Recently I stumbled upon Seth Godin’s typically erudite definition of brand value. According to Seth…”a brand’s value is merely the sum total of how much extra people will pay, or how often they choose, the expectations, memories, stories and relationships of one brand over the alternatives.” Hmmm.
It struck me that expectation and relationship are particularly relevant to those charged with managing and enhancing a brand’s digital presence. As each is a full post in itself, this post deals with the notion of expectation.
The digital environment is remarkably caustic – it can strip away the wishful thinking of brand managers or board members in an instant. It can efficiently remove years of expensive branding from the surface of your product in seconds. As such your digital presence can provide a brutally honest reflection of the real nature of your brand – and the online experience that it provides can have a considerable impact.
How considerable? According to the findings of the 2009 Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report, 65% of consumers in the study reported that they have had a digital experience change their opinion about a brand. 97% of them report that experience influencing whether or not they purchased a product or service from that brand”.
This is not necessarily bad news
Depending upon your perspective this can be good or bad news. Done correctly, your digital presence can extend the relevance of a brand and ultimately engage a whole new segment of prospective customers.
However, the blade cuts both ways. Provide an experience which is inconsistent with how the customer would expect your brand to behave and you may end up with the customer using a blog post, a tweet, or a negative post on a review site to rally support and define your brand for you.
Employing new methods to engage customers is only part of the picture. All too often it’s the basics that let a brand down. The choices you make about seemingly benign web content can send powerful messages about your brand and what it really stands for.
It can be what you don’t say that counts…
For example, absence of meaningful brand credentials (a favourite of brands that dominate their home jurisdictions) can be taken as arrogance. Similarly, failure to provide sufficiently detailed product information can be viewed as closed and defensive. Limited or outmoded contact methods say a great deal about how approachable, helpful and customer-centric a brand really is.
If you don’t think that these things affect the way your brand is perceived, ponder this…
- 41% decided not to make a planned purchase because they couldn’t readily find a piece of information about the product or service. (JupiterResearch, September 2007)
- Online businesses lose as many as 6% of consumers due to a lack of online product information. (Allurent, January 2008)
- 94% of UK shoppers leave sites with inadequate customer service. (Econsultancy, July 2009)
The features, options and content that you include say a lot about the nature of the relationship between your brand and its customers. With this in mind it is good practice to regularly review the components of your digital presence individually and collectively to see if your brand values are truly reflected.
If your brand is meant to be helpful do your offer features and options that are consistent with that position? If friendly and responsive, do you actually provide genuine feedback options to allow customers to tell you what they think. If your brand is truly innovative, prove it with examples and blog posts about your latest innovations instead of just telling your customers.
It always pays to remember that it is often what goes unsaid which speaks loudest about a brand and its true values. It is important to be aware of the messages that you send.
in senior marketing, online media and digital brand management roles. Passionate about the customer experience and cautious of false prophets, I help create genuine long term value within the digital & social media landscape. 
