The importance of researching the customer journey has been widely discussed. The customer journey is the path that a customer takes before making a purchase on your website or in your store. How do customers arrive at your website or store? What steps do they go through before converting? What message works best for customers? These questions are all part of your brand’s customer journey. In this process, your customers come into contact with your brand identity.
Brand identity
The influence of your brand identity on the customer journey
While this is a familiar term for many marketers, and the development of the customer journey is extensively described in books and online articles, they often overlook the influence of brand identity on the customer journey. Successful brands like Apple and CoolBlue understand this well. Their brand identity is designed in such a way that customers know how the purchase process (customer journey) works. This builds trust and enables brands to guide customers, as customers exhibit predictable behavior.
The brand identity of Apple
Apple stands for quality, innovation, and design. Although the competition is fierce, these are still the terms that most people associate with Apple. In addition, Apple has very loyal customers who are not quick to switch away from the brand. The reason for this is the brand identity of the company. Apple doesn’t sell products; it sells an experience, a customer experience. Apple creates a community around its brand. There are Apple users and non-Apple users.
Slogans like ‘Think Different’ and ‘Say hello to the future’ indicate the brand’s innovation power. Apple’s messages are rebellious and unconventional. Consumers want to be associated with this. The website appears calm and primarily conveys a sense of design. The product specifications are beautifully presented, with no user manuals in sight.
Despite this, Apple is praised for its user-friendliness. Remarkable, isn’t it? Apple’s customer journey is also remarkable. Of course, Apple is easily accessible on all online channels, and consumers can purchase everything on the website. The difference with competitors lies elsewhere… Apple has an Apple Store in just about every major city, and these stores receive about 1 million visitors per day worldwide. How is that possible?
The experience created by the brand through its brand identity directly influences the customer journey. People enjoy coming to the stores. In Apple Stores, you can test every product, and they are spacious and peaceful. There is a relaxed atmosphere, and you are not bothered by pushy salespeople. Apple employees are not focused on selling products. They listen to customers, provide targeted advice, even if it doesn’t lead to an immediate sale. In short, it’s all about the experience.
Door de merkidentiteit is de customer journey voorspelbaar geworden. Apple creëert als het ware zelf het gedrag van de consument.
CoolBlue: Everything for a Smile
CoolBlue is known for the slogan ‘Everything for a smile.’ This slogan is an important part of CoolBlue’s brand identity and positioning and is used in AdWords advertisements and on the company’s Facebook page.
The brand does everything to make its customers happy with optimal service. The brand identity of the company is perfectly aligned with this goal. Synonymous with CoolBlue is the color blue. Blue is associated with reliability and calmness. This immediately instills trust in the consumer. But at CoolBlue, it’s also about the smile. The well-known blue delivery packages from CoolBlue also feature funny stories, fun contests, and always include nice extras.
How does this brand identity translate into the customer journey? Firstly, online visibility: all product categories of CoolBlue are easily found on Google. They make excellent use of AdWords with ads that stand out from competitors.
The CoolBlue advertisement is larger than the others, the benefits are mentioned in the text, opening hours and the address are indicated, and the slogan is highlighted in the ad extensions.
Once on the website, everything is designed to make it as easy as possible for you. Clever tricks like ‘CoolBlue’s Choice’ and ‘the best choices according to our customers’ encourage you to make a purchase. The product pages are designed in such a way that you immediately see the most important specifications of the products. Available products are listed at the top, and the product range is not too large. Too much choice can be counterproductive, and CoolBlue narrows it down to a limited number of qualitatively relevant products. Furthermore, you can easily request advice, and there are various advice pages that explain differences between different types of TVs or drills, for example.
And then the service section. On a specific product page, this list is displayed below the order button:
Particularly, the social proof like the 9.3/10 score and the Best Web Shop award are persuasive and instill trust in consumers.
In short, CoolBlue is the perfect example of a company where the customer journey and brand identity align perfectly. The company’s successes continue to accumulate. In 2017, they broke the billion-euro revenue barrier, and they have since opened 9 physical stores throughout the Netherlands.
These are just two examples of successful companies that use brand identity to influence the customer journey. As a business, be aware of your strengths, communicate them consistently in all your marketing and communication efforts, and ensure that the customer’s journey towards purchasing your product consistently delivers an experience that aligns with your brand identity.
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