Aligning Brand and Customer Experience Strategies for Growth
by Mike Deinlein and Eric Scheer
Aligning brand marketing and customer experience (CX) strategies can yield significant benefits for both customers and businesses. When these two critical components work together, they create a cohesive, compelling, and predictable brand experience that can drive customer loyalty, increase revenue, and enhance brand strength. By integrating marketing and CX tactics, brands can ensure that the promises made through advertising are consistently delivered through customer interactions, leading to a more trustworthy and reliable brand image.
However, achieving this alignment is often challenging. Many brands measure the effectiveness of marketing and CX separately, resulting in data gaps that obscure how these elements interact. This siloed approach can lead to inconsistencies between the brand promise and the customer experience, ultimately damaging the brand’s overall strength in the marketplace.
For experience brands, it is crucial to understand that marketing and CX interactions form reinforcing loops. On one side, brands make promises to attract customers, and on the other side, they deliver on these promises to retain them and encourage repeat use. Within these loops opportunities to interact with customers and fulfill their needs arise through many touchpoints, such as advertising, point-of-sale messaging, the shopping and buying experience itself, and a brand’s ability to obtain customer feedback and make meaningful improvements. To customers, these interactions are interconnected and together form the overall impression of the brand.
To fully leverage the reinforcing loops and develop integrated marketing and CX strategies, teams need to answer questions such as:
- How strong is our brand and customer experience relative to the competition?
- How can CX improvements build stronger customer connections to our brand?
- How can our customer experience better deliver on our marketing promise?
- What is the optimal allocation of resources across marketing and customer experience initiatives?
Answers to these questions are critically important, and Burke’s experts advise organizations to start by understanding their brand’s strength relative to the competition. Our Relevance and Momentum brand growth philosophy determines brand strength via 5 dimensions (Presence, Affinity, Distinction, Vibrancy, and Advocacy) and provides an evaluation relative to the competition. Simultaneously, we examine CX performance and model the relationships between aspects of your brand strength and CX to answer the critical questions and provide strategies for growth.
Burke Brand Framework Research Study, 2022
One of the best examples of successfully aligning marketing and CX strategies is Chick-fil-A. Despite having fewer stores and limited operating hours compared to competitors like McDonald’s and Starbucks, Chick-fil-A has built a strong brand by promising exceptional customer service and consistently delivering an experience that exceeds expectations. This alignment of marketing and CX has created a reinforcing loop where marketing promises are met by service delivery and high quality products, contributing to the brand’s strength. Chick-Fil-A’s Red Couch marketing campaign is a vivid illustration of this dynamic. The campaign video features employees and customers telling the stories of instances when customer experience transcended food services expectations to form real connections between individuals.
On the other hand, Starbucks has faced challenges in maintaining this alignment. Once credited as a leader in customer experience, recent strategic decisions have commoditized the brand and shifted the focus away from the in-store experience, which has long been a hallmark of the Starbucks brand. Long-time customers have also said that the marketing promise “to uplift the everyday, providing a superior coffee and customer experience every time they visit us” is not realized by the focus on mobile order kiosks at the expense of comfy seating, and printed orders vs. handwritten cups. This misalignment between marketing promises and service delivery has been cited by the company as the cause for sluggish revenue among other troubles. However, Starbucks took a major step to address this issue in September by appointing a new CEO from Chipotle, known for revitalizing the fast-casual restaurant’s in-store experience. His first steps have been to better align the Starbucks experience with their customer promise.
In conclusion, strong experiential brands maintain a healthy balance between marketing promises and operational delivery. Establishing this balance starts with having a complete view of a brand’s reinforcing loop. Monitoring these elements simultaneously and modeling their relationship is central to making informed decisions about resources and tactics that positively impact brand strength, revenue, and profits.
Mike serves as VP, CX Solutions at Burke Inc. and consults with clients on agile CX technology use, the removal of customer data silos, and the effective utilization of integrated insights to drive better customer experiences for clients.
Eric is SVP, Brand Solutions at Burke, Inc. Drawing from over 20 years of experience, Eric is especially good at solving brand challenges. Having been an entrepreneur, combined with extensive branding, design, and strategy experience, Eric has the know-how and strategic approach to conquer any obstacle your brand may encounter.
Interested in reading more? Check out Mike and Eric’s other articles:
How to Maximize the Benefits and Avoid the Pitfalls of Corporate Advocacy
As always, you can follow Burke, Inc. on our LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages.
Sources:
Burke Brand Framework Research Study, 2022
Feature Image – ©JOURNEY STUDIO7 – stock.adobe.com
All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, service names, and logos referenced in this documentation are the sole property of their respective owners. All copyrights, trademarks, trade names, service names, and logos used in this documentation are for instructional and illustrative purposes only. Reference to any copyrights, trademarks, trade names, service names, and logos does not imply endorsement or affiliation.
BEYONDMEASURE POSTS:
