Promotion and Communication. Profiling a Company — Create a Positive Image
Category: Marketing
Modern marketing calls for more than developing a good product, pricing it attractively, and making it available to target customers. Companies must also communicate with their customers and other stakeholders. To most companies the question is not whether to communicate, but how much to spend and in what ways.
Profiling a Company — Create a Positive Image
When persons meet they very quickly form a ‘picture’ of each other, a picture which can decide how relations between the persons will develop — for better or worse. In the same way the first impression a potential customer gets of a company can be important for the future cooperation.
The first impression is decisive.
Company profile. A company must therefore be ‘profiled’. The profile of the company is a strategic decision, determining how the management wants the customer to see the company, for example as regards action parameters such as quality, price, service, packing, product range, etc. Image is the customer’s impression of the company, cf. the profile/image analysis.
It is important to be able to live up to the profile which a company tries to create. The purpose of ‘drawing’ a profile is to get the customers to want to trade with a company. This can be done by influencing customers directly or indirectly.
Indirect and direct influence. A customer is influenced indirectly when he hears about a company, be it in newspapers, radio or TV, or through satisfied customers. Customers buying a company’s products will see and experience a number of conditions which will directly influence the customer’s picture of the company:
Physical framework. The company should compare what the customer will see when he comes to the company with the experience he should preferably get (e.g. parking, displaying signs (names, numbers, references), appearance of buildings/rooms (style, maintenance, cleaning, and layout of rooms)).
Personal contact. When the customer comes to the company (e.g. which staff does the customer meet? What does the staff look like? How is the customer service?). The company is responsible for what the customer will see. If the company contacts the customer at his place, the first impression will often be based on personal contact. Therefore the salesperson’s style, behaviour, and way of dressing should be planned or taken into consideration.
Sales material. Everything the salesperson gives or sends to the customer are elements of the company’s profile (e.g. cards, writing paper, envelopes, offers, orders, confirmations, invoices, etc.)
The product. The customer will naturally judge the company on whether the products bought meet the promises made.
Company image. As mentioned, the company’s image is the customer’s impression of the company, cf. the profile/image analysis. All the above will form the background for a total evaluation from the customers, and the company will get an image varying from positive to negative.
It is important that the profile planned for a company corresponds to the customers’ image of the company. That is if the company wants to have a profile of quality and trust, all the elements with which the customers get in contact must signal quality and trust.