Customers Crave Consistency

I believe consistency is the key to marketing success. Experience has proven that building a brand requires consistency in quality, communications and customer relations.

• Quality: Inconsistent quality of a product or service can damage your brand. If customers cannot depend on the quality of your offering, they’ll look elsewhere for what they seek. As management guru Peter Drucker explained:
   
  “Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.”

• Communications: Your messages to customers must be meaningful and consistent. Audiences today, bombarded by offline and online messages, have become resistant to some communications. Thematic consistency of your brand messages is a key to remembrance.
   
  So, when your messages travel on different channels – print, on the air, outdoor or web-based – they should possess identifiable similarity in graphic and verbal content. That way, when the customer wants a certain product or service, that consistency helps your offering stay top of mind.

• Customer Relations: Brand-building requires consistent positive contact with the customer. Some type of “personal” relationship with customers will give you a competitive edge, but brand-building requires even more.
   
  You must concern your organization with the total consistent, positive customer experience. Every interaction at every touchpoint is an opportunity to build and reinforce your brand or detract from it. It takes discipline to concentrate the whole organization on the customer, but it pays off in loyalty to your brand.

So, remember, building brand loyalty requires nurturing customer relationships, sending meaningful, consistent messages and maintaining the quality that customers value. Do these things consistently, and it will produce marketing success.

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