Perception: Is it that clear?

In business there are many things that are taken for granted. It could be your customers, your colleagues, or simply that your chair has enough back support (sorry if that's not the case). The way you see your business and your company "lingo" is something you might take for granted as well. The way you view your products (services, skills ect.) can have the same effect. The description of a product, service, or skill could be easily misinterpreted even when you think it's black and white. Many times this is where a disconnect happens with customers. They could either have the wrong perception from marketing collateral, information on a website, or the wrong expectation from any channel of information. How do businesses make sure that they can alleviate false perceptions? Insert thought provoking quote here:

As a business, how do you make sure people understand your product/service/skill from their own eyes, not yours? While this certainly isn't a definitive guide, I wanted to share 3 useful tactics to hone your messaging and positioning in order to maintain a linear perception.

1. Ask - Find a few people outside of your company and ask them what you do/what you make/what you offer ect. 1 of 3 things will most likely happen. A. They will be often able to accurately say what you do. B. They will have no idea (then we get into brand awareness ect.) or C. They will confidently tell you and be way off the mark of what you truly do. C. is where you can dive in and uncover why they thought the way they did, what influenced them, and who influenced them. This will start to show you how to shape your messaging and collateral to set the right perception.
2. Tell - Tell someone who has not heard of your company, your elevator pitch. Then ask them to use their own words to repeat what you just said. If they struggle to do this, take a look at your elevator pitch and make it even simpler. Undoubtedly, throughout a sales cycle or marketing campaign you will go more in depth. However, to start creating a uniform perception, you must start with the basics and progress forward.

1. Read - We live in a world where one bad review can ruin a company. Just ask Goodfellas Distillery in Lexington, KY. One of their employees kicked internet famous pizza reviewer Dave Portnoy (President of Barstool Sports) out of their restaurant. The result was hundreds of 1 star reviews from fans of the show taking Goodfella's rating from the high 4 star range to the 2 star range. Take 15-30 minutes out of your day to take a deeper dive and read reviews or other articles written about your company. Are the things they are saying accurate? Is their perception skewed? Are they right and you just don't want to admit it? The key out of all these three tips is to find where the disconnect is (if any). It isn't rare to see a company have an amazing website, collateral, product, service, and still fail to communicate a uniform message. The things that seem black and white obvious to you, might be totally different to your customer.

As always, in business there are cases outside of these tips and businesses who purposefully want the perception of their customers to change. Tide used your perception of "clean" in the Super Bowl ads to turn them all into Tide Ads. I simply hope that this article provided a little bit of interest or provoked a thought that wouldn't have happened otherwise.