How do your customers feel about your brand?
It is a tricky question that many businesses fail to address properly. Customer opinion is at the core of your marketing strategy. Therefore, it should be a priority to find out:
- What customers think about
- What they think about you
It’s not uncommon for companies to focus only on the first element of customer research. Yet, understanding your customers’ needs and market behaviors is no guarantee that the same customers will know of your brand or even have a positive image of it. Therefore, every business must dedicate time and effort to collecting and influencing their customers’ opinions.
Being easy to find online
SEO agencies warn their clients that failing to act on search engine optimization immediately devalues the business into oblivion. Ultimately, it’s no mystery. If customers can’t find your brand online, they are unlikely to have an opinion about it, let alone know you exist. SEO guarantees your visibility in Google search results.Â
Providing quality and reliable packaging
Your packaging acts as the selling strategy for your products. Great packaging increases customer opinion and can serve multiple purposes, such as:
- Showcasing your brand identity
- Facilitating storage
- Meeting environmental requirements
- Contributing to product enjoyment, such as multipurpose food packaging that can be folded into a plate
Great packaging works because it attracts the eyes and enhances customer opinion of your product line.
Your CEO
Consider Facebook, for example. Branding experts fear that the change of name from Facebook to Metaverse is unlikely to transform the brand’s reputation. Indeed, they believe that Zuckerberg’s personal brand could have a harmful impact on Meta. Unfortunately, because Zuckerberg is still strongly associated with the many scandals on the social media platform, public opinion is unlikely to change even after the rebranding. Unlike Google, which rebranded itself as Alphabet in 2015 and allowed founders to distance themselves, the face of Facebook/Meta has remained visible and unchanged. Is your CEO’s reputation hurting customer opinion?
Listening to your customers
Do you know what your customers want or need? Most brands claim they put their customers first. Yet, over 4 in 10 companies do not collect customers’ feedback. This begs an important question: How do you put your customers first when you don’t know what they want? Customers’ opinion of your company is valuable information that can say a lot about your future strategy and the effectiveness of your operations. Customers are quick to ignore brands that don’t meet their expectations.
Your social media activities
Nowadays, customer opinion often turns to social media for all queries and complaints. As social media platforms are public, their comments are visible to everyone. Therefore, your audience can react negatively if they notice that comments are left unanswered.
Your prices
Do customers mind high costs? Brands such as Apple have proven that customers are willing to pay more for a premium product. However, they expect your product quality and customer service to match the price tag. Premium services or products that fail to meet their expectations will suffer a public backlash.
Your social responsibility
Public backlash has been quick to affect brands that fail to show support to Ukraine. The public has been pointing accusative fingers at brands that have not pulled out of Russia immediately after the Ukraine invasion, such as Mondelez International, Hilton Hotels, and Pirelli.
In conclusion, managing your customers’ opinions is no easy task. As a business, the priority is double, as you need to focus on being visible and then maintaining the right kind of visibility.
