Do customers believe your marketing campaign?

“The real key to your influ­ence with me is your exam­ple, your actual con­duct. Your exam­ple flows nat­u­rally out of your char­ac­ter or the kind of person you truly are - not what others say you are or what you may want me to think you are. It is evi­dent in how I actu­ally expe­ri­ence you.” -Steven Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effec­tive People

Cus­tomers are smart. They can tell when your mar­ket­ing mes­sages do not agree with their cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. If your mate­ri­als promise great cus­tomer ser­vice and cus­tomers deal with untrained and impo­lite employ­ees, the com­pany loses cred­i­bil­ity. Mar­ket­ing that promises the lowest price on a prod­uct with­out making it avail­able to every­one con­tributes to an over­all dis­trust in the com­pany. Mar­ket­ing can’t bait the cus­tomer with an entic­ing mes­sage only to switch them to an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence once they raise their hand. Once cus­tomers pick up on it, they take their money else­where, and then twit­ter their friends about it.

This prin­ci­ple isn’t only reserved to mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, it extends to your entire brand posi­tion­ing. Your posi­tion­ing has to be authen­tic and accu­rately reflect the mes­sage you are com­mu­ni­cat­ing to cus­tomers. If you posi­tion your com­pany as a luxury brand, then luxury must be com­mu­ni­cated in every­thing from how the phone is answered to how invoices are sent. Your company’s words and actions must align for cus­tomers to believe what you are saying.

How­ever, when a customer’s expe­ri­ence matches the company’s claims, a level of trust is estab­lished. And it is this trust that is key to build­ing long and prof­itable cus­tomer relationships.