Five top tips on building your brand

Top tips on building your brand

Top tips on building your brand

 

We have spoke previously on why branding is important, and why it should be prioritised. This week we’re looking at top tips for building your brand. As just having a brand is not enough, it’s how you implement it that will be remembered.

 

You need to ensure you are consistent with your branding.

That means optimising your website, your social media, your content and any press release marketing all carry your consistent message.

Remember you need to keep your message consistent. So though you may want to take slightly different approaches to each of your social networks for example, you still need to make sure your voice shines through and is easily recognised.

As we spoke about previously, your brand is creating an expectation of who you are. So keeping consistent ensures your customers know exactly who you are, and that you can be relied upon.

 

Look at your website.

You need to ensure your site says everything about you, without being one giant sales pitch. That means fast loading times, clear and concise information, clear images, and great functionality.

In our blogs, we often compare to how your business would function if your website was your shop front. Though having a lovely looking site might attract people in, or having something temporary in place to get you going is all well and good. There are some fundamentals we have come to expect as customers.

Your customers (and potential customers) expect to find what they want. A helping hand if they need it. And to be able to buy the product of their choice. By taking the time on your website, you can underline your brand and your message. Fast delivery? Follow through. Huge selection of products? Have them displayed correctly and readily available. Products ethically sourced? Tell the tale in the product description.

There are over a billion websites live on the web. If yours does not stand out, and represent you well as a business, it becomes even harder to compete.

 

Consider a blog.

Businesses get scared when you mention blogging. What on earth would they write about? When would they have time? And what benefit would it bring them anyway?

It’s true that a good blog is a lot of effort to maintain, but it is incredibly worth it. Not even going into the SEO benefits it would bring your business. It is great for establishing your brand and your credibility within the industry.

Offer advice, opinions and solutions to problems your customers or clients may face. You’ll find more people returning to your website, and looking to you for answers when they stumble across problems. This sets you as a dependable brand, and one that looks out for their customers.

 

Work Social Media.

Then no doubt if you have made the leap to a functional website, you probably have a social media account for your business too. This may even be your only online presence.

Though social media is a lot more ‘casual’, it’s essential to continue to keep your brand in check. That is not only ensuring your cover photo, images and name are consistent, but your voice as a brand still shines through.

This is across any networks you are on, so choose carefully. Everything you post, share, like and interact with should still be a direct representation of your brand.

This is a little easier when you are a smaller business and no doubt live and breath your brand, so you can easily choose which are the best things to interact with. However if you are a bigger company who employ a few more people, it can sometimes be harder to maintain a consistent voice. This is where company briefing and perhaps even social media guidelines would be useful to put into place to ensure though you may have several people running one account, you have a consistent thread of posts and interactions.

 

Get your brand out there!

So that’s just a launch campaign, that’s using the tools you have above. Interact with similar users on social media, increasing your presence, your brand awareness and keeping your toe in all of the latest goings on. Blogging? Share your industry knowledge, or if you’ve found a great article, share that for others too.

Your brand is everything for your business, so making it excel at certain marketing pressure points like social media and through your website means you can make the most of all the hard work you put in to the branding process.

The stronger your brand becomes, the more you will not only attract the right type of customers, but people will aspire to be one of your customers. So it is worth the effort of maintaining your brand.

 

Next time we’ll be looking at re-branding, and if you’re finding your brand isn’t consistent with who you are as a company now, what steps you should take to get your brand back on track.

Until then, if you would like a helping hand with making the most of your brand, why not give us a call? Not only do we offer a free initial consultation where we can talk through your branding concerns, we also offer blogging and social media training sessions so you have the right tools to make the most of your brand. Call us today on 01543 495752 for a friendly chat.

5 reasons your brand should be priority

5 reasons your brand should be priority

5 reasons your brand should be priority

It is nothing new for marketing companies to say you not only need a great brand but brand should be priority, as it will help your business. This is no lie.

But we know it can be hard to even consider dedicating time, money and energy to consistently working on your brand. When there is so much competition out there who have access to much bigger marketing budgets, and can dedicate entire teams to this sort of thing. Sometimes it can even be our own egos that get in the way. Thinking that ensuring your branding is up to date and well represented is a wasted exercise, as people already know who you are.

We’re going to look at some of 5 reasons why you consider your brand a priority when it comes to your business. And why it should be something you constantly review and promote.

 

“Your brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is”

This quote hits the nail on the head. You may have had the most fabulous brand designed when you set up. But if you’ve not maintained the promises set by your brand, your customers will have noticed, and will be talking about it.

Managing your brand, and keeping customer expectations fulfilled will mean you can leave a good impression with your customer. Which in turn leaves a good impression of your brand.

If you are consistently looking and assessing your brand. Fulfilling or exceeding customers expectations. Appearing in all the right places within the industry. And are putting out regular, informative info, then you are more likely to sculpt a better impression of yourselves.

 

It promotes recognition, and user loyalty

Having a solid brand means you become instantly recognisable. Which is why it’s so essential. Bigger businesses can optimise this well. With some of the biggest players being instantly recognisable from just a colour, shape or tagline. But that doesn’t mean medium and small businesses can’t create the same effect.

By keeping this consistent and getting your brand out there, people will come to recognise it. People trust brands they recognise. We’ve all picked a brand we’ve seen before over something completely unheard of when we’ve been unsure.

 

It creates expectation

Having a certain standard for your brand not only gives promise to your customers. It provides motivation for your staff, and expectations of what is needed from them.

Which is why it is important your brand accurately reflects your company. Pitch yourselves a lot higher than what you can deliver, you may let customers down. Then point one will come to bite you, and people will not believe anything else you put out there.

Having a brand is a standard to adhere to for your staff, and a promise to fulfill with your customers. Prioritising your brand includes consistently keeping these promises to customers.

 

It confirms your credibility

In an era where every product or service is scrutinised, reviewed and researched before it is bought, having good credibility is more essential than ever before. One bad review can throw off a sale. That is, if you brand isn’t underlining who you actually are.

Now building your brand does not mean you will never get a bad review, as you will never please everyone. But what it does do is underline your companies ethos and values. So the more you establish and promote your brand, the more it becomes credible and not a one off.

When looking to build your credibility focus on blogging, or sharing relevant articles. Including valid case studies available to your potential customers and showcasing awards or certification you have in your field.

 

It gets the right customers to you, and customers to aspire to you

Though like we said you can’t please everyone. Focusing on your brand, and really establishing who you are and who your products are for should draw more of the right customers. Leading you to better quality leads and more returning custom.

Having a great brand also creates the aspirational quality. Maybe people might not be your right customers right now, but they want to be. If you are creating a high end product, though some will be happy with a lower quality version, others will aspire to own one of your high end products instead of the lower quality version. Other’s may be a life milestone, and your customers need to reach a certain life event, or age before your products or services apply. By keeping your brand consistent, in the public eye, and well presented, you can be inspiring those potential customers until the time comes that they can become a customer.

 

Next time we’ll be looking at how to make the most of your brand, especially looking at how to build that credibility within your industry.

 

Until then, if you are looking to build your company brand but are feeling a little overwhelmed with the challenges you are facing, why not come and talk to the experts? Call us on 01543 495752 for a friendly chat, or you can catch up on more our branding blogs here. 

How do you make the essential exciting?

How do you make the essential exciting

How do you make the essential exciting

It can be hard to market your business at the best of times, but it begins to seem a bigger challenge when your industry is seen as ‘essential’ rather than exciting.

When you have impressive new products like phones, gadgets or ‘hoverboards’ coming out everyday with huge budgets behind them, it can be hard to compete, and make people want what they actually need to buy. So if your not making a product with a fruit logo on it, how do you go about getting people to buy it?

 

Be Human

This sounds simple, but can be harder in practice. If you are selling a B2B product for example, you are marketing a business product to another business, and it can be easy to slip into an almost robotic approach. So you can’t forget that you are still marketing to people.

Using real examples can be a great starting point, so potential customers can see how you actually work. Do people make mistakes when using your product? Is it common for people to overcomplicate your service? Do not many people understand the best practice when it comes to your industry? Then talk to them, and use these examples to inspire, educate or for a bit of a giggle, to connect with them on a human level.

Social Media is a great way to do this, but it may take a bit of time to get yourself established. There are so many social networks now it can be hard to choose which would be best. However, it also means you can reach your customers in a variety of ways.

Does your industry need lots of practical advice? Get blogging. Want people to understand your products further? Go visual with Pinterest. Want to do a ‘how to’ video, or show your engineers at work? Start a Youtube channel with factual information, alongside some out-takes when it may not have quite gone to plan.

All of these little snippets of information give your customers an idea of who you are as people, and if you are the type of people they would like to work with. If they want the ins and outs of what you do, they will go to your website or give you a call, but to convince them you’re the ones they want to work with, get posting.

 

Develop your own voice

Which leads very nicely on to my next point, developing your own voice.

When your in a competitive industry, with a product everyone needs, it can be easy to fall into the same line as everyone else. Copying product descriptions from manufacturers, having the same benefits and features, and marketing to the same group of people.

Make sure you stand out by developing your own voice, which carries through all of your marketing material, your social presence and your team as a whole. Now, tone of voice for your brand is a whole other blog in it’s self (and a conversation we have a lot with clients in the office) but you need to consider: your values, your vocabulary and your humour. Are you slightly sarcastic, or just add in the occasional one liners? Are you appealing to customers who will only accept the Queen’s English, or perhaps a younger generation who may appreciate more down to earth posts? What are your personal values as well as the companies? Let all this shine through on your posts, but make sure you keep this consistent.

Showing your passion for your profession is always a great way to connect with customers. Even with the most boring product in the world, if it sold with someone who clearly has passion in it, you would be more inclined to at least take a second look. As passion is not only contagious, but it shows a belief in what you are doing, it shows your putting all of your energy into it, so it has to worth something.

 

Make your product real to buyers

Your product is real, you know it’s benefits and features inside out. But how does it actual benefit that person? How is it going to shape their day?

It can be hard to get this across, especially with products people take for granted, or ones people don’t entirely understand how it helps then, just that they should have it.

A method used by a lot of companies now is using a narrative within their marketing or advert. Let’s use Direct Line as an example. Direct Line, in case you don’t know, are an insurance company, and for this example, I’ll be focusing on their car insurance.

Everyone needs car insurance, as it is a legal requirement. There are plenty of providers of this, plenty of choice, and everyone knows that they need it in case of an accident, but it’s not always clear what that actual means for the person. In their latest run of adverts, Harvey Keitel whisks in to help direct line customers who face a series of woes.

The most recent advert is of a hen party who are involved in a bump, thinking their day is ruined, when Keitel pops in to say, because you’re insured with us, your entitled to a hire car, and continue your day. The other party involved in the crash is stuck there, as their insurance does not provide this.

 

 

From the advert the customer can visualise that, of course they would have insurance on their car, but f they have Direct Line insurance, they will be well looked after, and your day doesn’t have to end. It will remind those unfortunate enough to have had a bump and be stuck, that actual buying the same ‘product’ from them would mean a totally different outcome to that day.

Their whole advert series involving Keitel show the real time effects and benefits the service has to it’s users, and showcases effectively that their ‘essential’ product stands out from the rest.

 

Make it visual

Oh the old saying, a picture speaks a thousand words. But it really does, as does video, like we can see in the point above.

In an age where we are content saturated, sometimes we need to use visuals to grab a bit more attention, or to get our message across a bit quicker.

There are a huge amount of examples of visual marketing done well, but I am going to use Tipp Ex to illustrate this particular point.

Now Tipp Ex face a different horizon to when they started business, a situation which many companies find themselves in now. Their product was a particular need when pen and paper were the norm. This was an age before computers became the staple for the majority of offices. So what now?

Tipp Ex went clever with their marketing, and using modern technology and ideas bought themselves into the modern age, as well as engaging with a whole new host of customers. Below, you can see their advert ‘a hunter and a bear’.

 

 

Now there we have an advert that shows their brand voice with quite a humorous advert, their product is made real and relevant to potential customers, and it has a very human aspect to it.

Use visuals and video to get your message out there in a way your potential customers may not have considered it before.

 

Keep it simple

Sometimes the things you need to buy aren’t always the simplest to understand.

Take for example applying for a mortgage. It is something the majority of us will need to go through within our lifetimes, and though it can be an exciting purchase, it is more likely to cause panic than jubilation.

Like with car insurance, It is a market with plenty of choice, but one people don’t know much about. So they stick to the big names they know and that’s it. By keeping it simple, you instantly reassure that potential customer, making them more likely to pop in and enquire.

 

Remember, no brand is too boring to market, you just have to find what makes it amazing, and share that with others. Use the tips above, do a bit more research into your industry competitors, and get going!

 

However, if you are struggling to feel inspired, don’t worry! Give us a call, and pop in for a chat. It’s no obligation and might just give you the ideas you need. Or you can read more about branding in our blogs. 

 

What Taylor Swift can teach you about personal branding

What Taylor Swift taught us all about personal brand

What Taylor Swift taught us all about personal brand

Image taken by GabboT, used under Creative Commons license.

Love her or hate her, Taylor Swift is the most relevant and successful example of doing personal brand right. Here are 5 things we can learn from Swifty herself.

Personal brand is an essential part of everyday business. How you represent yourself can severely affect your business, as people buy from people they like and trust. How can you make the most of personal brand?

 

Change with the times

One of the biggest changes in how people connect with customers or fans, is social media. It’s something that many companies still shy away from, but it can work wonders for your business.

Using Taylor as an example, she was able to gain a fiercely loyal fan base by connecting with them over social media. Responding to their posts. Adding personality to an industry that is famously impersonal. Meant she could propel herself into the spotlight, setting herself apart from other stars who did not appear to care about their fans.

Many customer service responses to Facebook posts and tweets have gone viral. As they show outstanding service. Tesco for example have been in the news a number of times this year. For taking the time to write a poetic reply or even just declaring their love of bacon. Taking the time to reply to the people reaching out to you shows respect, and creates loyalty, and sometimes even a viral campaign.

 

Stick with your morals

Taylor is well known for calling journalists out when they make a sexist remark, and for speaking quite honestly.

It can be tempting when building up a business, to begin trying to please every prospect, but the truth is, everyone does that, and it only comes back to bite you later if you agree or go along with things you don’t actually believe in.

Stand up for yourself, and respect what you believe and the ethics of how you work. Others will come to respect you, and if they don’t, do you really want their approval or business anyway?

 

Take the negative on the chin

Taylor is no stranger to being judged and receiving negative comments, mostly about her personal life.

As the old saying goes ‘jealously can be an ugly thing’, and people making negative comments about your business or brand without genuine reason are more than likely worried about the competition.

Unfortunately, you just have to take it on the chin and keep on doing what you do best. Making other people look bad won’t make you look good, and sinking down to someone else’s level will make you look worse.

 

Use the power you have to empower other businesses

It was one of the biggest news stories of June when Taylor Swift stood up to the big boys Apple, and refused to let her work go out for free. The even bigger news was that Apple backed down and agreed with Taylor that all artists should be paid for their work.

There are a number of things to look at here. Taylor could of stomped her feet and screamed and shouted that it wasn’t fair, but she was savvy, and used her business mind to leverage Apple to see the unfair and accept responsibility. She also didn’t just do this for her music, she did it for all the artists. Meaning artists who haven’t quite gained the same following yet so don’t have the same power behind them still have a voice too.

If you have power or influence and can use it to make changes for the local community and local businesses, use it.

 

Show you care

If you want a lesson in how to show your audience that you care about them, look no further than Taylor. She is well-known for keeping an eye on her fans and rewarding those who are loyal.

Before her latest album, 1989, launched she invited dedicated fans to secret listening parties after stalking them (or ‘taylurking’ as she calls it) on social media.

In the run up to Christmas, she surprised some fans with gifts, such as $1989 dollars to go towards a fan paying off her student loans, and sending people stage costumes or items of clothing she’d worn.

Now, you don’t have to go as far as offering to pay off your audiences’ debts, but the occasional surprise for a loyal fan, or maybe even a curious prospective customer, can get people’s attention and make you look caring.

 

Work hard, but celebrate the good

Though Taylor is doing everything you can think off, she still shows that she is a normal twenty something in some ways. Who would believe she’s like us normal people sometimes? She celebrates birthday, days out with friends and dinners with her boyfriend, and that makes this complete superstar who is successful beyond imagination, relatable.

This is where your blogs and things come in to play. Social media is a way for you to connect with your target audience and show you are normal people, you are relatable and you could be part of this family too.

If you’re a small business and think your brand could use some strategy?

Do you know where you want to go and how you’re going to get there? We could help. Call us today on 01543 495752

I don’t know if my marketing is working

i don't know if my marketing is working

i don't know if my marketing is working

When many businesses first come to us, they often say “I don’t know if my marketing is working.” They’ve tried a few different things, but it doesn’t appear to be doing anything other than costing them money. Does that sound familiar?

It’s important that you can show the Return on Investment (ROI) of your marketing efforts. If something is working, you need to be able to show that. And if it doesn’t work, you need to be able to prove that so you don’t waste further time and money on something that doesn’t work.

When businesses come to us and say “I don’t know if my marketing is working”, we evaluate these 6 things to find out what might be the cause of the problem.

Have you set a goal? If so, what was it?

While all of these points are important, this is a huge one. If you haven’t got a goal, how can you possibly know whether your marketing is working?

When setting goals, follow the SMART method to create goals that are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic
  • Timely

 

How are you tracking your marketing activities?

Once you know what you’re working towards, you need a way of tracking activity produced by your marketing campaign. If you aren’t tracking what’s happening, you won’t know if your marketing activities are working or not.

Tracking and monitoring needs to be considered before you begin marketing as you may need to implement something before you campaign begins, such as setting up a dedicated phone number, or setting up goal tracking in your analytics software.

Exactly how you track your marketing campaign will depend on what you’re doing:

  • If you’re running a special offer, you might look at orders using the offer code in an email you sent out
  • If you’re getting people to call you, you would track phone calls to a dedicated number, or you could ask people where they saw your number
  • If you’re at an event, you might just track the number of people who put their email address down on your email marketing form

By tracking your marketing activities, you will easily be able to identify whether or not you are reaching your goal.

 

How strong was your campaign and call to action?

Your call to action (CTA) is the most important part of any marketing campaign because it tells your target audience what you want them to do next.

If your CTA is weak, unclear, confusing, or if you have multiple CTAs, your audience won’t know what to do. Best practice is to have one CTA that is focused on getting someone to take the next step.

Keep your CTA succinct and use verbs to encourage your target audience to take action as soon as possible.

The rest of the copy should back up the CTA and encourage your audience to take action by focusing on their pain points and telling them how your product / service can remove that pain.

 

What did your marketing activity look and feel like?

The way things look, and feel if they are physical things your audience can hold, is incredibly important. Especially if this is the first contact someone will ever have with your brand.

Think about the junk mail you get through your letterbox at home. I bet you’ve received a cheap and nasty looking leaflet from a local takeaway that you’ve never heard of before. It’s confusing on the eyes, there are probably lots of dark colours, bad editing, the paper feels thin, and just looking at it makes you feel like you might get food poisoning. What do you do? You throw it out.

Now, it might be that the takeaway makes delicious food, but if you judged it on that piece of marketing material alone, it certainly didn’t give you the impression of delicious, filling food.

It’s not just the first time you contact your audience that you need to make a great impression; you need to make a great impression every time you contact your audience and customers.

A great impression can remind loyal customers why they are a customer of yours, encourage them to purchase from you again, and hopefully remind them to tell their friends about you.

If that’s not enough to convince you that your marketing to existing customers needs to be high quality, this statistic might: 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your existing customers.

 

Is it your audience’s preferred method of communication?

This is where a thorough understand of your audience is helpful and will help you.

Where your marketing material appears is important. If your audience are 16-25 year olds who regularly use the internet, then online is the best place to target them.

If your audience are 70+ olds who don’t use the internet, then offline marketing activities will suit them better.

 

What’s your brand like? Is it putting people off?

The way your brand looks can play a large part in whether or not your audience pay attention to your marketing.

As a consumer, you probably understand this yourself.

If you see a brand that looks small, unprofessional, outdated, and maybe even a bit dodgy, you will probably steer clear of it. No matter how good an offer it is. You don’t want to risk being ripped off, or receiving a faulty product.

If you see a brand that looks clean and professional, it will automatically come across as much more trustworthy than a brand that looks bad. It will give you confidence that the business knows what they’re doing. That you’re likely to get a product which fulfils your needs.

 

If just one of the points above isn’t right it can prevent your marketing activities from being effective, which means it’s wasting your time and money.

To find out if your brand might be putting your audience off, read 4 signs you need to rebrand your business.

4 signs you need to rebrand your business

4 signs you need to rebrand your business

4 signs you need to rebrand your business

It’s easy to think of your brand as ‘just a logo’, but it’s a visual representation of your business and the way your brand looks has a big impact on how people perceive your business.

Your brand should appear on every touch point your audience and customers have with your business: website, leaflets, catalogues, emails, business cards, packaging, invoices and receipts, social media, signage, and more.

A brand that doesn’t represent your business effectively, can do you more harm than good and have a negative impact on leads and sales.

If your brand is causing you any of the below problems, it’s a sure sign that you need to rebrand your business.

 

It’s confusing for your existing customers

If your brand focuses on one particular sector, product, or service you offer, your existing clients may not be aware that you offer other related services or products.

At the end of last year, we rebranded Electrical Certs to Veriserv, because the Electrical Certs brand was confusing their clients and staff.

Veriserv offer services in electrical, fire, mechanical, security, and compliance, but the name ‘Electrical Certs’ led their existing customers to believe that they could only handle electrical compliance. Customers were unaware of the other services they offered, and went to other providers for related services that Veriserv actually offer.

The rebrand has helped to make their existing customers aware that they don’t just deal with compliance, and that they can handle many related services. This makes things easier for customers as they don’t have to deal with multiple providers.

You need to rebrand if: your brand is confusing customers.

 

It’s preventing growth

Similar to the point above, your brand can prevent you from moving into new sectors and growing if it focuses on one particular service or sector.

A couple of years ago, we rebranded a business called SSC Learning (with SSC standing for ‘Skills Source Care’) who offered apprenticeships and training in care, marketing, sales, leadership & management, recruitment, and more.

As they tried to offer training in new sectors, the name SSC Learning held them back and prevented them from moving into new sectors as people thought they only offered care training.

When they relaunched as ‘edo’ they were able to move into new sectors and grow, and were no longer held back by their brand.

You need to rebrand if: your brand is preventing your business from growing.

Read the edo rebranding case study to find out more about how a new brand helped them grow their business and increase inbound leads.

 

It makes you look low quality

If someone sees a poor quality brand, they will probably think your products and customer service is low quality, and that they’d be better off spending their money elsewhere.

Your brand should represent the quality of service and products you provide.

If you’re a business that sells high-quality, luxurious products or services, your brand needs to reflect that so your audience feel that you’re a high-quality, luxurious brand.

Don’t confuse the price of your products and services with quality; your brand doesn’t necessarily have to represent the price of your products and services.

Even if your products are cheap, or not the most expensive on the market, you can still offer high-quality products and services. Beauty brands are a great example of this.

Some beauty brands give off a luxurious and high-quality feel, even though they’re not the most expensive offering on the market.

Sanctuary Spa Boots screenshot

Take Sanctuary Spa for example; their skincare and beauty products are not the most expensive, but their brand positions them as higher-quality and more luxurious than other brands which sell similarly priced products.

This makes Sanctuary Spa’s audience happy because they feel that by buying their products they’re getting better value for money.

You need to rebrand if: your brand is making you look low-quality and / or cheap.

 

Your brand makes you look untrustworthy

You know exactly what we mean when we talk about untrustworthy brands. They’re the kind of brands you see on a website and you immediately click back for fear that they’re trying to scam you and take you for all the money in your bank account.

Similarly to brands that look like they provide a poor quality service, you don’t want your brand to give off the vibe that you’re sketchy, are only interested in taking people’s money, and providing no help or support if someone runs into a problem.

A brand that looks trustworthy is especially important if you are an ecommerce website; people don’t want to hand over their bank details to a company that looks untrustworthy.

As well as improving your brand, you can make your business look more credible by:

  • Providing customer service contact information
  • Providing information about returning items, or what to do if you’re unhappy
  • Having an SSL certificate – your domain will start with https://, rather than http://
  • Using a widely recognised payment gateway like PayPal, or SagePay

You need to rebrand if: your brand makes you look untrustworthy.

 

Rebranding can seem like a huge and daunting task, but if your existing brand is causing you any of the above issues, you are missing out on leads and sales.

 

If your brand is holding your business back, call us on 01543 387 047 to find out how we might be able to work together, and arrange a chat to pop into our Burntwood office. Or for more insight into branding you can check out more of our blogs. 

 

LEGO’s Excellent Example of Customer Service

LEGO

We all know how important it is to provide your customers with the best possible customer service you can. The results are well worth it and will earn you loyal customers who are more than happy to sing your praises.

LEGOWe wanted to share this brilliant example of customer service from LEGO.

LEGO received an email

From 7 year old Luka who lost one of his Ninjago Ultrasonic LEGO figurines while in a supermarket.

“Hello. My name is Luka Apps and I am seven years old.With all my money I got for Christmas I bought the Ninjago kit of the Ultrasonic Raider. The number is 9449. It is really good. My Daddy just took me to Sainsburys and told me to leave the people at home but I took them and I lost Jay ZX at the shop as it fell out of my coat. I am really upset I have lost him. Daddy said to send you a email to see if you will send me another one. I promise I won’t take him to the shop again if you can.”

Luka received a reply from Richard in LEGO’s customer service department, saying that he had spoken to Ninjago master Sensei Wu, who had told him that it was an accident and that he wouldn’t take his figurines to the supermarket again.

As a result, LEGO were going to send him a new figurine and some extras. Not only did they offer to replace his figurines, they also decided to help his Dad out by telling Luka that he should always listen to his Dad.

You can read LEGO’s lovely heart-warming reply below:

Thanks for sending us an email!

We are very sorry to hear about you losing your Jay minifigure but it sounds like your dad might have been right about leaving it at home. It sounds like you a very sad about it too.

Normally we would ask that you pay for a new one if you lose one of your minifigures and need to have it replaced.

My bosses told me I could not send you one out for free because you lost it but, I decided that I would put a call into Sensei Wu to see if he could help me.

Luka, I told Sensei Wu that losing your Jay minifigure was purely an accident and that you would never ever ever let it happen ever again.

He told me to tell you, “Luka, your father seems like a very wise man. You must always protect your Ninjago minifigures like the dragons protect the Weapons of Spinjitzu!”

Sensei Wu also told me it was okay if I sent you a new Jay and told me it would be okay if I included something extra for you because anyone that saves their Christmas money to buy the Ultrasonic Raider must be a really big Ninjago fan.

So, I hope you enjoy your Jay minifigure with all his weapons. You will actually have the only Jay minifigure that combines 3 different Jays into one! I am also going to send you a bad guy for him to fight!

Just remember, what Sensei Wu said: keep your minifigures protected like the Weapons of Spinjitzu! And of course, always listen to your dad.

You will see an envelope from LEGO within the next two weeks with your new minifigures. Please take good care of them, Luka. Remember that you promised to always leave them at home.

Happy building!

Sincerely,
Richard,
LEGO Consumer Service”

What you can take from this

Some people have raised doubts over its authenticity; whether it’s real or not this is the kind of standout customer service you need to be providing.

You don’t need to be giving things away to provide your customers with excellent customer service; just provide them with solutions to their problems and answers to their queries.

Show that you care and you want to help them however you can. If someone who is not yet a customer gets in touch with you, you’ve got an excellent opportunity to turn that enquiry into a customer.

If you do this well, you will create loyal customers who give your business, service or products glowing reviews and refer you to their friends and family.

Perhaps if your customers are as social media savvy as Luka’s Dad, your response may even go viral!

You can read more about what social media means for customer service in another of our posts.

If you business needs a hand to delight your customers, why not speak to us about a marketing strategy? Call us on 01543 495752, or go to our approach page for more details.