In this episode of the Level Up Podcast, I'll show you 4 ways to build your brand promise, which in turn help you make a customer experience better.
Including:
Successful businesses deliver exceptional service throughout the whole customer journey.
Next week you'll learn how to build that customer journey.
In the meantime, come and learn about us.
This is the hot metal brand podcast. I'm your host Martin Sully, founder of snapper studio, a brand strategy and visual design studio in the heart of Newcastle Australia. And I'm on a mission to help you gain clarity in your brand and confidence in what you are. Brand thoughtful, empowering brand strategies to defining powerful visual stories. I'll arm you with bite-size branding tools to help you grow your brand and leave your own unique mark.
In the last five episodes I've harped on about brand foundations, intentionally aligning your values, repelling and attracting your customers and zagging. It's all led to this episode. As we reach the latter stages of my brand strategy framework. Pleasing your customers and delivering on your promises is what we're gonna talk all about today. And one thing that rings true is the old adage of 'actions speak louder than words'. So bear that in mind, as we journey through today's episode.
First thing I want to talk about is - successful businesses deliver exceptional service throughout the whole customer journey. Uh, think about a business that has kind of lost their way and ended up basically shutting shop because they didn't adapt their circumstances of how they did business changed as technology evolved. I'm talking about Blockbuster and then kind of yeah. How they went from, you know, having the corner of the market to being just completely dead, losing out to Netflix and other streaming platforms. That's just one thing to kind of think about when you are delivering a customer journey.
And if you just learned one little thing from me and this podcast, it's this, your brand is worth nothing if you can't uphold a promise through each customer interaction. And your branding had better aligned to your customer experience, especially if you want to gain longevity and build authentic connections with your people. Can you just stick your branding and you know, your customer experience in a blender? No. We have to get our lab coat on and make a culture. Like a good sourdough culture, a culture requires patience feeding and the right atmosphere. It's not an overnight thing. A good culture is the best way to ensure your company delivers on a brand promise.
Why? Because if your staff is sending mixed messages about what your brand stands for your customers won't connect. And the easiest way to do this is to look at it from a, with an inside out approach. So today I'm gonna look at four things you can do to give you the best chance to gonna yeah nurture that little sourdough culture. Um, yeah, nurture that culture. Try saying that after a drink. So number one, unify your team through your mission. So we talked about this on the brand foundation's episode, which was episode number one of this podcast. Your team need to understand your how, your what, and your why to be able to provide a unified team.
And if you provide a vision, which we talked about as well, and I think that might have even been in episode two, we talked all about vision and mission. Uh, if you provide it, your team can pour everything into it and become a, a really tight knit little unit. Um, one way to kind of look at that is to do, uh, weekly hands on meetings where people can throw out, you know, people can know what's going on day to day. You can also find out problems. but also solve those problems and talk about it as a group, you can inform your team what's going on in the bigger picture, the, those sort of big evolutions of the business and see how your goals are tracking.
You know, our people, um, our people getting towards doing that thing you set right at the start of that year. Are you moving towards it? is there some action that needs to be taken at some point by you or by some of your team? Number two, hire people with your promise in mind. So if you are hiring right from the start looking for candidates who embody some or all of your values, teaching them how to deliver the brand's promise becomes so much easier. Because they're, they're just singing from the same hymn sheet. It's important to not hire someone in a customer facing or a leadership role, if they're pulling in a completely different direction, you can. Yeah. That one's a fairly easy one to, to see.
Number three, include your team in the really important parts and. So this one is more getting them involved as your strategy evolves. So obviously your brand's strategy, isn't a isn't you don't do it once. And then it's, that's it stuck for the next 15, 20 years? It's something that evolves and getting them involved in planning out your, your vision and seeing how you're tracking on that one. Looking at your values, setting values together is so good. It's makes them, it gives them that ownership and it makes them invested in the brand to start with so that they can start yeah.
Working towards these values. And yeah, it's gonna really help align your culture together. Number four. It's take feedback. Now, I, as a, as a designer and as a brand designer, feedback is the most critical stage. Of design in that you can go and do some amazing stuff. And what you feel is amazing, but without feedback, this is feedback from peers.
It's feedback from customers, it's feedback from your leadership team. You can do all of this stuff, but without it, everything just falls apart. So. I always say, encourage your team to give you the feedback, let them share their thoughts and criticisms openly. So an openness, a humility and respect start building a really great culture and feedback is vital to all future plans.
It helps to improve systems and end results. These are my four tips to start cultivating that brand. So we got number one, unify your team with your mission. Number two, hire the right people. And if you're not ready to hire, and like I fully, I fully get this having been a, uh, having been a solo operator for, you know, six, seven years. I fully understand if you are not ready to hire that doesn't mean that you can't work with this part. So. You need to, you also need to be really super confident in your values, understand your vision and yeah, these, that is something that you need to do too. Number three, involve your team in your, in the brand's development.
Now, if you don't have that team, there's no reason you can't involve, uh, Uh, family members or people that are invested in learning and helping you along the way, there will still be people that want to help and want to get involved. Even if they're not staff members, there'll be people you can bounce ideas off. And I still think feel, this is a really relevant thing to do. Number four encourage feedback. That's open, respectful, and accept that. Sometimes there is a better way to do something. This has turned out to be quite a short episode today, but if you like it, please hit the follow button and share this episode around.
And I will catch you all on the next one.