Brand Promise. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But what does it really mean to make and support these statements, and what is the cost of less-than-perfect delivery? In truth, achieving the outcomes that delivering on this can accomplish requires near-flawless execution in making, delivering, keeping, and reinforcing the brand promise.

While appropriately positioning the organization and the development of a branding and messaging platform are critical first steps, there must also be steadfast, across-the-board organizational commitment to developing and implementing the structure, systems, and staffing needed to effectively deliver on the promise.

Our experience shows us that the benefits of making and keeping a brand promise are well worth it. Here’s a quick primer on our point-of-view:

Defining (and Making) the Promise. Your promise needs to be relevant, compelling, believable and achievable – and supported by the values that drive your organization – to make a deep connection with your target audiences. To define it, you must understand your organization, your customers and your competition.

Delivering the Promise. The responsibility for delivering the promise message falls primarily on the sales and marketing team, while management and employees in the field deliver on the elements of the promise on a daily basis.

Keeping the Promise. Your success hinges on the competency and commitment of line staff, IT, call center, outsourced vendors, etc. to deliver on the promise at each Touchpoint. So much of your relationship with customers, and of your ability to keep your promises to them, will depend on the precise coordination and structure of your systems and staff. Leverage the processes, procedures and systems needed to effectively communicate with each other, and your customers will experience the positive results.

Feedback: Have we kept our promise? The only way to know that you are making, delivering, and keeping the right promises is to continually get feedback from your customers. Utilizing Customer Listening Tools – including those in MCorp’s Customer Experience Mapping toolkit – can be qualitative, or it can be a formal, quantitative process for measuring gaps between customer satisfaction, attitudes, and needs. Finally, processes must be in place for easily and systematically collecting, reviewing, and acting upon this feedback.

Those organizations that successfully connect with customers and deliver on a relevant promise reap huge, quantifiable benefits in areas such as retention, loyalty, customer NPV (“Net Present Value”) and LCV (“Lifetime Customer Value”). The flip side for those organizations which promise one thing and deliver an experience that just doesn’t match up is the cynicism, increased churn, and reduced loyalty and satisfaction which can negatively affect relationships with both internal (employees) and external (customers, analysts, partners, etc.) audiences.

Why benchmark? And what should you benchmark against?

We were asked an interesting question during a new business pitch the other day. In the middle of our discussion of the “Touchpoint Performance Dashboard” and our ability to help clients both understand key metrics and develop benchmarks for ongoing performance measurement, a senior marketing exec piped in: “What is benchmarking?”

After a (very brief) pause to see if they were serious, I quickly dove in. But the question was illuminating. How many marketers – in this age of management focus on ROI and performance measurement – wonder what to track to prove how well they’re doing?

Our definition of benchmarking is the act of comparing a specific measurement (or set of measurements) to a benchmark. External benchmarking compares internal measurements to measurements from external sources (prospects, competitors, non-competitive functional leaders). Internal benchmarking compares internal measurements (typically by division, process, unit, customer or segment) against other internal measures.

A recent engagement on the process of identifying, codifying and transferring internal best practices fell into the internal benchmarking category. The question we answered was, “How can we (organizationally) find out what we (individually or at the business unit level) already know?”

Once they got it, this client was really interested in external benchmarking, followed by a dialogue around what they’re trying to accomplish: Would you like to benchmark yourselves against best practices in your industry? Or would you like to benchmark yourselves against perceptions of the ideal? Or do you want to benchmark performance against the ideal as perceived by the most profitable, loyal customers you have, and others like them?

The answers, unsurprisingly, were yes, yes, yes and yes.

But we’ve been able to narrow this down somewhat to those metrics that really matter, with the objectives of helping our clients adopt best practices and increasing performance. But benchmarking should be treated as a continuous process in which organizations continually seek to challenge their practices and improve upon them. While many organizations benchmark on weekly or monthly performance data, we’ve found that quarterly measures are most manageable, while still occurring often enough to incent positive change.

The approach you’ll take is driven by exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, and what you plan to with the data once it’s been gathered and analyzed.

There are many things that you could choose to benchmark against. But do you need to benchmark against all of them? Probably not. Read part 2 of this series, for our perspective on what you should measure (vs. what you can), and why understanding the relationships between various performance measures is a primary objective of benchmarking.

Direct response doesn’t mean you should ditch your brand platform for a few basis points. In fact, it may end up costing you way more.

Online and off, direct marketing exists for a primary purpose: to sell stuff. But whether products or services, many marketers lose sight of the potential for brand building in pursuit of higher open and click-through rates, greater response numbers, and more dollars generated.

The metrics are compelling: If you’re lucky enough to have response rates of 4% in a traditional DM program, the other 96% of recipients still see your message – and have the ability to be positively (or negatively) influenced by your brand as a result. By driving brand messaging, promises and key attributes throughout the visual and verbal elements of your letter, package or email, you can start building awareness, knowledge and preference.  Or, this touchpoint can help to drive prospects (or current customers that aren’t re-purchasing today) away from your brand.

In an online environment – let’s call it Google Adwords – an above-average (well performing) campaign, your click-through rate (CTR) should be around 2% or a little better. This means that for each click, 49 searchers – typing in keywords relevant to your business – have been exposed to your message. No, it isn’t much room. But you can make it work for you, and your brand.

By all means, sell your product or service. Testing will show you how to best do this. But be sure to educate all recipients on your brand. Though the results won’t show up on your ROI dashboard today, the seeds you plant may sprout when you least expect it.

Creating brand value is not a static process. A continual cycle of monitoring and assessment is key to maintaining relevance – and increasing value.

Building and maintaining a strong brand is not a simple task. In some companies, the hardest step is gaining a top-down organizational commitment. For those that do, the rewards are great. The following five steps can serve as an initial guide.

Step 1: Assessment

Understand your brand. What are the internal and external perceptions? How do your key audiences see you versus your competition? Are they aware? Engaged? Where are the gaps in your brands performance?  Brand research is the only way to effectively assess where you stand, and why.

Step 2: Strategy

Prioritize communication of rational and emotional perceptions that communicate key customer benefits, as well as the drivers of brand loyalty, repurchase and engagement.  Through a quantifiable understanding of what drives value for your brand, brand strategy will reinforce desired perceptions and behaviors.

Step 3: Architecture

Architect a strategic brand hierarchy that effectively communicates brand and messaging priorities through product and service lines, divisional and/or subsidiary relationships, geographies, segments and distribution channels.

Step 4: Application

Be relentlessly consistent with the delivery and control of your brand experience across all channels. Ensure that your brand is consistently – and effectively – delivered across all major categories of customer touchpoints, including static (such as print ads or direct mail), interactive (including web and online) and human (sales team, call centers, etc.).

Step 5: Monitoring

Brands must be maintained and monitored to ensure that they retain relevance and importance with key audiences. Assign explicit responsibility for custodianship and conduct periodic brand audits and tracking studies – leveraging your own methodologies, or a proven tool such as Brand Mapping – to provide ongoing market-driven feedback.

Ten considerations for naming your company, product or service.

The right name combines the strengths and significance of your company, product or service into a single word or phrase. So how do you create a name that is both intelligent and memorable, and sets you apart from the rest?

1. Is it informative? A name should help identify the company’s industry, or the application of its product or service. It should also suggest size. A company with a national presence should not have a “boutique” sounding name, but rather a name which says “we own the turf.”

2. Is it memorable? If a product or company has a memorable name, it will be easier for prospects and customers to request it or recall it. A memorable company or product name also facilitates sales through word of mouth, and is more easily found on the web.

3. Does it spark curiosity? Sparking human curiosity is the best way to grab and hold a prospect’s attention. Whenever appropriate, use elements of wit, mystery or humor to engage your audience.

4. Is it clearly differentiated from other product and company names? In markets flooded with new products or several similar sounding company names (such as high-tech or financial services), it’s critical to stand apart from the competition with a name that is distinctive.

5. Is it easy to pronounce and spell? If a name is easy to pronounce and spell, it helps the product or company project a customer-friendly image. This can be especially important in consumer and technology-related businesses, and can be key to “findability” online.

6. Does it work internationally? Many American brand names have failed in the international marketplace because they meant something absurd (“Nova” in Spanish-speaking countries) or offensive (“Supra” in Arabic countries) in other cultures. Check the meanings of name candidates in different languages.

7. Can it be protected? A name that is purely descriptive or generic in nature (such as The Moneysaver) is difficult to trademark and protect.

8. Will it be appropriate in five years? Ten? Twenty? Names tied to trends or that age quickly (remember “New Coke”?) are quickly outdated. Seek names that have a timeless quality.

9. How well can the name and visual brand work together as a unit? A great name is enhanced by a strong visual identity that supports its personality, its history, or the name itself.  (Think Apple, Wells Fargo and Google).

10. Do you like it? One of the most important tests a name must pass is the visceral one. It should appeal to your gut as well as your mind.

It’s well past time to look at social media as just another channel, and start getting involved in the conversation.

Recent survey data published by Knowledge Networks a couple of months ago – and written about in Adweek to some fairly enthusiastic online comments – came to what sounds like a surprising conclusion. It claims that a very low percentage of social media users – under 5 percent – “regularly turn to social media sites for guidance on purchase decisions.”

This “lackluster” performance points out that a mere 4 percent (for “travel or travel services” and “banks or financial services” categories) 3 percent (“clothes or shoes,” “eating out or restaurants” and “personal care products”) and 2 percent (“cell/mobile phones and services,” “cars or trucks” and “groceries or food”) of users turn to these kinds of sites for guidance on purchase decisions.

Yet in the same breath, the study notes that 83% of the online population, ages 13 to 54, use social media, with 47% participating weekly.

It’s about influence…

No, I don’t suppose that you’ll see a great number of users “Regularly turn(ing) to these sites for guidance on purchase decisions.” That’s because the social media metrics relevant to brand marketers aren’t related to purchase decisions, but to purchase influence – on attitudes, perceptions, and loyalty. And as a result, yes, on purchase decisions.

This is why those organizations that leverage “social media” are looking at it well beyond its efficacy as just another media channel. It’s why word-of-mouth spending on online communities increased 26.6% in 2008 (in the face of declines in almost every other area) and word-of-mouth spend is projected to grow 14.5% annually between 2008 and 2013.

It’s also why nearly 90% of online shoppers read customer ratings and reviews at least “some of the time” before making a purchase decision.

Pretty influential indeed. Did they click on a banner and buy? Probably not. After all, social media is really word-of-mouth online. And that is massively influential when it comes to guiding purchase decisions. Both online and off, the power of word-of-mouth is well documented.

As the most influential medium, the question is how Social Media affects you.

Of the top ten most influental media, Social Media is number one. In our approach to customer experience research (Brand Mapping, Touchpoint Mapping, Loyalty Mapping), we’re usually charged with helping organizations better understand how to better serve and get “closer” to their audiences. In a nutshell, this means understanding those touchpoints that have influence on desired perception and behavior, and seeing how they fit into the customer relationship lifecycle unique to a particular brand.

As a result, we’ve seen many instances – across sectors, segments and markets – where social media strongly influences purchase decisions, as well as brand perception and customer loyalty.

That’s why research like this Knowledge Networks survey can be problematic. Because data can be misleading if you’re aiming for the wrong target. As with all research, what you get out of it is only as useful as how well you define your research goals going in. So if the goal of this research is to find out how many people go to social media with the express intention of purchasing products, or to find specific products to buy, of course the answer will be “few.”

But if we’re trying to discover how “social media” influences purchase decisions, that’s an entirely different question. And the answer to that is clear: a lot.