First Impressions and Your Brand Image.

You are in your best jeans and a clean t-shirt. But, you’re at a black tie dinner and you want to impress the CEO’s in the crowd. If you’re not a rock star, this clothing is going to seriously dampen your clout. Similarly, if you wear a tuxedo to a rodeo – you’ll be seen as a geek. Your brand image has the same effect - you need to match the look of your marketing to the audience you want to reach.

The written word is a powerful tool for promoting your business, and good copy writing is more important than ever. However, what you “say" can be tossed aside in your audiences mind if the “image" you use is not in sync with your words.

Consider the words which you want to describe your company and its services or products. There’s lots of words to choose from. Strong, vibrant, innovative, experienced, new, fresh, knowledgeable, daring, stable, healthy, independent, well-connected, high-tech, handmade, and so on. Grab your thesaurus and dictionary and come up with your own list.

Since marketing campaigns that try to “be everything to everybody" have a long history of failure, don’t try. Instead picture your “perfect" customer. Don’t worry about getting everybody because there are lots of your “perfect" customers out there, and even more people who want to be just like your perfect customer. So, picture this person and write down who they are: male, female, either, old, young, middle-aged, professional, unemployed, retired, rich, low-income, thrifty, luxurious. Come up with your own list. Now, grab the three words that are most likely to appeal to your perfect customer. This is your brand image.

Keep these three words as the basis for everything you do in marketing. You don’t have to use the words themselves but keep them in mind for your advertising, the look of your web site, the photography you commission, the way your staff answers the phone, your signage, the brochures you print, the layout of your store/office. If an aspect of any of your marketing is not in sync with these important words, you could be shooting yourself in the foot.

They say you have three seconds. That first impression is created by the look and feel of your marketing and is remembered more than the words you use. In learning, there is only a five per cent retention of the words which are read. There’s a twenty per cent retention of audio and visual content.

As well, if you don’t have a brand image that reflects the words you use, you create what is called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is when an existing idea conflicts with a new idea, and the person rejects the new idea because of the dissonance.

If the look you use creates one idea (that first impression in the first three seconds) is different from what you are saying - is your potential customer going to pay attention to their first impression or the words you use?

Even if your words are brilliant and many people still buy because of them, what about all the ones who don’t buy.

The real kicker is that creating a unified brand image like this does not have to cost one extra cent on anything you do, outside of buying nicer clothes for the black tie dinner. You’re still going to have a web site, answer the phone, layout your store, print brochures, or whatever else your marketing needs. Just make sure they are in sync with your brand image.