Contributed by Dayna Neumann
How do you know you made a great first impression?
They remember your name. They take your calls. They buy from you. They buy from you again. They send a shout-out Tweet recommending you to their network. The uncomfortable truth is, in business, we may not know the quality of our first impression in time to do anything meaningful about it.
So how do you guarantee the best possible first impression? For me, it’s all about the experience. No matter the channel – sales reps, customer service, websites, packaging, products, signage, business cards – you must be prepared to make the best possible first impression.
That Sounds Expensive
Managing good first impressions does not require a Lebron James PR budget. Orchestrating consistent, impressive first impressions starts with awareness. Be aware of your communication channels and all the ways potential clients interact with your company. If you start with awareness you may reveal areas for improvement and missed opportunities.
Help Me Help You
Do you make it easy for customers to socialize? Do you give them a simple way to tell you what they like, what they don’t like and to share all of these feelings with their network? If you answered no, you are missing a major opportunity to capture new market share. Again, this doesn’t have to be a major investment. Slap a QR (quick response) code on a portion of your next label run and have it point to your Twitter page
. Ask your customers to give you instant feedback on why they chose your product. Test an incentive like a discount coupon or a product give away and see if people need a little extra encouragement to engage the campaign. Capture the metrics, read the posts, react accordingly, repeat the parts that worked, get lots of new customers, make buckets of money. Creating ways for your existing customers to help you attract new customers does not have to break your marketing budget and you will have entered a brave new world of first impressions.
Channel Surfing
Let’s consider another scenario where your product is the channel to create a first impression. For many companies, a web-based application like a storefront is the first interaction someone has with your company. For us, we have cloud, or hosted products that our customers make available to their employees to help them do their job – like initiating marketing campaigns or managing label inventories. In these situations it is your product that establishes the first impression with an entire user community. Again, you must be aware of the customer experience and continue to ask yourself if the experience is the best it can possibly be. Do you allow your customers to socialize about the experience and the product? Are you listening and reacting? Are your channels working hard for you and each other?
You Had Me At Hello
So who is killing the product-based first impression and who is nailing the internet first impression? 37 Signals and Prezi are two companies doing both incredibly well. I won’t cloud your judgment with my opinions here. So go out to their sites, have your own first impression and report back in the comments on what your first impressions are of these two companies and their products. Are they giving a firm handshake or a limp fish?
FetterGroup 