What’s your brand doing for you? You brand is a collection of all the moments when customers interact with your business that add up to the opinion of you they carry around with them. It’s not just your advertising: everything affects your brand, from what your ads say to the sites or publications that host them. Not just the products you offer but their design, their price point and packaging. Your brand isn’t just what your sales teams say about your business, it’s what your customer service agents say when they pick up the phone to disappointed consumers.

All these moments create an impression in your customers’ minds of the promises your brand makes. Those are specific promises, around prices or what your service can do. There are also implied promises created by the tone, framing and wording of your adverts, suggesting that using your business might be a luxurious, pampering experience, or that you’re direct, efficient and good value. It’s as important to fulfil these promises, even if they aren’t the sort of thing that would see you in trouble with the trades descriptions act.

The first thing you need to do is learn exactly what your customers are thinking about your business. Whether you’re new to the world of marketing or an experienced hand, it’s possible to be caught out and surprised by the impression you’ve made as it’s created by such a complex cloud of factors.

Gathering the necessary data in house isn’t possible for a while range of businesses: only the biggest of brands can support their own dedicated market research teams. What you need is to find a market research agency you can work with to form a productive partnership and build a long term relationship that provides vital data you can inject into your decision-making process over the course of time. If you work with a firm like Attest, brand tracker surveys can inform you exactly what customers think of your brand, of your competitors and most importantly of all, why.

Once you know the promises your brand is making, you assess your own ability to meet those promises, and make the decision about whether to consciously lean into the brand you’ve created with future marketing, products and projects or begin difficult job of pivoting your brand to more accurately represent the business you’re actually running.

Whatever you choose, the key to your success is in knowing just what your brand promises and making sure customers or clients aren’t left feeling disappointed.