Surprisingly, most brands make a promise but fail to deliver it to their customers. Making a brand promise is not enough, but living up to it is what matters. However, a clearly defined promise is crucial to highlight so that customers set expectations for what they get from your brand.
If you break your brand promise, your business will crumble. Nevertheless, if you consistently deliver on it, you will build loyal customers who will help your business thrive.
And what helps you consistently deliver on your brand promise? Guess what? It’s experience, strategy, and vision that support your brand promise. You must bridge the gaps between your brand promise, experience strategy, and vision.
In this piece, we will reveal tips for delivering on your brand promise: Experience Strategy and Vision, and make your brand outshine the competition.
What is a brand promise?
Your brand promise is not just a slogan; it’s a pledge you consistently make to your customers about the value and experience they receive. A well-defined brand promise resonates with consumers, sets up their expectations, shapes trust, and builds brand credibility.
At the same time, it helps guide every business decision and aligns with company values, experience strategy, and vision.
What is experience strategy?
Generally, an experience strategy is a company’s plan to design and deliver value and positive consumer experiences. It focuses on delivering meaningful experiences at every touchpoint. The value and insightful experiences you provide through a brilliant experience strategy compel your customers to your brand.
But here, keep in mind that experience strategy is different from brand strategy. Brand strategy sets the stage for how businesses are perceived, whereas experience strategy is about delivering the perception at every point of customer interaction.
What is the brand vision?
Your brand vision statement mainly spotlights your brand’s future aspirational goals.
For example, what impact does your brand want to create in the world? It’s far from just amplifying company revenue over time. It’s all about communicating your brand values and the change you want to make.
For instance, if you have an apparel brand, your brand vision could completely change to using recycled materials like recycled polyester and recycled leather to reduce waste and negative environmental impact.
How do you deliver the brand promise? Align it with the experience strategy and vision.
Delivering your brand promise requires consistency and must be coordinated with experience, strategy, and vision. Let’s take a sneak peek at the practical tips for coordinating these to build loyal customers and a thriving brand.
1. Start with a customer-focused brand promise
First of all, be curious to investigate what your ideal customers crave, need, and value. Don’t trust your gut; you have to find out about them, not you.
You might be wondering how you can know what your ideal consumers need.
No one can inform you better than consumers themselves. To get a deeper perspective, conduct customer surveys and questionnaires, online reviews, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews.
Put yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes to genuinely attract them to your brand. Once you find the problems, brainstorm solutions that your brand product service can solve.
And craft a customer-centric brand promise that solves the real problem, and must be clear and specific.
For instance, Zappos, a popular American online shoe and clothing retailer, promises to “Deliver WOW Through Service.” Zappos promises to provide a positive customer experience that surpasses customers’ hopes.
2. Map the experience strategy to every touchpoint
You know what 90% of customers look for: seamless interactions on all communication channels.
So, once you have finished crafting your brand promise, map out your experience strategy at every touchpoint to strengthen it.
Customer interaction points include your brand.
- Digital space as a website, app, social media, or email
- Physical stores, packaging, and product quality
- Interaction with your employees (sales calls, customer service, and delivery staff).
In fact, 65% of companies compete mainly over customer experience. A positive experience that reflects your values and promises drives customer loyalty and profits for the company.
This means you have to surpass your competitors with a positive customer experience across all channels beyond just quality products or services.
So, you must develop a strategy that strengthens your brand promise and ensures a positive customer experience at every touchpoint.
Zappos’ experience strategy centers on providing a “WOW” experience at every touchpoint.
- Free shipping
- 365-day returns
- 24/7 support
This aligns with their promise to deliver ‘WOW’ through service. It makes the customer’s shopping experience hassle-free and convenient.
3. Tie up your decisions with a strategy to a vision
90% of small businesses won’t survive beyond 5 years, and 20% of them fail in their first year. One reason is that they don’t have a clear vision.
Brand vision inspires customers, but without deliverables, it’s only a piece of paper. You don’t just have to write it; you must also make company decisions with a strategy corresponding to the vision. In this way, your team will know what to prioritize.
Whereas 72% of shoppers expect brands to contribute to the community. Even Gen Z believes that brands have the authority to make our world a better place.
Zappos’ vision is to deliver happiness to customers, teams, vendors, shareholders, and the community in a sustainable way over the long run. The four C’s—Commerce, Customer Service, Company Culture, and Community- are what they value most, which you see in their business operations every day.
This means that they offer buyers more variety and style that redefine customer expectations. Meanwhile, Zappos protects and expands company culture while supporting communities worldwide.
4. Empower your employees
Your team is the fuel of your business growth. When your team performs well, your company flourishes. So, make sure to engage with employees on how to deliver your brand promise at the consumer’s interaction points. This will reinforce the customer experience strategy.
Inconsistency, either internal or external, can dilute your brand promise, company culture and impact customer experience. You should train your employess but thisn’t enough. Your team must feel home in workplace as they are part of important purpose.
Empower your employess by giving them freedom for decsions that resonate with your brand promise and vision. This will help them to innovate and satisfy your customers. Moreover, appreciate, reward your team, celebrate theie achievements to motivate them.
When you authorize your team, the chances of growing your brand and delivering the brand promise increase.
Like Zappos is committed to delivering happiness through its company culture, and they mean it. Zappos puts the employees first and gives them significant autonomy to make decisions to serve the customers in the best possible way.
Even Zappos is popular for its fun and engaging workplace culture that nurtures creativity. They created a fun environment so the team could enjoy their work and establish meaningful relationships with colleagues.
5. Maintain your brand performance and evolve.
Delivering your brand promise, ideal customer experience strategy, and vision requires closely monitoring your brand perception. Evaluate customer satisfaction scores and employee engagement at every touchpoint to identify gaps in delivery.
Keeping an eye regularly helps your brand maintain alignment with brand promise, customer experience, and vision to achieve company objectives.
Set up feedback loops (surveys, social media listening) to catch misalignment early. other than that, the industry revolutionizes with time, and you need to evolve to stay relevant.
Bottom Line
Delivering on your brand promise by leveling it with customer experience strategy and vision is a win-win for brand. f you empower your team and build a friendly workplace culture, then it will surely help you deliver the brand promise, boost customer experience, and get close to your vision every day.
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