Retention is everywhere the light touches

I see many companies making this huge strategic mistake in marketing:

That nothing else matters: Branding is everything!

This sometimes comes at the expense of the lifeblood of the business:
The customer.

Quick definition time:

😎 Your BRAND is defined by public perception.

💋 BRANDING (Brand Marketing) is an attempt to influence public perception of you or your products and services. It is critically important as it provides a framework for the rest of the organization to work within and a set of goals and values to strive for.

🙌 This is your BRAND PROMISE, i.e. what is the expectation when doing business with your brand?

🧠 CUSTOMER RETENTION (Retention marketing) is the attempt to meet the brand promise at every touchpoint from top of the funnel through the last repeat purchase in a customer's lifetime.

It's the attempt to stay true to your brand and deliver on expectations.

🤳 💅 An analogy:
If your date's Tinder profile is their "brand," then who they reveal themselves to be one year into your relationship is a reflection of how authentic their branding is. More authenticity leads to more trust. More trust leads to loyalty, and so on.

😍 Keeping customers delighted begins with setting the right expectations with your branding, and outperforming those expectations throughout the entire course of your relationship.

👨‍🔧 That is why the best retention marketers are GENERALISTS. They must understand almost everything about your business to ensure that an authentic brand promise is sustained in every process from Sales to Customer Service, from Fulfillment to Shipping to Billing, and so on.

EXAMPLE:

💋A brand person might define their target audience as "on-the-go, busy people" and write some good copy and produce content that appeals to this persona.

🧠 A retention person would understand how this translates to the ideal return & refund process to prioritize convenience over other projects. Then they'd meet with the product team to inform them about what busy people like about the product. Then they'd head over to CX to train them on how to upsell that product. Then they'd call up Shipping to ask them to add an insert they designed to educate a busy customer. And so on.....you get it.

When working on your brand, don't forget to plan on how you intend to deliver on those expectations.

In your business, The kingdom of Retention Marketing includes everywhere the light touches. 🦁🦁🦁

Send me a DM if you want to brainstorm how this applies to your business.