The Art of Perception (Part III): Are Customers Getting The Right Perception of Your Business?
In Part I of this series, we discussed how perception can affect buying habits. In Part II, we saw specifically how this works. You don’t want to buy a Ferrari in a dirty back alley for example. The environment and the way you do business needs to reflect the product or service you are selling.
As you may know, it is easy to look objectively at someone else’s decisions and judge their effectiveness. Yes, Italian marble fountains in the showroom and oak desks mean prestige, trust, and Ferraris.
But what represents your product or service?
For Starters…
It is important to realize that every aspect of your business influences perception. The way you dress for a business meeting, the design of your website, the look of your business card, the colour of the drapes in your office, the way you recycle. Even things like the car you drive or the places where you eat.
For some of us, like the work-from-home freelancer, we aren’t likely to be “seen” at any particular restaurant. But imagine what perception customers would have if they saw Ronald McDonald standing in line at Wendy’s for a lunchtime burger…
So for starters, consider every aspect of what your customers/clients see of you, including:
- Logo
- Tag lines and slogans
- Business cards
- Website and/or blog
- Advertising (print ads, banners, Google Adwords, etc.)
- Phone message recordings
- Brochures and other marketing materials
- Store front
- The way you dress and groom yourself for direct contact with customers/clients
Develop your own list, and consider every point. Also try to keep an objective eye here, if at all possible. What would you think if you saw all these separately? What would you think looking at all of these together?
In short, what perception do you have of yourself based only on these items?
Chances are, there is room for improvement. Even companies like Microsoft and GM must constantly work on customer perception. Decide:
- How you want customers/clients to perceive your business.
- How you can achieve it.
What Are Your Keywords?
Deciding how you want customers to perceive you can be deceptively complicated. It is no secret that even the best marketers out there freeze up when they try to decide how to market themselves.
So crafting customer perception is no small thing. It helps though to start with the basics. Jot down in one sentence exactly what your company does. Think in terms of benefits, not features. For example, if you sell WordPress plugins, then your sentence won’t be “sell WordPress plugins”, it would be “make it easier for people to use WordPress”.
See the difference? Not only is the second more colourful and descriptive, but it focuses what your core business really is (i.e. helping people, not just selling products).
If you feel it is important, add a couple more sentences to describe the nuances of your business. But don’t write an essay. Boil it down as much as possible until you have the essence of your business.
Now we boil it down even further. Create a list of keywords based on this sentence, just as you might a blog post or an SEO web page. If you are a florist, some obvious keywords would be “flower”, “arrangements”, “gift ideas”. But what about words like “fun”, and “happy”, and “celebration”? These are even better because they deal with emotions, not objects or ideas.
And we all know from Marketing 101 that connecting emotionally with your customers will make all the difference.
One More Easy Tip
If you want an objective assessment on how your customers perceive you, why don’t you ask them?
Recently, James at Men With Pens asked their readers what people thought of the look of their blog, and what they could do to make it better. That post and the comments opened a whole can of worms. Many people chimed in with suggestions for a website redesign.
But what I think surprised James was the fact that different readers saw different things. Everyone knew them as bloggers, and many knew that Men With Pens was a business name as well, but few knew exactly all the services they offered. (In fact, this is the case for many bloggers — I found out recently that few readers know exactly what I do as well!)
Just by asking for customer feedback, you can find out exactly how some of them perceive you right now. You can do this by emailing them for a quick impression of your website, sending a “How Are We Doing?” survey, or if you have a blog, simply asking them like James did. However, I would recommend making it as easy for your clients to respond as possible. You don’t want them to start thinking that they are now working for you!
Armed with this new-found information, you can decide what holes are in your customers’ perceptions, what you need to stress better, and what you should fix. We’ll discuss this next in Part IV of the series.
Until then, have any tips for discovering customer perception? Let us know by leaving a comment below!
~Graham
Tags: customer feedback, Ferrari, marketing, McDonald's, men with pens, perception, Wendy's
