It’s Halloween – my 2nd favorite holiday. All during October I listen to Halloween music. I’ll read a couple of classic, spooky books (this year I read Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). I eat approximately 8 lbs of Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins.
And Rachel and I usually stay up late at least a couple of nights watching horror movies. We do it because we like to be pretend-scared.
But we don’t really like to be scared when it comes to our brands and our business.
Want to hear something really scary? What if:
1. Your customers forget about you.
2. Your customers lose their trust in you.
3. Your customers don’t take you seriously.
Now that’s just frightening. But it happens to brands every day. Do you want to know the main cause of these horrifying situations? Inconsistency.
Whether we’re growing our business, growing or network or growing our influence, all of our goals hinge on building and managing relationships. And people stay in relationships because they trust that they’re going to receive consistent treatment and a consistent experience every time.
Have you ever known someone who looked, talked and behaved one way when they were with you, but you found out they looked, talked and behaved differently with others? I have. It confused me. It made me question that person’s authenticity. And it made me not want to associate with them. I couldn’t trust that inconsistency.
Inconsistency will sabotage all your efforts to build your brand and to build your influence because it causes confusion. And as Building a StoryBrand author, Donald Miller, says, “If you confuse, you’ll lose.”
Want to know what your customers value more than anything else? Their time. If they have to expend an unnecessary amount of time trying to figure out just what your message is or to understand why the experience they have with you differs from day-to-day, they’ll run away from you faster than Camp Crystal Lake counselors running from Jason.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to be talking about consistency and why it’s so critical to maintain consistency across all of your brand experiences.
