Matching Brand Identity to Customer Expectation
Daniel Gitonga
Digital Marketing | SEO, SGE and SEM | Strategy Development | Customer-centric Marketing | Marketing Tech | CIM graduate
In today's competitive market, understanding the complex relationship between brand identity and customer expectations is crucial. The way a business presents itself and its offerings has a significant impact on the type of customers it attracts. This is because each customer has distinct needs, preferences, and behaviors. As a result, businesses must look into customer personas to ensure that their brand identity matches customer expectations.
Aligning your Brand Identity to your Customer Persona
By understanding the interplay between a business's brand identity and customer preferences, businesses can effectively target the right customer segment through tailoring its products and services as well as its unique value propositions to meet specific needs and desires associated by a specific customer segment. This will inturn help in improving customer experience and satisfaction between the business and its customer segments.
1. Understanding the Customer Persona.
At the heart of every business lies the customer, hence a deep understanding of the customer determines the success of a business in terms of presenting its services towards a customer and whether a customer will be interested in the business to make a purchase (brand identity). By understanding the behavioral and psychological aspects of a target audience, businesses can tailor their offerings to meet specific needs and desires. This involves considering factors such as:
2. The Power of Brand Identity
A strong brand identity serves as the foundation for customer perception. It encompasses the brand's values, mission, and unique selling proposition (USP). When a brand's identity aligns with the aspirations and lifestyle of its target audience, it fosters a deep emotional connection. Hence, matching this customer perception of a business to the expectations and preferences of a customer is crucial for the success of a business.
Balancing Exclusivity and Accessability
"The problem is not the price but your targeting strategy" - This is basically a positioning problem rather than a pricing problem.
Why does Omega advertise its latest time pieces with the 007 James Bond movies? Hint: James Bond is the very essence of masculinity and class personified in the big screen.
There are market sectors like fashion, hospitality and technology markets where its is very necessary to understand that there is a fine line between accessability and exclusivity of services provided by businesses to their respective customer segments. Hence, it is important to strike a balance between promotional programs, especially discounts and loyalty programs to avoid diluting the brand identity especially for premium brands while at the same time there are brands that are more inclusive to customers at all price points thus targeting one client segment alienates the other customer segments.
Case Example:
1. Retail Industry
The retail industry often grapples with the tension between exclusivity and accessibility, specifically the fashion and luxury sectors where brand exclusivity for different brands is a high determinant for the kind of customers who will visit your store.
Sometimes offering discount campaigns for brands like Levis, Giordano, Rolex, Gucci and other high premium fashion brands takes away the exclusivity enjoyed by such brands, thus driving away customers who want to enjoy the exclusivity related to such brands, inturn making these brands lose their identity in certain geographic markets due to failing to understand the relation between brand identity and customer expectation and relevance in terms of customer preference and behavior.
领英推荐
As discounts are a strategic approach to create loyalty between customers and brands, these discounts should be inline with the brand and sensible to customers associated with exclusive brands, thus there will be no need for clearance sales with excessive discounts which take away the exclusivity of premium brands thus diluting such brands leading to reduction in sales revenue.
2. Hospitality Industry
The hospitality industry provides an excellent example of brand identity and customer expectation. The star rating system clearly differentiates hotels based on their level of service and luxury, which also determines the pricing of services as well as the type of customers that will benefit from different hotels with different star rankings.
A hotel that is ranking between 5 and 6 stars never compromises on quality hence a premium price is also associated with the services provided by hotels ranking 5 star and above as compared to 4 star hotels that also provide the same but dont have the exclusivity factor as they try to be inclusive by offering different services at different pricepoints. 5 Star hotels have the exclusivity factor hence services should be aimed towards customers whose preferences veer towards uniqueness and exclusivity as only a few can experience such services, thus targeting customers who have these behavioral and psychographic traits is beneficial to matching a 5 star hotel brand identity to this customer's expectation.
Even hospitals take the same approach as there are hospitals with the premium factor in terms of patient treatment quality, service and technology hence attracting premium prices for their treatment services while others offer affordable services but are more inclusive to patients from different price brackets.
Key Points to Consider for Brand Relevance and Customer Expectation.
1. Understanding your ideal customer:
Do you have a clear picture of who would most benefit from your product and what motivates them to buy?
2. Precise targeting methods:
Are you using the right channels (social media platforms, search engines, etc.) to reach your target audience with the right messaging?
3. Relevant messaging:
Is your marketing communication tailored to the specific needs and interests of your ideal customer?
Conclusion
In conclusion, understanding the intricate relationship between brand identity and customer expectation is crucial for long-term success. By tailoring offerings to specific customer segments and maintaining brand consistency, businesses can build strong brand loyalty and drive revenue growth. As the competitive landscape continues to evolve, businesses must remain agile and adapt their strategies to meet the ever-changing needs and preferences of their target audience.