Perception is Reality

I know this may be obvious to some of you but I think we often forget how crucial it is to take the statement "perception is reality" into account when it comes to marketing and communications. I was reminded of that recently when I had a coffee with Todd Defren (@tdefren), blogger at PR-Squared, and we were discussing how consumers and the media may brand a company a certain way despite the companies best efforts to change that. We looked at each other and said "perception is reality" at exactly the same time.

This is so true and we need to realize that what our customers think of us is always their reality even if it's 100% false. And changing that can be extremely difficult if not impossible. This is why it's so critical to get your message simple and consistent and ensure that your marketing is credible. If you don't start in the right place with your audience in terms of your brand then it may never change.

In the early days of many start-ups, they think they can control the messages their audience associates with their company. This may be the furthest from the truth when you think about how easily information spreads in our online, social media driven world. You need to realize that things have changed and that people can talk about your company 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and it's this perception that becomes the reality for your company.

Even if the media is not talking about you, then it's important to understand that your own employees or product could be doing or saying something that creates the wrong perception. For example, what if your brand was all about simplicity but getting an order placed is extremely difficult. Then the reality for your brand would not be simplicity. For many start-ups the perception created by your employees and product is the bigger contributor to a different reality than what is communicated online by the media and others.

I've also seen quite a few companies that have the issue where everyone does not communicate the same message consistently. Different members of the team answer the question about what you company does and why it's better in multiple ways which confuses that potential customer but also contributes immensely to creating a different perception of the company.

For example, and this is a bit abstract, what if some of your employees referred to your product as an apple, while others called it an orange and one person insisted on calling it a banana. Now in this scenario, the right answer is apple by the way, what would your customers call your product or would they use a different word? I think you can see where this could go, especially depending on the last person they spoke to.

In the end, to help create the right "reality" for your company, start within to ensure everyone is using the same messages when they talk about your brand and make your brand attributes a key ingredient in everything you do from product to company culture. While you can't control others perceptions of your company, control what you can to help create the reality you strive for with your brand.

Comments

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Dave: great article. I agree with you on the imopatrnce of content marketing. While the benefits are quite clear, however, it does require a shift in mindset: a content marketer, by definition, is a mini media company. And this requires hard work many organizations and associations do not have content as a core competency. But of course, they need to, in order to succeed at content marketing.Content marketing requires an investment in resources, time and energy. Content marketers need to write, edit, curate and share. Organizations that allocate resources to social media ought to make a similar investment in content.

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