We’ll see which tasks we can take off your hands which will free up your time, so you can get more done. Or even enjoy the odd day off.
We look forward to being of service.
