Your Customer's First Impression

Businesses may never get a second chance to make a good first impression. But when - and where - does that first impression begin?

Human beings are incapable of ingesting, sorting, and rationalizing every single piece of new information presented to them. Not only because there's simply too much stuff out there for the brain to take in. But also because most of it isn’t important to us.

Over millennia we’ve evolved to become selective in what we consciously see, hear, smell, and feel. Most of us don’t notice the change in daylight when the sun comes out from behind a cloud, for example. None of us will pay attention to the 57th time it happened that morning.

Customers Don’t Think In Bullet-Points

It’s impossible to impart every single element of your business proposition, instantly, to every person you’re trying to reach. People don’t think in bullet-points because it’s harder to interpret random abstracted information. What works better is something designed to resonate with how people think and feel.

That’s why you’ll read so much about how business marketing is about "telling stories". It’s because stories are a way to encapsulate information in a way people can easily digest, remember, and recall. Brands will tell their stories in many different ways – through their packaging or their advertising, for example. The goal of the Marketer is to impart the message contained within the story to their audience.

However, what is said is not always what is understood.

When an impulse/message/idea reaches a person’s brain it is interpreted based upon a bazillion factors that may include historical, cultural, ethnic, socio-economic and age-related influences. Whether you see the interpretation as being “right” or “wrong” is ultimately irrelevant: it is how it is. It’s one of the reasons why marketing messages need to be simple in order for them to have half a chance of being understood and (hopefully) spread.

Customers Make Snap Decisions

Once people are exposed to your message, they will interpret it and digest it in their own way – not yours. Once they've made their decision, it’s very difficult to convince them otherwise.

We all make snap decisions. The way someone talks, or looks, or smells, or dresses. The packaging, the pricing, the design of the website, the way the phone is answered. The decision may be right, or it may be wrong. There may be subsequent, compelling data contradicting our initial judgement, but usually (and certainly at the beginning) we'll choose to ignore it. No-one likes to be proven wrong, do they? Our minds are made up, and that’s all there is to it.

In a very short space of time the customer has pieced-together the elements of the story and made up their minds. If the story is confusing or inconsistent, the customer becomes uncomfortable and the story is ignored. If it's seen as compelling, resonating with the customer's own moral/social/political compass and echoing their own opinions, goals or aspirations, then the story is accepted – and embraced.

The First Impression Illusion

It's not that first impressions aren’t important: of course they are. My point is that we don’t know precisely when that first impression was forged in the customer’s mind. We don’t control the combination or timing of the influences ultimately leading the customer to reach their decision.

More often than not, the first time a customer interacts with your brand they’re left with no impression at all. Most people won't have noticed your advertising, your signage, your pricing, the muzak in the elevator, or the color of your necktie. At least, not the first time they interact with you.

There should be a differentiation between a prospective customer’s first contact with a brand, and their first impression of it.

“First Contact” Is Rarely “First Impression”

This is why your story not only has to be something your audience can embrace, but something consistent across every customer touchpoint. We don’t know – or control – the factors used to create the story the customer will tell herself.

You may have a cool logo, a fantastic website, trendy-looking staff uniforms, awesome customer service, and offer the lowest prices in town. But if (in the minds of your customer) your product sucks and your staff are unhelpful then your story isn’t seen as being coherent. If there’s a disconnect in their minds, they’re less likely to advance the potential interaction.

Conversely when an organization – or individual for that matter – is seen as authentic and consistent from whatever angle approached, the story being told is deemed sufficiently consistent to align itself with the greatest number of audience members.

It’s not about spending a fortune redesigning your corporate ID, updating your support desk software or putting a flashy video on your website. It’s about being mindful of every point of contact between you and your audience before, during and after the transaction.

( first published on the KEXINO Small Business Marketing Blog )