What…8 seconds? Yes, it seems that we now have less of an attention span than a goldfish! While it used to be 12 seconds 7 years ago*, with the cacophony of images, media and messages flowing at us at a faster pace from our mobile devices, our brain has mastered more flitting!
How do you even get your marketing messages into 8 seconds with comprehension? Your brand story and any marketing message has to be so clear that it can pass the rapid eye scan.
Step 1: Align the brand story and image with the true reputation and if you are not sure what the true reputation is, time for market research! Focus groups are a great way to hear how your customers/members describe their experience with your brand. If you can’t afford professional focus groups, use an “advisory board” informal style gathering of customers/members as well as culling through any testimonials or reviews you have collected.
Step 2: Do a culture assessment (part of our Strategic Marketing Audit process). Simply asking questions of every employee to determine what they say about your organization to someone in the community, why they like working there and what is one really good experience they can recall when serving a customer/member gives you tremendous insight into your brand message. You are looking to see if there is resonance with what they tell customers/members and how they feel treated. Staff will only treat your customers/members as well as they feel treated on a daily basis.
Step 3: Put up all the current marketing pieces and images on a wall in your conference or board room. Next to those, put the words heard in the research and culture assessment. Finally put up words from how the staff feels about working at your organization and the one good experience. Look for alignment across the brand image, the words from customers/members and staff, the stories, and the comments about culture. Find the words that stand out that truly describe your organization and how it serves others.
Want a quick tool to use? Check out our 20-Minute Image Audit for Credit Union Success which is for sale here: https://lemmontree.com/cu_success_tools_5.php.
Want some help? Visit LemmonTree.com since we love creating brands, updating them and marketing them with success for clients across the country! Contact us at 7solutions@lemmontree.com.