The human brain is hardwired to judge.
This survival mechanism makes it very hard to see any brand without evaluating and interpreting their way of doing things. In fact, the majority of the judgments are focused on smaller, subtler things, such as the status being put on the social media channels, and the words used to reply comments. Brands are also being judged if they simply don’t reply to people’s comments. From here, people often form complete opinions about that particular brand.
Similar to human being, brands’ unconscious behaviours have a language of their own too, and their words aren’t always consistent. These behaviours have likely become an integral part of what your brand’s is, and if you don’t spend much time thinking about them, now is a good time to start, because they could be sabotaging your revenue.
Modern or traditional. This can be seen from your logo, font type utilised, the combination of colours used for corporate, the way your profile being written, designs of your website, advertisements and brochures, as well as the marketing strategy being adopted. People can easily notice within the first 15 seconds whether your brand is considered as a modern and future-thinking brand or your brand is on the other side of the equation – a traditional brand.
Fun or boring. This can be seen from the tone of your status or sentences, the way you say it in your website, blog or social media and the words chosen to create them. People will only associate themselves with exciting brands, who can engage with audience rather than with the boring ones.
Alert and interactive, or slow and one-sided. People will notice whether you are the brand that really reply to people’s comments and inquiries or otherwise. Then, they will also see how long does it take for you to reply those comments. From here, your brand will be judged as to whether you’re alert and interactive or simply a slow one-sided ones.
Trustworthy or otherwise. Thousands of Likes or followers doesn’t represent trustworthy anymore. It only works for first impression sake of it. Instead, it takes a lot of conviction to acquire trust from the people. From your blogging style, the blogging substance that represent your expertise, you know what you’re talking about when you blog or write articles, showcasing the list of customers, share to the world about the work completed for clients and testimonials from clients, these are all the points that could help your brand to acquire trustworthiness from the people. Without all these, it will be tough. Your brand will be seen as an empty can – noisy sound but no substance.
Global or local. The key factor to differentiate whether the brand is a global brand or a local one is by the language used. If you’re using a Bahasa Malaysia, your brand tends to be perceived as a local brand unless you’re already a global brand trying to be seen as local.
On the other hand, if you’re using English as your primary language for most of your content then you can be seen as a regional or even a global player even if you’re being run by merely less than 5 people. However, if your English is broken or not up to the business standard then the first impression earlier will get reduced tremendously.
Being local isn’t that bad. It’s just that the selling cycle is way longer as you need to work harder to gain people’s trust before they decided to make a purchase. Unlike the global players, the selling cycle is way shorter as people already believe in you and trust the quality of your product. Hence, they are more than ready to buy your products anytime.
