One of the coaching calls for our Tourism Marketing Plan Blueprint™ addresses the topic of how to talk about your brand. On the call, our geek-in-chief Bronwyn talked about how consistency enables search engines like Google recognise your brand. That builds Trust, Reputation, and Authority (TRA) which come together in search to put you in front of customers at the right point to make their decision. In this article, we will discuss the vital role that consistency plays in tourism branding.
Google famously does this through its algorithms. Machine learning increasingly enables it to tweak those algorithms to ensure that it gets more and more accurate at recognising the searcher’s preferences.
But it’s important to note that this has its parallels in the science of the original machine – the human brain.
Long before Google moved to semantic search, we had argued that consistency in brand communications benefited your business.
Firstly, the field of behavioural psychology has opened our eyes to the fact that the human brain is very efficient in directing effort. We’ll use heuristics (mental shortcuts), proxies and anything else to help us make decisions quickly. Our brains instinctively shy away from having to work too hard. Consistent brand positioning and communication reduce the effort in recalling our brand and in remembering what we like about it.
But thanks to a recent TED talk I now understand even more about how important consistency is. The talk in question is by Uri Hasson and you can view it by clicking on the photo of Uri opposite.
By telling our story consistently, we can literally implant our brand understanding in the mind of our customers and give it a shape that matches the shape we give it.
How the story enters your brain
Even better, this even works across languages. So if you translate your story well and consistently it will work in international markets as well.
In effect, you are equipping your customer to remember and care about you very quickly. Better still you are keeping your other customer (the search engines) happy. You are creating Trust, Reputation and Authority for both. Imagine if you could do that for your brand?
Well, you can. Actually, it’s not hard once you articulate your brand properly and stick to the playbook!
For Marketing Plan Blueprint customers, you can check out the blueprint to do this – and check the date of our next coaching call on the topic- here
MTR Insights and Trends Members you can hear more on branding here
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