What we're getting into.

David Aaker, the godfather of brand strategy, says that it takes seven to ten clear, consistent, repetitive touches with your brand for a customer to understand who you are, what you stand for, and why they should care. Most companies respond to this reality by developing the communication checklists when they launch a new product or service – white papers, executive presentations, positioning statements, etc. These documents and field support materials are supposed to get everyone aligned. They don’t. Why? Because the seven to ten touches are about building relationships and that requires people, not documents, to be aligned with other people.

Your team needs to understand that the touches are all about understanding your customer’s hopes, desires and needs and where that customer sits with the customer purchase funnel. Too often the story being told through the communication checklist is self-involved. It speaks to the importance of the product or service, the differentiation within the competitive space, and the “features and benefits” of the product or service. These checklists miss two major opportunities to align internal teams and connect with customers.

First, they do not consistently and clearly make brand promises aligned to customer needs. “Where does my customer sit in the purchase funnel and how can we get the awareness ball rolling?” We see clients who skip awareness completely in the hopes that every potential customer gets “relevancy” and will move with them directly to “differentiation”. This is foolhardy and misses an enormous opportunity for your team to connect with your customers in a meaningful way. By taking the time to align your team around relevancy issues you are, in fact, becoming a trusted partner to your customers. You are thinking about and solving their problems. You are helping them to understand why the best thing for their business is to partner with your business. Awareness alignment creates value for you and value for them.

Second, the checklists do not make an emotional connection with the customer that drives a sustainable branded experience. “How will this offering make my customer feel about our brand? Will they clearly understand what we can do to improve their life? And how can I make that customer care about our ongoing relationship? This is where you can begin to build an ongoing narrative that will align your team with your customers. Use of the customer psychographic profile to identify where the customer is in the purchase funnel, what their concerns are and how to provide essential (but too often missing) focus to keep the awareness ball rolling. Determine which team members will touch the customer at which stage of the engagement. Develop multiple opportunities to break through the bottlenecks using “if/then” statements to attack problems in different ways. The white papers and industry accolades are important, and have their place later in the conversation, but at this point your team must develop an awareness story that drives home relevancy for your customers.

One of my technology clients has customers that are business and technical decision makers with multiple pain points and concerns. Early communications to these constituencies address what promises he will make to solve problems and grow opportunities. My client must gain the trust of his customers by proving that he is more passionate about their problems than his technology. Only then will the product specific material he wants to impart feel relevant.  We recently participated in a product launch for another client – a retailer – that was followed by two day breakout meetings for each of her internal teams. Members of each group developed ingenious ways to promote the products and drive sales. Unfortunately, this process was doomed because the teams were not in synch about the narrative. One team wanted to push Web 2.0 opportunities to drive sales while another team wanted to push discounts through distributors to gain the same increase to sales. Well-meaning, dedicated people running in different directions, giving different messages, are bad for the brand – internally and externally. Nobody wanted to talk about the brand promise or about the customer hopes, desires, or needs. Web 2.0 or discounts can become a vehicle for communicating the narrative but they are not the narrative.

Use the first seven to ten touches to develop a narrative that solves problems and creates opportunities for your customers. Live in their shoes. Ensure that each of your team members is prepared to support that narrative, to pick up where the last person left off. If your product or service is truly better than the competition, the differentiation process should speak for itself. But don’t rush to that stage before creating a connection that answers relevancy in a meaningful, engaged, and trusted way.