Don’t Lose Your Brand Experience in the Holiday Rush

Brand Experience During the Holidays

As we’ve said before, consistency is the most important factor in designing a brand experience that generates customer loyalty.

The problem is that consistency is difficult to maintain during the holiday rush, but that’s no reason to let your brand slip. In fact, the holidays are the best time to prove that you’re committed to a great brand experience, as large numbers of both new and returning shoppers flood your stores.

Your customers won’t give you a pass for poor service just because it’s busy, so it’s vital to make sure that their experiences are consistent with what they expect from your brand.

But how do you keep your brand experience consistent? Try these things:

Keep Your Message Cohesive

During the holidays, you’ll be sending out frequent messages across multiple channels to a larger-than-normal audience. Don’t let your marketing message become unrecognizably broad. Keep it solid and focused, and it will cut through the noise.

Your customers have come to expect a unified omnichannel experience of your brand – one that makes them feel like they’re always dealing with the same person. Everything from your associates to your marketing campaigns, in-store signage, and social media should be sending the same message. That’s how you create a great holiday campaign and avoid overloading your customers.

Personalize the Experience

It’s easy to get lost in creating a memorable holiday experience for your clientele as a whole and forget to reach out to your customers individually. To make each loyal customer feel appreciated, tailor personalized messages and offers to reward their continuing loyalty throughout the season.

Use these offers to bring your customers back into your stores or incentivize shopping across other brand channels, like your website or app. You can also offer unique programs for loyal customers, such as private shopping parties and preview sales of next season’s big items.

Service Is Key

The holiday peak season is one of the most difficult times to maintain service standards, but it’s also when you have the opportunity to impress the largest number of customers.

Make sure your staff (especially seasonal employees) understands that service is the key to a successful holiday season, and explain why customer experiences are so important to your brand. When your employees understand how service impacts sales and ultimately their paychecks, they’ll be more likely to provide great service to your customers.

Once you’ve implemented these strategies to protect your brand experience during the holiday rush, don’t forget to continue gathering data from surveys, customer intercepts, and mystery shopping programs. Each retail chain is unique, and the only way to improve your brand experience is to find out what customers are actually experiencing in your stores.